In teacher education in Germany, two formats of inquiry-based learning can be distinguished: in combination with or separated from school internships. Whereas in the first format, student teachers carry out research about their own teaching practice (e.g. Schüssler et al., 2016) with the aim to get prepared for their future profession (Weyland, 2019), in the second format, student teachers do research about teaching practice they are not involved in with the aim to develop academic competencies in the field of research and to start processes of Bildung (Huber & Reinmann, 2019). Recent studies indicate that student teachers in the first format can be overwhelmed by doing research while being engaged in their internship (e.g. Fichten & Weyland, 2018). On the other hand, learning processes in inquiry-based learning courses focusing not their own school practice have not been sufficiently explored yet, even though this format has a long tradition in Germany. This paper focusses on inquiry-based learning in university courses of the second format. Existing research will be presented, research desiderata will be pointed out. An own study focuses research courses taking place in the department of school pedagogy & school research at the university of Hamburg. These courses last two semesters and can be categorized as “wholistic” (Brew & Mantai, 2017): The student teachers work in research teams, formulate research questions, carry out observations in inclusive classes, write field-notes, analyze them and present their findings in the participating schools (also Huber, 2009). The accompanying research picks up two desiderata. 1) By analyzing group discussions from five courses, the collective level of inquiry-based learning was examined. At the end of the courses, the student teachers were asked to look back at their research process. 2) By using the documentary method (Bohnsack, 2018) for data analysis, the explicit as well as the implicit knowledge structures of the student teachers were reconstructed (Hinzke & Paseka, 2021). As a result, it becomes evident how norms and common sense-theories of student teachers concerning their studies and the university as an organization are framed by habitual orientations structuring the way student teachers experience inquiry-based learning processes. It will be discussed how these explicit and implicit knowledge structures shared by the group members affect, i.e. promote or hinder the learning processes of student teachers in the context of inquiry-based learning settings.

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