Estimating the Competence of Preservice Primary Teachers to Use Inquiry and Their Willingness to Apply It in the Classroom

Inquiry as a strategy for science teaching has become widespread in the classroom and has various applications. But whether teachers are sufficiently trained to carry it out in pre-university classrooms would need to be determined. The objective of this study is to determine the inquiry knowledge of preservice primary teachers and their ability to use it before and after experiencing it for themselves on their degree programmes. The study was carried out over three academic years (2018–2021) with students from the Experimental Sciences course on a Bachelor’s Degree in Primary Education at a teacher training centre in Spain. A total of 579 students participated and the study was divided into two phases. In the first phase, students answered a questionnaire about a hypothetical situation in which they had to apply inquiry, and in the second phase, they worked in groups on problematic situations in which they had to solve them or propose solutions through inquiry. The results indicate that students have a general ability to follow inquiry procedures, which improves after instruction, although they still need training in didactic content on inquiry methodology. Students were also asked about their willingness to apply inquiry in their future work, as well as the difficulties they consider they will encounter. A number of recommendations are made to address the shortcomings and to overcome the difficulties expressed by students in applying inquiry in their future teaching work.