Katrina, Ryan and Jason were appreciative of the inquiry approach to the
teaching and learning of physics. Ryan, for example, shared the following about
teaching and learning via the inquiry method:
There’s something amazing about seeing a student learn through inquiry...It just gives me
the chills. You know, it is like [experiencing] the dissention of the Holy Spirit, do you know
what I mean? It’s very freeing...the Eureka moment. It lifts you up and you feel your whole
body come alive. It’s tingly and you want to learn and teach that way again and again and
again. You want to start thatfire again...and you want to keep fanning theflames...As for Jason, he had already learned in his religious counseling education that
“experience [needs to] come in the front door and theory [needs to] come through
the back door.”He understood that this theory–practice relationship would allow
him to retain his interest in great mysteries of life“without imposing [not fully
formed] answers on others.”This way he could increase students’live chances in a
non-authoritarian way.
All threeteachHOUSTONpreservice teachers credited their science and science
teacher educators for having a significant impact on all of them. The transcripts of
the interviews and focus group sessions were full of comments about their effects.
Katrina, for example, said that their instructors would“guide us and scaffold us—
but would not tell us the answer. It was a lot of guided questions. It was never direct
teaching.”Katrina“appreciated the approach”and said that she“would try to mimic
it in her own teaching as well.”As for Ryan, he was able to discern the differences
between physics taught as theory in his high school classes and physics taught as
inquiry class at university. In physics taught theoretically, he said that“the words
Fig. 30.4 Cumulative secondary science students taught by teachHOUSTON graduates
(cumulative number of students taught is an estimate that assumes teachers will teach 150
students per year.)
30 Attracting, Preparing, and Retaining Teachers in High Need Areas... 467