An Inquiry-Based Approach to a Pedagogical Laboratory for Primary School Teacher Education

In this paper we discuss some results of the trial of two pedagogical physics workshops, held during the academic year 2014-15 with students of the Undergraduate Program for Elementary/ Kindergarten Teacher Educationat the University of Palermo. One of the workshops was Inquiry Based, while theother was performed by using “traditional” teaching methods. The data, analyzed by using quantitative methods, were obtained by the administration before, during and after the workshop activities of a questionnaire aimed at understanding what are the teaching styles preferred by students, the student motivation in learning and teaching science, and their ideas about the difficulties a teacher meets when designing and trialing with real pupils science-based pedagogical activities. After a short description of the analysis methods we used in our study, the results of the trial are discussed and commented.