Inquiry on Inquiry:

Practitioner Research and Students Learning

Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Joan Barnatt,
Audrey Friedman, and Gerald Pine

Boston College
February 2009

Will appear in a special issue on
Research on Teacher Reflectivity: The Impact on Teaching and Learning
Ed Pultorak, Editor
Action in Teacher Education
Fall 2009



Contact information:
Marilyn Cochran-Smith
Lynch School of Education
Boston College
140 Commonwealth Avenue
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
cochrans@bc.edu










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ABSTRACT

In many teacher education programs, some form of inquiry or practitioner
research is now included in the preservice teacher education curriculum. The intention is
to help teacher candidates become professionals who are life-long learners who raise
questions and research their practice across the professional career. At the same time,
teacher education evaluation has shifted from primary emphasis on resources and
curriculum to an emphasis on K-12 student learning outcomes. This article speaks to both
the outcomes focus of teacher education policy and practice and the agenda to prepare
professional teachers who know how to learn from and about teaching in an ongoing
way. The article describes an inquiry project carried out by a group of teacher education
practitioners/researchers in order to examine how and what teacher candidates learned
when they were required to conduct classroom inquiry focused on students learning
outcomes. The purpose of the study was to explore the processes and results of this new
focus and to determine whether the strengths of a long-standing emphasis on inquiry as a
way of knowing about teaching could be retained when the emphasis was shifted from
teacher candidates own learning to the learning of their students. Based on in-depth
content analysis of purposively selected inquiries, the article demonstrates that the quality
of candidates inquiries generally depended on the questions posed, the ways candidates
conceptualized and assessed learning, and their understanding of the recursive nature of
the inquiry process. However the article also identifies a number of problems that were
created with the new emphasis.

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In many teacher education programs nationwide and internationally, it is now
common for some form of inquiry to be included in preservice preparation. Whether
labeled teacher research, action research, self-study, or practitioner inquiry, the inclusion
of inquiry in the preservice curriculum is generally intended to help teacher candidates
become life-long learners who raise questions and continuously learn how to teach by
researching and reflecting on practice across the professional life-span. This goal is
consistent with the current professionalization agenda, which, since the 1980s, has called
for the reform of teacher preparation policy and practice to ensure that all students in all
classrooms in Americas schools have fully certified and fully prepared professional
teachers. A hallmark of the professional teacher is that he or she is knowledgeable about
not only content and pedagogy, but also how to learn from teaching in an ongoing way,
how to pose and address new problems and challenges that do not have existing answers
(Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005), and how to integrate and link different kinds of
knowledge to the complex problems of schools and classrooms (Hammerness, 2006) .
Over the last decade, however, many questions have been raised about the
professional agenda in teacher education, and in particular, critics have suggested that
teacher education has not been properly accountable for the learning outcomes of K-12
students (Crowe, 2008; Kanstoroom & Finn, 1999). Partly in response to critics, but also
as part of changing notions of educational accountability (Cuban, 2004) and changing
standards of accreditation, the emphasis of many preparation programs has shifted from
inputs only (e.g., institutional commitment, faculty qualifications, fieldwork,
conceptual frameworks, and the alignment of these with professional knowledge and
standards) to outcomes (e.g., candidates demonstrated knowledge, skill, and
dispositions as well as K-12 students test scores and other school results). Although
there have been many critiques of the outcomes emphasis as well as differences in
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viewpoints about which outcomes are most important and how they should be measured
(e.g., Fallon, 2006; Zeichner, 2005), it is now widely accepted that the effectiveness of
preparation programs and pathways ought to be assessed, at least in part, in terms of
outcomes and results rather than simply in terms of curricula, faculty, or resources. This
is reflected in current standards for teacher certification and program accreditation in
place in most states (Darling-Hammond, 2000b) and in current calls for new teacher
education research and assessments (e.g., Allen, 2003; Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2005;
Walsh & Hale, 2004).
