How can autonomy, cooperation, creativity, and social and gender equity be characterized in inquirybased science teaching sessions? A reflection on the development of a multidimensional framework

Abstract

This paper sets out the development of a grid aimed at observing and characterizing ordinary inquiry-oriented teaching practices in science in secondary and higher education. This development is based on a literature review including five dimensions and focuses on the characterization of inquiry-based teaching and four issues at the heart of such teaching, which should foster social and gender equity, cooperation between learners to develop their autonomy and their creativity in a school setting. This grid was built through an iterative process, comparing the first grids derived from the literature review with field data (session films, teacher interviews, field notes) presented by a multidisciplinary research team. The final grid including 25 indicators is used to analyse a physics teaching sequence in the final year of upper secondary school in France. A short discussion about the potential and the methodological limits of the grid concludes the paper.