Implementing Inquiry-Based Science Education to Foster Emotional Engagement of Special-Needs Students - Affective Dimensions in Chemistry Education - page 114

education based on critical action research 4 with 15 teachers. She says, “it is
absolutely appropriate, indeed essential, for teachers to use such a model of critical
action research as a tool for changing practice and as a means to enlightening and
empowering themselves and their pupils and other involved agencies in order to
develop genuinely participatory inclusive education for all” (Lloyd, 2010 , p. 1129).
Insights and discussions from special-needs education are often used as a starting
point for the development of inclusive settings, which increasingly involves persons
concerned with general education (Meijer, 2010 ; United Nations, 2006 ). Also the
daily practice of chemistry teachers has to be empowered for change in terms of the
inclusive demands posed by education policy. Action research is an essential means
(cp. Lloyd, 2010 ) to drive forth this beginning development in chemistry education.

6.1 Data Collection and Analysis

I wanted to track how the change of classroom practice, i.e., the newly implemented
approach of inquiry-based learning, affected the level of engagement of the stu-
dents. In addition to direct classroom observation, I videotaped a double lesson of
guided inquiry (third part of the teaching unit, see above). Only the part where the
students actively planned and experimented was recorded, whereas the parts of
discussion and reworking the students concepts were not. According to my obser-

vations it was often difficult for the students to start a task. That is why especially
the phases of planning and conducting an experiment should be revealing in terms
of accomplishing the task. Those are the first steps to take self-regulated and
without direct teacher control. The video data is the main focus of the following
analysis as guided inquiry was the teaching strategy to be implemented in the
long run.
The video analysis would give me an opportunity to reflect on action with some
distance. Video recording is recommended when teachers analyze their own classes
(Altrichter et al., 2007 ). Furthermore, the data produced by video analysis is not
influenced by students '

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attainment levels like interviews, for example, would

be. Due to the students language skills, I decided not to use questionnaires.

Concerning ethical issues, permission to videotape the students was given, data
was anonymized, and the video was only seen by the researcher/science teacher and
the classroom teacher.
As theoretical and curriculum-based aims and indicators were used to analyze
accomplishment of the implementation, I decided to use the deductive procedure
“contentual structuration” of the method “content analysis” (Flick, 2009 ; Mayring,
2007 ). The videotaped lessons were coded by means of a category system which
will be explicated in the following section. The tool “Videograph” developed by

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4 Critical action research is regarded “as the embodiment of the democratic principle, leading to
empowerment, enlightenment and emancipation” (Lloyd, 2010 , p. 112).