This article speaks to both the outcomes focus of teacher education policy and
practice, on one hand, and the current professionalization agenda, on the other. The
article begins by briefly clarifying the concept of practitioner inquiry in teacher education
and considering related literature. Next the article describes a study of inquiry in one
teacher education program as a way to assess the impact of teacher education and
examine the process of learning to teach. The inquiry project was carried out by a group
of teacher education practitioner-researchers in order to examine how and what teacher
candidates learned when they were required to conduct classroom inquiry focused on
students learning outcomes. The purpose of the study was to explore the processes and
results of this new focus and to determine whether the strengths of a long-standing
emphasis on inquiry as a way of knowing about teaching could be retained when the
emphasis was shifted from candidates own learning to the learning of their students.
Specifically the study examined what happened when candidates were required to
conduct classroom inquiry that focused on students learning and what the implications
were for the local program as well as teacher education more generally.
We demonstrate that the quality of candidates inquiries generally depended on
the questions posed, the ways candidates conceptualized and assessed learning, and their
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understanding of the recursive nature of the inquiry process. We conclude, however, that
although helping teacher candidates focus on students learning is important, a number of
new problems and issues were created.
Framing the Study
As the title of this article suggests, the study described here can be thought of as
inquiry on inquiry. In other words, as members of the teacher education research group
who are the authors of this paper, we engaged with our colleagues in systematic inquiry
about the processes and outcomes of our candidates inquiries. This double-layered
aspect of inquiry on inquiry sharpened the questions we asked and prompted us to turn
on ourselves the same expectations for learning from reflection and analysis of the data of
practice that we held for the teacher candidates we taught.
Theoretical Framework
The conceptual umbrella of practitioner inquiry, or practitioner research, refers to
a variety of educational research modes, forms, genres, and purposes (Anderson, Herr,
and Nihlen, 1994, 2007; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2004, 2009; Zeichner and Noffke,
2001), including action research, teacher research, self study, narrative inquiry, the
scholarship of teaching and learning, and the use of teaching as a context for research.
Although these stem from different historical and epistemological traditions, they also
share several common features that link them and also distinguish practitioner inquiry
from more traditional forms and paradigms of education research (Cochran-Smith &
Lytle, 2004, 2009).
With practitioner inquiry, the practitioner (e.g., teacher, teacher educator, school
administrator, adult literacy educator) simultaneously takes on the role of researcher,
which contrasts with conventional research on K-12 teaching and teacher education. In
many versions of practitioner inquiry, as is the case with this study, collaboration, in the
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form of joint discussions of methods, data analysis, and writing, is a prominent feature. A
key assumption is that those who work in particular contexts have significant knowledge
about both what the problems and questions are and, through systematic data collection
and analysis, how to solve those problems within that particular context.
As this study illustrates, the boundaries between inquiry and practice blur when
the practitioner is a researcher and when the professional context is a site for the study of
practice. Practitioner inquiry uses intentional and systematic ways of gathering and
recording information and documenting experiences such that inquiry is planned and
deliberate, rather than spontaneous (Stenhouse, 1985). With practitioner inquiry, the
systematic examination and analysis of students learning (and/or other educational
outcomes and issues) is often interwoven with examination of practitioners own
intentions, reactions, decisions, and interpretations. This makes it possible for practitioner
researchers to produce richly detailed and unusually insightful analyses of teaching and
learning from the inside. Practitioner inquiry makes the work of teaching and learning
public and open to the critique of a larger community.
Inquiry and Teacher Education: Related Literature
There is a rich and growing body of research that describes and theorizes the use
of inquiry, teacher research, or action research as a way to enhance the learning of
teacher candidates and their students. Over the last 25 years or so, a number of
preparation programs in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the
Netherlands, and many other places have used inquiry to encourage teacher candidates to
engage in critical reflection, develop a questioning stance, understand school culture,
construct new curriculum and pedagogy, modify instruction to meet students needs, and
become socialized into teaching by participating in learning communities. This work in
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teacher education is generally consistent with the larger theoretical framework for
practitioner inquiry outlined above.
