A model of the inquiry process based on John Dewey's concept of inquiry was used to develop a means of observing and scoring individual inquiry behavior. The Teacher's Inbasket, a simulation of problems crossing a teacher's desk in a simulated school setting, was developed for the study. Fifty-one female elementary education majors were selected as subjects on the basis of the patterns of psychological and academic achievement characteristics they manifested. Subjects were divided into four groups according to cognitive style configuration and college grade point average (GPA). Their behavior was observed, and they were trained to "think aloud" while completing inbasket forms, one before student teaching and one after. Correlational and multiple regression analyses revealed that"through using a combination of predictor variables characterizing different personality-cognitive style types, significant predictions can be made of the inquiry bahavior of teachers-in-training as subjects." College GPA generally proved irrelevant as a predictor. (Also reported are content analysis descriptions of the inquiry process in relation to the philosophical concept of "dialectic," effects of student teaching experience on inquiry performance, and relations of inquiry performance to conceptual tempo. Appended are a 51-item bibliography, inbasket materials, scoring information, selected tests and scales, supplementary matrices and tables, and raw data.) (SG)