Practical inquiry: Collaboration and reflection in teacher education reform

If teachers are to use collaboration and reflection in their own classrooms, it is important for them to experience it in university teacher education courses. To explore implications of recommendations in national reports on teacher education reform, a course was designed using practical inquiry to structure use of craft knowledge, collaboration and reflection. Forty one teachers of varied backgrounds participated. Teachers reported that their perspectives broadened and that they gained confidence in their teaching choices through this experience. I found it challenging to manage disagreements for their maximum learning potential.     

Difficulties in promoting inquiry in teacher education partnerships: English and Canadian perspectives

This comparative study of two pre‐service teacher education programmes in England and in Canada focuses on the relationship between inquiry and the partnership structures within which the universities and schools work together. Despite the very different jurisdictions and cultures of the two systems, the two universities seem to experience similar difficulties in relation to their commitment to inquiry and to working in partnership with schools. At both the Canadian and the English sites, definitions of inquiry varied within institutions as well as between universities and schools, and inquiry was a university rather than a school priority. These differences between the schools' and the universities' views on inquiry are significant for the partnerships in which the programmes operate. It is these differences and difficulties—which often seem context‐related but which, through the authors' comparative work, have come to seem more systemic—that are explored in this article.     

Developing new teacher inquiry and criticality: The role of online discussions

This work concerns the professional development of UK teachers in their first year of teaching. It is interested in how the online discussions (ODs) these teachers undertook as part of the Master of Teaching contributed to this development process. The teachers worked in online tutor groups made up of teachers from different schools, phases (primary and secondary) and subjects. The data used were their accounts of participating in the ODs written towards the end of this first year of teaching and interviews with a selection of these teachers at a later stage in their career. It appeared that the learning gains of the ODs were enabled and fostered by writing for an audience of peers about their professional practice. These new teachers developed an inquiry‐centred collegiality, reflexivity and a critical engagement with wider and longer‐term educational perspectives. The research establishes that the gains from the ODs were the result of careful pedagogic design at many levels. By foregrounding the situated experiences and interests of the teachers, it allowed a “way in” for them to start to understand the complexities, dilemmas and strategies within their own and others' professional practice.     

Student-centred inquiry as curriculum as a model for field-based teacher education

This research project focuses on teacher education in a field-based methods course. We were interested in understanding what could be when we worked with pre-service teachers in a high school physical education class to assist them in the process of learning to listen and respond to their students in ways that might better facilitate young people’s interest, motivation and learning. To develop a theoretical understanding of what happened in this field-based methods course designed to promote listening and responding to students as a way to guide curriculum, we utilised grounded theory. In this paper, we describe a model, student-centred inquiry as curriculum, which includes a cyclical process of building the foundation, planning, responding to students, listening to respond and analysing the responses. Student centred-inquiry as curriculum is a blending of action in the historical, localised and particular lived realities of students and teachers illuminated through inquiry with the simultaneous engagement of autobiographies, the negotiation of student voice and the social construction of content. We discuss this model as a possibility for transforming the status quo of teacher education and K-12 schools.     

The weakening role of education studies and the re-traditionalisation of Swedish teacher education

Research suggests that certain common policy presuppositions can be identified regarding teacher education programmes in advanced knowledge-based economies, most notably?the relationship between formal education (schooling) and economic production, and the role of teacher education in respect to this relationship. This article draws on the work of Basil Bernstein to engage theoretically and critique the nature of that evolving policy relationship within the context of Sweden. While the article concentrates on developments in one country, however, it is contended that the findings are symptomatic of a wider European or even global trend in which the scientific foundation of teacher education is under threat.     

The role of the cooperating teacher in a school-based teacher education program: Benefits and concerns

A school-based teacher education program is described. The focus of this research is the cooperating teacher. Specifically, the role of advisor (cooperating teacher) and the benefits and concerns are examined. Twenty-three advisors completed a questionnaire related to the school-based teacher education program. The benefits were personal and professional development, time to work with specific pupils and plan programs, meeting new people and the pleasure of watching a student teacher develop. The concerns were time constraints and problems with poor student teaching performance.     