Efforts to make inquiry the centerpiece of teacher education assume that teachers
learning is a process that occurs over time rather than at certain points in time. From this
perspective, how teachers become socialized into teaching and learning is assumed to
have a critical influence on their emerging interpretations and practices, their sense of
responsibility as educators, and their students learning. With practitioner inquiry, the
larger project is about generating deeper understandings of how students learn and
enhancing educators sense of social responsibility in the service of a democratic society.
In teacher education, practitioner inquiry is sometimes, but not always, explicitly linked
to larger social justice and social equity agendas.
Although there are a number of articles that conceptualize or describe inquiry and
teacher learning at the preservice level, the empirical research on its outcomes is much
thinner (Grossman, 2005). However, the empirical literature on the promises and
problems of inquiry in teacher education appears to be growing. Some key examples
include: Oylers (2006) volume, Learning to Teach Inclusively: Student Teachers
Classroom Inquiries, written with her preservice inclusion study group; Cochran-Smiths
(1991, 1995, 1999) program of research on inquiry as a way to help student teachers
address issues of diversity and social justice in order to teach against the grain; Valli and
Prices analyses of the intended and unintended consequences of encouraging preservice
teachers to engage in action research (Price, 2001; Price & Valli, 2005; Valli, 1999; Valli
& Price, 2000); and Boston College efforts to construct inquiry as both process and
legitimate outcome of teacher education (Barnatt, 2008; Barnatt, Cochran-Smith,
Friedman, Pine, & Baroz, 2007; Cochran-Smith, 2003). In addition, there are a number of
studies of the role of inquiry in the development of preservice teachers ideas and beliefs
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about teaching, learning and diversity (e.g. Hyland & Noffke, 2005; Levin & Rock, 2003;
Rock & Levin, 2002) and about the relationships between inquiry and/or reflection and
identity and learning in various settings, including professional development schools (e.g.
Crocco, M., Bayard, F., Schwartz, S., 2003; Freese, 2006; Mule, 2006; Schultz &
Mandzuk, 2005).
The literature on inquiry in preservice teacher education clearly points to its
benefits, but also alludes to some of its costs, including time investment, difficulties with
sustainability, continual need to nurture partnerships with schools, and added demands to
an already-crowded curriculum. However there continues to be little research on the
consequences of inquiry, particularly its connections to students learning. The project
described in this article addresses this need.
Inquiry on Inquiry
The inquiry reported here is one of six studies that make up an evidence portfolio
created by the Evidence Team of the Boston College (BC)
i
Teachers for a New Era
(TNE) initiative.
ii
The portfolio includes both qualitative and quantitative studies,
designed to complement one another and provide a rich picture of what it means to
examine the effectiveness of teacher education and the process of learning to teach.
Research Site
For more than 15 years, teacher education programs at BC have used inquiry as a
way to encourage teacher candidates reflection, rethinking of beliefs and assumptions,
and decision-making based on analysis of classroom data. The culminating project is a
classroom-based inquiry conducted in the student teaching classroom. Prior to changes
described here, the project required candidates to pose a question, collect multiple
sources, and reflect on and analyze the data to guide instruction and future practice.
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As in many other programs where inquiry is a central activity, although the
faculty had long assumed that inquiry contributed to the learning of teacher candidates
and indirectly to the learning of their students--we had not examined this assumption
empirically. That is, we assumed that inquiry encouraged teacher candidates to reflect on
their emerging practice as professional teachers, raise questions about common school
arrangements and practices, rethink curriculum and instruction, and begin the life-long
process of learning to teach by treating practice as a site for inquiry. However we had not
empirically documented teacher candidates learning or tied this to the learning of their
students. In addition, an informal review of candidates past inquiries indicated that many
focused on reflections about one child, aspects of school culture, or a particular teaching
unit without focusing directly on students learning.
