Teachers’ perspectives on scaffolding open inquiry in primary school science.

Open inquiry in science education is often associated with enhanced student engagement, agency and deeper learning. However, its implementation in primary classrooms remains rare, largely due to perceived challenges such as balancing student autonomy with pedagogical structure. This study explores teachers’ experiences of teaching open inquiry to students aged 7–12. In collaboration with researchers, six teachers designed and implemented open-ended investigations on everyday and societally relevant issues and shared their reflections in focus group discussions. The study investigates how teachers perceived opportunities and challenges related to students’ engagement and learning, and what scaffolding strategies they used to support their students. The analysis shows that teachers employed a range of both planned (hard) scaffolds such as introductions, templates, and guided discussions and on-the-fly (soft) scaffolds such as triggering questions, reminders, and discussions. We exemplify and discuss how some scaffolds might constrain student autonomy in the short term, but might enable student agency and ability to proceed with their investigations in the long term. The study contributes a didactic model for scaffolding open inquiry in primary science. The results offer valuable implications for teacher education and professional development aiming to prepare teachers for teaching open inquiry in sustainable and manageable ways.