Educating inquiry-oriented teachers: students' attitudes and experiences towards research-based teacher education

Abstract

In this article, we will discuss research-based teacher education as an organizing theme of teacher education. We will report the results of two surveys in which students expressed their attitudes towards the research-based approach and their experiences of research-based teacher education. The construct validity of the inventory was tested using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The comparison of the factor means revealed that the multimode teacher education group had a statistically higher mean score than the traditional class teacher education group for factors which dealt with the pedagogical content knowledge of those subjects that class teachers teach in their classes. When the experienced implementation of the research-based approach was analyzed, the results ran in the same direction. The difference between the attitudes and experiences concerning the research-based approach was remarkable. However, our results suggest that the research-based approach is an appreciated general level organizer for teacher education.

Keywords:

• teacher education
• alternative teacher certification
• research-based approach
• inquiry-oriented teachers