Teaching Patterns of Scientific Inquiry: A Video Study of Chemistry Lessons in Germany and Sweden

Abstract

Despite the central role of Scientific Inquiry within science education, this topic is rarely focused upon during science lessons in Germany. A comparison with a school system that emphasises Scientific Inquiry in a stronger way (such as the Swedish system) would enable the identification of culturespecific teaching patterns in terms of the instruction of Scientific Inquiry. For this reason, such a comparison has been made within this study. This study has been undertaken as a low- and middle-inferent video analysis. The study provides information concerning culture-specific teaching patterns in Germany and Sweden on the level of general (organisational) teaching processes and of the phases of Scientific Inquiry. The study was carried out with ten German und nine Swedish video-recorded chemistry lessons. The results, presented in this paper, show that German chemistry lessons are organised in a more product-oriented way than the Swedish chemistry lessons.