As we made changes to the inquiry project, we wanted to stay true to our
theoretical framework for inquiry and to its bottom line goalteachers deeper
understandings of their own and their students learning, students enhanced learning and
life chances, and educators stronger sense of teaching for social justice. In doing this
study, one of our underlying concerns was whether the strengths of practitioner inquiry as
a way of knowing about teaching could be retained when the emphasis was shifted to the
collection of multiple data sources to document students learning.
Research Questions and Design
The study asked these questions:
(1) When happens when teacher candidates are required to engage in inquiry
focused on students learning?
(2) What kinds of research questions do candidates pose about teaching and
learning and how do they connect these to theory, pedagogy and practice?
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(f) How do candidates use the inquiry process to guide curriculum and instruction
in the short and long terms?
To address these questions, the study used a mixed methods research design, with three
separate but related analyses, one quantitative and two qualitative. The first was a
quantitative analysis of 46 inquiries randomly selected from a pool of 110 inquiries
conducted by teacher candidates and scored using a 100-point rubric with four categories:
Teacher as Researcher, Content and Pedagogy, Pupils Learning, and Learning to Teach
for Social Justice. The rubric was developed over time by the faculty with training to
establish inter-rater reliability. This analysis examined the range of rubric scores for
teacher candidates as well as differences/similarities among cohorts of students in various
subject areas, school levels, and rubric categories. The second analysis was a qualitative
content analysis of the research questions in the 46 inquiry projects, which identified five
major themes that captured the essence of the questions and their relationship to learning
issues. The third analysis was a qualitative, in-depth content analysis of 12 inquiry
projects purposively selected from the sample of 46 used in the first and second analyses.
Given the space limitations here, this article concentrates only on the third analysis.
iii

Content Analysis of Inquiry Papers
The point of close analysis of 12 inquiry papers was to use in-depth qualitative
content analysis to explore how candidates posed questions, reflected on and analyzed
classroom data, and fostered students learning in their classrooms. To insure a range of
quality in the inquiry papers, two from each ten point spread on the scoring rubric from
the first analysis were selected across elementary and secondary levels and including
teacher candidates in special education. Based on multiple readings by a team of
researchers, these 12 papers were coded according to the following categories: Inquiry
Question, Conceptual and Theoretical Framework, School/Classroom Context,
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Participants, Intervention(s), Data Sources, Student Learning, Social Justice, Findings,
Modifying Curriculum and Practice, and Implications. Then matrices were constructed to
identify major elements and types of evidence, and key excerpts were highlighted.
Pairs of researchers then worked from the matrices to analyze each paper in detail
with ongoing review by the team to refine and establish uniformity across researchers.
Preliminary analyses of individual papers were constructed through a multi-step process:
individual papers were reviewed using the eleven categories listed above, followed by
team discussion of each paper in light of emergent themes in the group of papers.
Simultaneously, emergent themes in the group of papers were considered and revised in
light of preliminary analysis of each individual paper. Through this iterative process, the
team identified larger themes, which were reviewed and modified based on a systematic
search across the papers for confirming/disconfirming evidence. An overall analysis was
done to develop a deeper sense of how teacher candidates inquiries varied and to identify
key aspects that discriminated stronger from weaker papers.
Teacher Candidates Engaged in Inquiry
Collectively, the 12 inquiry papers amounted to more than 400 pages of narrative
and appended information (e.g., lesson plans, students work samples, classroom
assessments). We were particularly interested in how candidates framed questions, how
they documented and made sense of students learning, whether and how they used
evidence to make immediate decisions about teaching, and how they connected these to
larger issues related to diversity and social justice, which are major themes of teacher
education programs at BC. We found that there were three major cross-cutting aspects
that discriminated stronger from weaker papers: questions posed and how/whether these
were embedded within larger theoretical frameworks related to teaching and learning;
what data sources teacher candidates used and what they counted as evidence of students
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learning; and, how they understood the research process itself in relation to short and
long term decisions and interpretations of teaching and learning. In the pages that follow,
we explore each of these and provide exemplars of stronger and weaker inquiries.
