During the last twenty years, inquiry-based learning has become a widespread concept in teacher education in Germany (Paseka & Hinzke, 2018) as well as in other European countries, in the USA and Australia. For describing, several systematizations have been developed (e.g. Brew & Mantai, 2017).

However, there is rather little research on inquiry-based learning in teacher education. Research based on empirical data originates from a few countries (e.g. for the USA Han et al., 2017; for New Zealand Spronken-Smith et al., 2012; for Great Britain Levy & Petrulis, 2012; for Finland Byman et al., 2009; for Germany Paseka & Hinzke, 2018).

Looking at the concepts of inquiry-based learning various goals are formulated. Some of them are very specific, like: teacher students should experience and strengthen their knowledge in research methods and their competencies in conducting studies, they should develop an inquiry-focused attitude. Other goals are more generic, like: inquiry-based learning should help to increase competencies like the ability to reflect, to collaborate or to solve problems; even more general the gap between practice and theory, between the routines of teaching and knowledge about teaching should be reduced (e.g. Spronken-Smith & Walker, 2010).

Underlying these goals there is the idea that teachers are neither craftsmen nor technicians who execute rules. They rather have to act as professionals, i.e. they must be able to attend the needs of pupils and the specific characteristics of the situation marked by uncertainty and contingency (Schön, 1983). To be able to do so, teachers need a ‘double vision of advocacy and inquiry’, they need two contradictory abilities at the same time. On the one hand, they have to maintain the flow of (inter)action, following well-known routines and reflection-in-action, on the other hand they have to call their practice into question by evaluating and reflecting it critically. The question is whether inquiry-based learning can prepare teacher students for their future work by helping them to develop this double vision.

In light of this question, the paper presents findings of an empirical study carried out at the University of Hamburg. Though inquiry-based learning has become a wide-spread concept in teacher education in Germany there exist hardly any research about the connection of inquiry-based learning and professionalization. So it is quite unsure if and how inquiry-based learning can contribute to professionalization processes of teacher students.

In Germany, suggestions to clarify the concept of inquiry-based learning already exist (Huber, 2014; Reinmann, 2016). Other studies focus on how students perceive inquiry-based learning connected to school internships and how they carry out their research projects in this context (Drahmann et al., 2018). When learning is focussed, knowledge tests (Ophuysen et al., 2017) or questionnaires (König et al., 2018) are used.

By contrast, our study focusses on professionalization processes, i.e. processes in which students develop an analytical stance towards their (future) work (Helsper, 2001). To start sustainable and long-lasting learning and professionalization processes irritations seem to be necessary (Combe & Gerhard, 2012). So a concept for research courses in educational science was planned and carried out with a bias on inclusion in classrooms. Without any connection to a school internship, i.e. without the pressure to teach and to research at the same time, the students created a research question, carried out observations at schools, wrote a research report and presented their results in the involved schools.

Against this background, the paper addresses the following research questions:

• How do teacher students deal with irritations emerging in their research processes?
• How can these ways of dealing with irritations can be described as professionalization processes within the inquiry-based setting?

To find out whether irritations were realized by the teacher students ten group discussions were carried out at the University of Hamburg. The discussions took place twice: after the students’ first observations at schools and at the end of the yearlong inquiry-based learning course. In these discussions, there was no facilitator. The students had to decide in which way they react to questions given on a sheet of paper and concerning their perspectives on and experiences with their research. This approach meets the requirements of the documentary method (Bohnsack, 2010) which was used for data analysis. Based on the sociology of knowledge by Karl Mannheim, the documentary method takes into account the difference between communicative and conjunctive knowledge. While the first one can be put into words by the social actors, the second one remains implicit and tacit. Conjunctive knowledge can only be reconstructed by transcending the communicative modus, i.e. the modus which is important for role-based, institutionalized actions. To get access to the habitual or practical actions emerging from conjunctive experiences is the aim of documentary method (Bohnsack, 2018). This given, the group discussions opened up spaces for the students to set their relevancies. Analysis then focused on both: what the students said (communicative knowledge) and how they discussed the topics (conjunctive knowledge). In the so-called formulating interpretation, the content of the utterances was summarized whereas in the so called reflecting interpretation, the modes which organize the discourses of the groups were analysed. This was done by identifying the implicit rules underlying sequences of action, reaction and re-reaction in the discussions, and by carrying out comparative analyses between the cases.

By analysing what was said numerous irritations could be found. At the beginning, the irritations are connected to the process of data collection. For example, the students discuss the challenge to act as a researcher in a classroom and not as a teacher. In the discussions taking place after the research process, the students look back at these irritations, but they rather discuss irritations emerging during data analysis. For example, some groups got irritated by an example presented by the teacher educators showing how data analysis could be done. One group also got irritated by the course design. The students express that usually they do not experience so much freedom and space for making own decisions in their studies. By using the reflecting interpretation, different patterns of how the students deal with these irritations could be reconstructed. These patterns differ in terms of how deep and in which mode the students immerse into the research process and how likely they trigger learning processes. While some groups discuss their irritations in depth and try to understand them, others rather seem to tick off the questions. They just name irritations and don’t share their experiences. The findings will be discussed in light of the question if and how the ways of dealing with the irritations can be described as professionalization processes within the inquiry-based learning setting. It will become evident that chances for building professional capacity are based on the structures of the research courses as well as on the underlying knowledge patterns the students have.

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