Practical Guide of IBSE : A Pedagogical Framework for Primary School Teachers

Inquiry-based science education “IBSE” has been promoted as an inspiring way of learning science by engaging pupils in designing and conducting their scientific investigations. For primary school teachers, the open nature of IBSE poses challenges as they often lack experience in supporting their pupils during the different phases of an open IBSE project, such as formulating a research question and designing and conducting investigations. The current study aims to meet these challenges by presenting a pedagogical framework in which four domains of scientific knowledge are addressed in seven phases of inquiry. My results show that teachers can guide their pupils successfully through the process of open inquiry by explicitly addressing the conceptual, epistemic, social, and/or procedural domain of scientific knowledge in the subsequent phases of inquiry. The paper concludes by suggesting further research to validate our framework and to develop a pedagogy for primary school teachers to guide their pupils through the different phases of open inquiry.