Deductive or Inductive Approach? Instruction on Faraday's Law of Induction and Its Real-Life Applications for Teacher Candidates

Abstract

Students of Physics, Biology, Chemistry and also students of Materials Science and Engineering can have problems with learning certain concepts. Comparing deductive and inductive approaches to teaching can help in this respect. However, there is limited research on comparing deductive and inductive approaches used in teaching. This paper focuses on the impact of inquiry-based predominantly inductive approach over traditional predominantly deductive approach on the understanding Faraday's law of induction and its real-life applications for teacher candidates. Also, awareness of future teachers of different teaching sequences and their implications for the teaching results is discussed. Second-year teacher candidates from the elementary mathematics teaching program enrolled in this research. The result shows a significant difference in favor of the experimental group for which guided inquiry-based learning was implemented. It was concluded that teacher candidates can understand Faraday's law of induction and its real-life applications better if they participate in inquiry-based predominantly inductive approach.