Student Teachers' Research Skills as Experienced in their Educational Training.

At the university teacher training institute (IDO, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) student teachers who prepare themselves for a teaching career in senior secondary and pre-university education individually perform a research project as part of their curriculum. For some time it has been noticed that student teachers with a biology, chemistry and physics background experience problems with the performance of their educational research project. In this paper the student teachers' practice, experience and problems with the educational research project are elaborated. We used a qualitative approach, following four student teachers (of biology, chemistry, physics and German language), that resulted in the description of these four cases in terms of the operational, experienced and attained curriculum. From these descriptions improvements for the training of inquiry skills have been formulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]