Rsearch On The Reationship Between Middle School Science Teachers’ Abilities And Beliefs Towards Inquiry-Based Instruction

Improving students’ scientific inquiry ability and "scientific literacy" as the core goals of the current curriculum reform in China.Through investigation,we can see that the current situation of the middle school science teachers’ abilities towards inquiry-based instruction in China is not optimistic.The main reason is that teacher belief affect the implementation of inquiry-based instruction.However,Most researchers focus on the analysis of the implementation status quo of inquiry-based instruction,influencing factors and evaluation system.By this,this study analyzes the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and abilities towards inquiry-based instruction in middle school science teachers.This study decided to draw lessons from the questionnaire used by Dr.Lawrence’s doctoral thesis.This questionnaire is highly practical and the dimensions of the questionnaire are well-divided.A detailed examination of all aspects of the teachers’beliefs and abilities towards inquiry-based instruction is made.It’s will facilitate the accurate judgment and evaluation of teachers’ beliefs and abilities towards inquiry-based instruction and the relationship between them.During the research process,the author invited the science teachers from many middle schools in Wuhan and Shenzhen to answer the questionnaire through online and paper-based forms.A total of 172 valid questionnaires were collected.the paper fouses on investigating the effects of demographic factors and teacher background information on inquiry teaching belief and inquiry teaching ability of science teachers in middle schools through single factor multivariate analysis of variance.The multivariate correlation analysis was used to analyze the correlation between inquiry teaching beliefs and inquiry teaching ability of science teachers in middle schools.Finally,the most effective predictors were determined by principal component regression analysis.The results of the study are as follows:(1)Middle school science teachers’ beliefs towards inquiry-based instruction in China are between "reformed" and "traditional" perspective,and they are much more tend to the belief of "reformed" perspective.(2)Middle school science teachers’ beliefs and ablities towards inquiry-based instrcution in China is inconsistent,and teachers’ beliefs are tend to the "reformed"perspective.However,in the actual teaching,the traditional teaching methods are still poor.(3)Middle school science teachers’ beliefs and ablities towards inquiry-based instrcution in China are influenced by demographic factors and teacher background information.such as teacher’s teaching age,school location and so on.(4)The beliefs towards inquiry-based instrcution of middle school science teachers is a complex belief system,and it has significant correlation with teachers’ PCK、scientific knowledge and so on.At last,by comparing the results of this study with Lawrence’s study,we find that American teachers’ inquiry belief is more open to Chinese teachers and tends to"reformed" perspective.In addition,American teachers takes more time and opportunities to accept the training related to the professional development of teaching and the professional development of science content and inquiry-based instrcution than Chinese teachers.In response to this,the author proposes a related structural model after synthesizing the results of the two countries,and according to the above research results,it is concluded that strengthening the number of teachers’ in-service training is beneficial to the change of teachers’ belief in inquiry-based instruction.it’s also beneficial to improve the level of inquiry teaching abilities.