Aprendizaje por indagacion: un programa de formacion de docentes.

The project aims to develop a professional development program for teachers. The program objective is to promote inquiry oriented science teaching for first grade students. The objectives of the project are: 1) To identify the effect of the professional development program in the students-teachers interactions patterns of a first grade group of teachers. 2) To describe the students-teachers interaction patterns, regarding instructional support. Therefore, the main objective is to enhance the instructional practices of a group of first grade science teachers from Cali, Colombia. 40 teachers, who are currently teaching science classes in first grade, will be invited to participate in the study. The design proposed is a One-group pretest-posttest design using a double pretest. The interactions patterns in the pretests and posttest will be measured with the K-3, Classroom assessment Scoring System (CLaSS) in its dimension Instructional Support. This scoring system will be used with videos of teachers’ performance during their classes. The group will participate in the professional development program, in which they will learn about the empirical cycle as a resource to promote inquiry in their students. The program will have cycles of performance observation, feedback to the performance and coaching about instructional support and the use of the empirical cycle in their instructional activities. The data will be analyzed using paired t-tests. Educational implications of the results will be presented and discussed. 7