Framing the Questions: The Need for a Theoretical Vision.
There was considerable variation in how teacher candidates posed and framed
research questions and where those questions came from. Some questions were prompted
by individual interactions with problematic students. Others emerged from themes in
candidates own journal reflections, while still others were prompted by cooperating
teachers comments about students needs or curricular preferences. A few were guided
by research studies that had had an impact on candidates. Some of these issues and ideas
were transformed into productive inquiries that were highly rated on the scoring rubric;
others were not.
Our analysis revealed that stronger inquiry papers posed questions that began with
classroom tensions, but also thoughtfully integrated experience, beliefs, and
theories/research into a conceptual framework, rather than simply raising questions about
the impact of a particular technique. Zumwalt (1989) and Darling-Hammond, et. al.
(2005) have argued that what Zumwalt called a curricular vision of teaching is
essential if beginning teachers are to function as professional decision makers. Without it,
as Zumwalt suggests, they tend simply to pursue what works rather than what could be:
If prospective teachers do not understand that questions of what and why are
as central to teaching as the understandably pressing questions of how, not only
is the range and quality of their decision-making drastically limited, but teaching
can easily drift into a meaningless activity, for students as well as for teachers. (p.
174)
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The strong inquiry papers transformed candidates reflections and perceived classroom
tensions into questions embedded within something akin to Zumwalts curricular
visiona kind of theoretical vision that linked particular teaching methods or
classroom interventions with larger understandings of students as learners, classrooms as
cultures, and the possible worlds open to students.
For example, one candidate posed the question, What happens to student
attitudes toward mathematics and student learning when I differentiate instruction in my
fifth grade math class? In framing this question, the candidate described an initially
chaotic classroom situation, wherein the advanced students refused to go
unnoticed...they were loud, disruptive, and changed the course of instruction. Because
math instruction incorporated a whole-class model, the candidate frequently felt forced
to speed up lessons because a select, vocal group of students typically picked up concepts
immediately even though these advanced students constantly cut off other students in
order to state the correct answer. This prevented the candidate from teaching effectively,
causing other students in the class to refrain from answering questions and increasing
the pace of the class, leaving some students clearly behind. To develop her question,
this candidate first gathered more evidence, monitoring in particular the behavior of one
student who always waved his hand vigorously, stood up, and made noises and
declared the situation bootleg when he realized he could do nothing to get himself
called on. Although this frustrated the candidate, she also figured out the essence of the
dilemma, noting that a child who had the potential to be a tremendous resource had
become the bane of the teachers existence because he was totally bored and fed up with
the lesson. To a lesser extent, this applied to others as well.
To articulate a clear, researchable question that accounted for the diverse learners
in her classroom, this candidate drew from current literature and visited a classroom
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known for its differentiated math instruction. As she developed the question, she used the
research to identify elements of instruction that could be differentiated, articulated a
schedule for frequent assessment, and modified instruction based on assessment data. She
also collected data about students attitudes toward math, developed a skills pretest to
better group students, and integrated homework results into her plan. She also developed
learning stations through which students rotated as their performance improved, creating
a learning environment that was flexible and met the needs of diverse learners. This
candidates research question helped her crystallize the connection between experience
(including her visit to an exemplary classroom), beliefs, observations, and development
of a theoretical perspective about learning. The theoretical vision here was clear, as was
the candidates emerging understanding of the relationship between students classroom
(mis)behaviors and their opportunities to learn. The candidate did not blame students for
disrupting the class. She identified their assets as learners and deliberately restructured
the classroom routine to provide for them and othersrich learning opportunities.
