ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Teacher Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1490875
Teacher Perceptions of Classroom Composition and Instructional Strategies in Primary School Science Education
Provisionally accepted
- 1Private University College of Education of the Diocese of Linz, Linz, Austria
- 2University of Graz, Graz, Styria, Austria
- 3University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
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Teachers constantly need to make decisions about which instructional strategies to apply in their classrooms, in particular in the context of so-called adaptive teaching. Research, therefore, needs to explore how such decisions are informed and chosen. Using teacher and student data from the Austrian 2019 TIMS study (students: n=4,966; teachers: n=339), the present cross-sectional empirical study addressed three issues. First, we explored the frequency of use of inquiry-based instructional strategies (IQIS) by Austrian primary school science teachers. Second, we asked whether there was a potential relationship between this frequency of use and science teachers' perceived challenges in terms of heterogeneity, achievement and motivation? Finally, we examined potential associations between the frequency of use of specific IQIS and science teachers' characteristics. Using an IRT-approach and multiple regressions we managed to identify the four inquiry-based instructional strategies: Demonstrating (α= .68), Connecting (α= .65), Involving (α= .90), and Cognitively Activating (α= .77). Our results show a significant association between teachers' perceptions, teachers' characteristics and the frequency of use of IQIS. This suggests that primary school science teachers' perceptions of their class composition directly influence their choice of IQIS and that this perception is co-determined by certain teacher characteristics. The results are discussed in relation to educational equity, implications for pre-service training, and further training for primary school teachers but also regarding inquiry-based instruction, as our results contrast with numerous studies that examine student ratings as a basis for instructional quality.
Keywords: TIMSS, primary school science, inquiry-based learning, instructional strategies, class perception, class composition, Instructional quality
Received: 03 Sep 2024; Accepted: 05 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Neubauer-Hametner, Wendt and Kasper. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Doris Neubauer-Hametner, Private University College of Education of the Diocese of Linz, Linz, Austria
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