Reconstructive Longitudinal Study of Professionalization Processes in an Inquiry-Based Learning Context: A Comparison of Two Universities

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The aim of this research project is to reconstruct collective orientations of student teachers underlying inquiry-based learning in two different formats of inquiry-based learning as well as to trace and repro-duce these orientations from a longitudinal perspective. Expectations of inquiry-based learning are currently high – especially for the initial phase of teacher training and education. In this regard, inquiry-based learning should provide student teachers with professional skills in two distinct fields, namely teaching praxis and research praxis. Whether and to what extent inquiry-based learning can meet these expectations has so far not been investigated empirically; there is a striking imbalance between the increasing popularity of inquiry-based learning and the current state of research. Against this background, the research project focuses on two diverging formats and examples of the use of in-quiry-based learning in the education science and school pedagogics context in Germany: inquiry-based learning in conjunction with a praxis phase (University of Bielefeld) and inquiry-based learning without a praxis phase (University of Hamburg). The group discussions will be analysed using the documentary method and will centre on questions relating to the collective orientations of student teachers underlying inquiry-based learning that can be reconstructed, the continuities and discontinui-ties with regard to the underlying explicit and tacit knowledge behind these orientations which emerge over the course of the respective inquiry-based learning programme, and the extent to which these forms of knowledge and their interrelations differ depending on the inquiry-based learning format used. The longitudinal study will produce three typologies, which will be augmented in a series of supporting interviews that will accompany the group discussions. In a subsequent, separate step, the typologies will be discussed in the context of the expectations of inquiry-based learning and the an-ticipation of professionalization through its use. In this way, the project contributes both to the dis-course on inquiry-based learning in general and to the discourse on professionalization through in-quiry-based learning in the initial phase of teacher education and training in particular.