Pre-service Primary Science Teachers’ Abilities for Solving a Measurement Problem Through Inquiry

This article presents a qualitative descriptive-interpretive study about the abilities of pre-service primary science teachers (PPTs) to solve a measurement problem put to them as an activity of scientific inquiry. The participants in the study were 23 PPTs receiving training in science teaching, organized into small groups to solve the proposed problem. The data were collected through reports they prepared from a script with open-response questions that referred on the one hand to the planning, development and conclusions obtained with the scientific inquiry and on the other to promoting the PPTs’ metacognitive reflection regarding the difficulties encountered, the lessons learned and their proposals for improvement for future activities on similar measurements. The information was analysed in three phases to increasingly refine the coding of this. The results revealed that, overall, the PPTs were able to complete the scientific inquiry with a fairly acceptable degree of efficacy. A discussion of the results emphasizes the usefulness of the procedural-type scientific inquiry activities to initiate PPTs in their approach to inquiry-based science education.