Social Representations of primary school teachers regarding the Inquiry-Based Teaching approach in Natural Sciences classes and its implementation challenges

This study investigated the social representations of primary school teachers who teach Natural Sciences in the early years of elementary education regarding the Inquiry-Based Science Teaching approach. Within the context of a continuing education course offered as an extension course at a public university in São Paulo state, a free-association questionnaire was used as a data collection instrument. Each of the 101 teachers was asked to list six words they remembered when reading the inducing term "Inquiry-Based Science Teaching." After being tabulated and grouped by theme, the responses were subjected to the openEvoc 0.95 and IRaMuTeQ software analysis. The results suggest that the terms "Research" and "Curiosity" are part of the Central Core of the Social Representation of the participants. Additionally, when analyzing the most frequently mentioned terms, it becomes evident that experiment is an intrinsic aspect of Investigative Teaching in the conception of this group of participants