Prospective Teachers’ Understanding of Inquiry Constructs in Science Education

This study tested prospective teachers’ understanding of the inquiry construct in science education, as well as its differences in gender, field of specialization and level of study. A quantitative descriptive survey approach was used to obtain data to answer the questions and test the hypotheses in this study. A total of 128 study respondents based on Krejcie and Morgan were prospective teachers’ students from Tanjong Malim in the fields of specialization Diploma, Bachelor’s Degree and Master’s Degree in the field of Science (Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Science). Descriptive analysis was used to see the frequency and percentage of three inquiry constructs (Questioning, Scientific Investigation and Data Collection) while inferential statistics using Mann-Whitney U Test and Kruskal-Wallis H Test were used to test the null hypothesis. Findings from the analysis of the Mann-Whitney U Test and the Kruskal-Wallis H Test found that there was no significant difference between teachers’ understanding in terms of gender, field of specialization and level of study of the inquiry construct, thus accepting all the research hypotheses that were built. This study is expected to be the basis to give explicit attention and emphasis to the inquiry construct in the curriculum that is formulated in the future.