Biology teachers’ knowledge and practice of inquiry based learning in Luweero District, Uganda.

Abstract

Inquiry-based learning has been shown to be effective in helping the teacher cater for learners’ academic achievements, motivation, attitude, and participation as well as developing critical thinking and problem solving skills. Much as inquiry-based learning can be an effective method it is not known whether biology teachers in Luweero district have knowledge of inquiry based learning (IBL) and practice it in the teaching of biology. This study therefore investigated the biology teachers’ knowledge and practice of inquiry-based learning as well as the relationship between gender, level of education and years of experience and biology teachers’ knowledge. Questionnaires were administered to 57 biology teachers, of which 20 teachers were interviewed after which lessons of 5 teachers; each teacher 4 lessons were observed.Data from questionnaires were analyzed using SPSS 21 to obtain tables with means determining knowledge aspects of IBL. A Pearson correlation was also run to determine whether the different aspects of knowledge had relationship with gender, level of qualification and years of experience. A one-way analysis of variance procedure and independent t-tests for quality of means were performed to investigate whether significant relationships existed with respect to teachers’ gender, education level and years of experience. The study findings revealed that the biology teachers’ who participated in the study lacked clear knowledge (mean of 3.54 ± 1.12) of inquiry-based learning as they were undecided with all the knowledge aspects of inquiry-based learning. The biology teachers did not fully engage the learners in inquiry-based learning practices. And there was no significant relationship between gender, level of education and years of experience and the biology teachers’ knowledge of inquiry-based learning. The study concluded that the biology teachers who participated were not confident about their knowledge of inquiry-based learning and did not explicitly engage learners actively in knowledge construction. There was no significant relationship between gender, years of experience level of education and teachers’ knowledge of inquiry-based learning. The suggested areas for further research in the following topics; disparity in university/college teaching methods content and its effect on teachers’ understanding and practice of inquiry-based learning, relationship between teachers’ knowledge and their practice of IBL and effect of continuous professional development courses on teachers’ understanding and practice of IBL.