Enhancing the role of the arts in primary pre-service teacher education

This research sought to explore the impact upon pre-service teachers' orientations towards the arts of a performing arts week within a one-year postgraduate teacher education programme. There is evidence from a range of data collected before, during and after the week that it had helped to strengthen participants' self-image as artistic individuals who recognise the value of the arts in children's education and have enhanced confidence in working with different professionals to teach the arts in a cross-disciplinary way. Within a climate of compliance, this study suggests that pre-service teachers require such experiences to overcome their fear of curriculum innovation.     

Collaborative inquiry in teacher professional development

This article presents an in-depth case study of a complex community of inquiry. In this community, teachers worked collaboratively to build from situated assessments of students' learning through reading to refine and monitor practices designed to enhance student learning in their subject-area classrooms. In this report, we present evidence to address three questions: (1) What did inquiry look like within this community?; (2) How was collaboration implicated in teachers' inquiry?; and (3) How was engagement in inquiry related to meaningful shifts in teachers' practice and learning? This research contributes by uncovering important links between teacher inquiry, collaboration, and educational change.     

An autoethnographic inquiry into the role of serendipity in becoming a teacher educator/researcher

In this inquiry, the author inquires into her shifting ‘self’ as a researcher/teacher educator in teacher professional development. The ‘self’ in question is acknowledged as being historically, culturally and locally specific. It is also acknowledged as unfixed or unstable; constructed from and in response to various, and often competing, discourses. As an autoethnographic inquiry, this article presents vignettes of the self/researcher/teacher educator embedded in the messiness and complexity of lived experiences and it represents her attempts to make sense (albeit partial and provisional) of these experiences. Central to the inquiry is an examination of the roles played by serendipity and by writing itself in the processes of sense- and self-making.     

学习化社会成人教育教师的角色冲突探微

成人教育的教师由于扮演多重角色，经常面临角色冲突的困扰。恰当化解冲突，对成人教育教师自身发展、对终身教育体系和学习化社会的构建意义重大。     

Literature review: The role of the teacher in inquiry-based education

Inquiry-based education receives much attention in educational practice and theory, since it provides pupils and teachers with opportunities to actively engage in collaboratively answering questions. However, not only do many teachers find this approach demanding, it also remains unclear what they should do to foster this type of education in their classrooms. Our research question was: Which teaching strategies are used by K-12 teachers when promoting inquiry-based education in their classrooms and what are the reported outcomes?After searching for empirical studies on this topic, we examined 186 studies investigating different ways in which teachers can promote inquiry-based education. Analyses revealed varying teaching strategies, differing with regard to direction (teacher directed, student directed and mixed) and different perspectives of regulation (meta-cognitive, conceptual, and social regulation). Results show that important teacher strategies in metacognitive regulation are: focussing on thinking skills, developing a culture of inquiry, supporting inquiry discourse, and promoting nature of science; in conceptual regulation: providing information on the research topic and focussing on conceptual understanding; and in social regulation: bridging the gap between high and low achievers, organizing student learning in groups and focussing on collaboration processes.     

When Conceptions Collide: Constructing a community of inquiry for teacher education in British Columbia

The first part of the article describes a cohort option in a one-year elementary teacher education programme that is based on the idea of building a community of inquiry. This overview frames the discussion in the second part. Here I examine conceptual tensions that arise from the various understandings participants have of community and inquiry. Instructors see inquiry as the central purpose of the community, but some students believe mutual support is paramount (a community of compassion) and others believe they have entered a credentialing community. Each of these understandings results in a different degree or kind of participation.     

Narrative inquiry in service learning contexts: Possibilities for learning about diversity in teacher education

This paper explores the experiences of pre- and in-service teachers through intentionally created narrative inquiry (Connelly & Clandinin, 2006) spaces within three different service-learning engagements in Canada, Kenya, and Turkey. Because the contexts where our studies were situated were culturally different from participants' backgrounds, narrative inquiry spaces shaped windows in which participants could restory their understandings of others different from themselves. We argue thinking narratively suits the purpose of learning within service learning, highlighting the potential this kind of work holds for pre- and in-service teachers' professional identities in school contexts shaped by diversity.