Growing Inquiry: Professional Development for Secondary School Teachers to Improve Student Learning
This Pace Inquiry Learning Collaborative has been continuously funded by New York State for four years, has received almost $900,000 to support School of Education faculty to work directly with over 100 secondary school teachers from a diversity of subject areas, experience levels, and school contexts to promote teacher and student inquiry learning throughout the metropolitan region.
Specifically, our grants have supported the development of collaborative inquiry groups in 6 high schools and middle schools in New York City and Westchester county to support cohorts of teachers in conceptualizing and implementing the inquiry process for students. In addition to these school-based sessions, the grant provides funds for university-based sessions, consulting sessions with content area experts from Pace’s Arts and Sciences faculty, and funds for the purchase of classroom materials to implement inquiry learning experiences for students.
The development of this program and the research that grows out of this work rests on a simple hypothesis: supporting the teacher inquiry process provides teachers with the conceptual and practical tools to improve their ability to enact inquiry experiences with their students that would enhance learning outcomes. With that hypothesis in mind, there are two research threads we are pursuing: 1) Overall analysis of the development of teacher conceptions of inquiry learning across the years of the project to look for constancies and differences in development trajectories (Clayton & Kilbane, 2012; Kilbane & Clayton, 2013), and 2) Focused Case Studies of Exemplar Teacher Leaders in the Project (Clayton, Kilbane, & McCarthy, 2013). Initial findings suggest a relationship between appropriation, implementation, and conceptualization of the teacher and student inquiry processes while noting that there were a range of levels of appropriation across the diverse sample of teachers. The closer examination afforded through the cases revealed that three factors affected teachers’ ability to adopt an inquiry stance: trust, experience, and the context in which they worked. These findings reveal important insight about planning and the conditions for promoting professional learning in this area.
Finally, there are three areas that we anticipate future research and development. First, the emergence of teacher leadership for inquiry was an unanticipated outgrowth of this sustained work in schools and will likely be explored further through case study research. Second, impacts on student learning have been anecdotally noted. We are interested in working with particular schools and willing teachers to document more closely these impacts with a particular interest in those impacts on key populations such as English Language Learners. Finally, the curriculum developed as a part of the program has received repeated praise from participants; to that end, documenting and disseminating that “curriculum” would be desirable to professional developers, teacher educators, and secondary educators.
Specifically, our grants have supported the development of collaborative inquiry groups in 6 high schools and middle schools in New York City and Westchester county to support cohorts of teachers in conceptualizing and implementing the inquiry process for students. In addition to these school-based sessions, the grant provides funds for university-based sessions, consulting sessions with content area experts from Pace’s Arts and Sciences faculty, and funds for the purchase of classroom materials to implement inquiry learning experiences for students.
The development of this program and the research that grows out of this work rests on a simple hypothesis: supporting the teacher inquiry process provides teachers with the conceptual and practical tools to improve their ability to enact inquiry experiences with their students that would enhance learning outcomes. With that hypothesis in mind, there are two research threads we are pursuing: 1) Overall analysis of the development of teacher conceptions of inquiry learning across the years of the project to look for constancies and differences in development trajectories (Clayton & Kilbane, 2012; Kilbane & Clayton, 2013), and 2) Focused Case Studies of Exemplar Teacher Leaders in the Project (Clayton, Kilbane, & McCarthy, 2013). Initial findings suggest a relationship between appropriation, implementation, and conceptualization of the teacher and student inquiry processes while noting that there were a range of levels of appropriation across the diverse sample of teachers. The closer examination afforded through the cases revealed that three factors affected teachers’ ability to adopt an inquiry stance: trust, experience, and the context in which they worked. These findings reveal important insight about planning and the conditions for promoting professional learning in this area.
Finally, there are three areas that we anticipate future research and development. First, the emergence of teacher leadership for inquiry was an unanticipated outgrowth of this sustained work in schools and will likely be explored further through case study research. Second, impacts on student learning have been anecdotally noted. We are interested in working with particular schools and willing teachers to document more closely these impacts with a particular interest in those impacts on key populations such as English Language Learners. Finally, the curriculum developed as a part of the program has received repeated praise from participants; to that end, documenting and disseminating that “curriculum” would be desirable to professional developers, teacher educators, and secondary educators.
References:
Bray, J.N., Lee, J., Smith L.L., & Yorks, L. (2000). Collaborative inquiry into practice:
Action, reflection and meaning making. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Clayton, C. D. & Kilbane, J. (2012). University and School Partnerships for Inquiry: Promoting Learning for Teachers and Students as Inquirers. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Vancouver, BC, May 2012.
Clayton, C. D., Kilbane, J., & McCarthy, M. (2013). Growing into Inquiry: Stories of Teachers using Inquiry for Themselves and Their Students. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA, May 2013.
Cochran-Smith, M. & Lytle, S. (2001). Beyond certainty: Taking an inquiry stance on practice In A. Lieberman & L. Miller (Eds.), Teachers Caught in the Action: Professional Development that Matters (pp. 45-60). New York: Teachers College Press. Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. (2009). Inquiry as stance: Practitioner research for the next generation. New York: Teachers College Press.
Hawley, W.D., & Valli, L. (1999). The essentials of effective professional development: A new consensus. In L. Darling-Hammond & G. Sykes (Eds.), Teaching as the learning profession: Handbook of policy and practice (pp. 127-150). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Kilbane, J., & Clayton C. D. (2013). Teachers inquiring about student inquiry. Presentation at the National Association for Professional Development Schools, New Orleans, LA, February, 2013.
McDonald, S., & Songer N. B. (2008). Enacting classroom inquiry: Theorizing teachers’ conceptions of science teaching. Science Education, 92(6), 973-993.
Weinbaum, A., Allen, D., Blythe, T., Simon, K., Seidel, S., & Rubin, C. (2004). Teaching as inquiry: Asking hard questions to improve practice and student achievement. New York: Teachers College Press.