The concept of inquiry based learning has become widespread in teacher education in Europe. A variety of goals shall be reached by engaging teacher students in research: the competency to conduct studies should be constituted or strengthened and an inquiry-focused attitude should be developed. These goals often go along with the concern to increase the competencies of reflection, cooperation and problem solving (e.g. Fichten & Meyer 2014: 30; Spronken-Smith & Walker 2010: 726). Behind these goals there is the idea that teachers have to become researchers in and of their own practice (Paseka et al. 2011; Paseka & Hinzke 2014).

The ability to produce academic knowledge (Smith 2015: 44) is connected with an understanding of teachers as professionals. Teachers are neither craftsmen who can rely solely on their practical know-how nor executive technicians who follow suggestions derived from studies about ‚what works‘ or ‚what works best‘ in teaching (Winch et al. 2014: 20). Because teaching practice is uncertain and contingent teachers must decide case- and situation-specifically how to go on and how to evaluate critically their own actions (Schön 1983: 68f.; BERA/RSA 2014: 5).

Having that in mind it seems necessary to prepare teacher students for their future practice by inquiry-based learning to give them a chance to develop an inquiry-focused attitude. However, there exist only few studies on inquiry-based learning (e.g. Spronken-Smith & Walker 2010: 726; Cox et al. 2008; Levy & Petrulis 2012). Neither do we know much about the effects of different forms and different settings of inquiry-based learning nor what teacher students really learn nor how they learn.

This presentation wants to close some of these gaps. It looks more closely at the learning processes of teacher students in so-called research courses at the University of Hamburg and asks how and what teacher students learn. The link between learning setting and learning processes (Spronken-Smith et al. 2011) will be emphasized as well as the question how research courses structure the way students learn (Giddens 1984).

Basis for the reconstruction of the students’ inquiry-based learning processes is the experience-based theory of learning (“Erfahrungstheorie des Lernens”, Combe & Gebhard 2012). This theory provides an insight into the irritations student teachers experience during their own studies and how these irritations function as starting points of their learning processes. It also allows to reconstruct resistance against dealing with irritations in a productive manner and how some students use their creativity and the resources of the learning community and the instructions of the lecturer to overcome this resistance.  

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