Developing learners’ critical thinking skills through inquiry-based teaching has been an important aspect of science education. This is an exploratory study aimed at investigating the practice of inquiry-based teaching in schools that use a foreign language (English) in teaching science content. To address the issue, we conducted video observations of six teachers from four community secondary schools in Iringa municipality, Tanzania, for approximately 16 h. These six teachers and 18 students were interviewed after reviewing the clips. In our video study, we noted three major barriers to students’ development of critical thinking skills—teachers’ knowledge and beliefs regarding the nature of scientific knowledge, a classroom culture that does not support students’ development of critical thinking skills and the use of the language of instruction that is not well mastered by both teachers and students.

通过探究式教学来培养学习者的批判性思维能力已经成为科学教育的重要方面。这是一项探索性研究，旨在调查在教学科学内容中使用外语（英语）的学校中基于探究式教学的实践。为了解决该问题，我们对坦桑尼亚伊林加市四所社区中学的六名教师进行了大约16小时的视频观察。在审查了片段之后，采访了这6名老师和18名学生。在我们的视频研究中，我们注意到了学生发展批判性思维技能的三个主要障碍：教师的知识和关于科学知识本质的信念，