A Study Of The Primary School Science Teachers' Conceptions Of Scientific Inquiry

In the new curriculum reform, there are five content standards, the first one is scientific inquiry. At the same time, scientific inquiry is regarded as a primary way that can ensure the new science curriculum acquiring a good outcome. Primary science teachers' conceptions of scientific inquiry have a crucial effect, so the issue of science teachers' conceptions of scientific inquiry is worthy of discussing.The thesis firstly gives a review of the scientific inquiry literature, and constructs an analysis framework of conceptions of scientific inquiry. Based on the framework, using some phenonmenographic approaches, data collected by semi-structure interview is analyzed by category methods. Finally, the thesis also reviews the educational literature, and summarizes several factors that affect the developments of primary teachers' conceptions of scientific inquiry.The outcomes of this thesis are: 1) three dimensions of identifying teachers' conception are suggested: science knowledge, science process and science spirit. 2) three categories of scientific inquiry conceptions are identified according to their views on each dimension varied from the most inflexible to the most flexible: rigid conceptions of scientific inquiry, flexible conceptions of scientific inquiry and indulgent conceptions of scientific inquiry. 3) several factors that affect the developments of primary teachers' conceptions of scientific inquiry are given.