In contrast, a paper from among the lowest scores, posed this question: What
happens when I teach my students grammar using their own writing? This question
emerged from the candidates beliefs and experience and from comments by the
cooperating teacher about the students lack of writing skills, as the candidate indicated:
I believe that many students have difficulty learning grammar. I have observed
that often when grammar is taught out of a textbook with no reference to actual
class writing assignments, such as essays and short paragraphs, students have
trouble translating concepts they learn from grammar lessons into improvement in
their own writing. I myself find that examples given in grammar reference books
or textbooks usually cannot help me with the difficulty I am having in
constructing a given sentence.
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Here the candidate seemed to equate good writing with accurate grammar, focusing on
mechanics and punctuation. Although her effort to connect grammar instruction to
authentic writing is important and was informed by research, she did not link this to her
own classroom observations or to examples of students work. Neither her question nor
her instruction addressed the complexities of developing effective writing or writing
pedagogy. In the inquiry paper, this candidate reported that she had conducted mini-
lessons on selected grammar errors, but she did not indicate how or why she selected the
errors. She then instructed students to find and fix errors. Unlike the question in the
math example above, this grammar question was rather nebulous and did not connect
experience, beliefs, observations of students, and research in ways that were guided by a
more general theoretical vision.
Of course there were also some inquiry projects that fell into the middle of the
range between the strongest and weakest papers. In general, though we found that a major
distinction between strong and weak papers was how and whether the question was
connected to a larger theoretical or conceptual vision about teaching and learning.
Teacher Learning/Student Learning: What Counts?
Because encouraging teacher candidates to focus on students learning was a
major part of our rationale for altering inquiry requirements, we examined how they
conceptualized and assessed learning and what they counted as evidence of students
learning. Not surprisingly, we found that academic learning was the focus of most inquiry
papers, including content knowledge in various areas, comprehension and
communication skills, and literacy or math skills. However, many papers also considered
social and emotional learning goals, such as decision making, social interaction and
participation, understanding a diversity of perspectives, and respect for others.
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Interestingly, we discovered that in a number of cases, how candidates
conceptualized student learning was more contingent on how learning was measured
within pre-existing curricular packages in use in their student teaching classrooms than
on what candidates had learned about how people learn in their preservice program. We
found that candidates used a wide range of data sources, including informal and
formative assessments, such as observations, checklists, and instruments constructed by
candidates themselves, as well as highly structured formal assessments, such as
standardized unit tests and assessments that were part of curriculum packages. Informal
data sources included students writing samples, comments and questions during
discussions, homework assignments, grades, observations, journal reflections, teacher-
made surveys, quizzes and tests, student and staff interviews, and socio-grams.
As noted above, the distinction between stronger and weaker inquiry papers
depended on attention to multiple forms of academic and non-academic learning,
teaching strategies that were appropriate and flexible enough to encompass multiple
levels of learning, and reflections focusing on candidates learning as a result of inquiry.
To illustrate, we provide two figures that highlight the learning goals and activities for
two inquiry papers, one scored substantially higher than the other. In both figures, the
wording in the columns under each heading is taken directly from the candidates own
writing. The stronger paper (Figure 1) described the candidates use of non text-based
primary sources to increase students content learning in the humanities and to develop
critical and historical thinking skills. This candidate conceptualized learning as doing
history, which involved analysis of primary and other documents along with discussion.
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INSERT FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE
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To document students learning, the candidate represented in Figure 1 used a
variety of data sources: a pre-post survey, analysis of the level of historical thinking of
class questions and comments, student work samples, classroom observations, and
journal entries. The candidate also analyzed classroom observations and students work
to assess key elements of doing history, including corroboration, observation, attending
to context, sourcing, inferring, question posing, and providing evidence. This candidates
methods for assessing students learning were closely tied to the way she conceptualized
learning in the first place:
The history classroom has been an excellent place for me to connect to
students experience and knowledge, and sadly I dont think that that is
utilized as often as it should. I found that doing history in my classroom
benefited all my students. I also found a correlation between the use of
non-text base primary sources in my class and the quality of historical
thinking, analyzing, writing, and discussion. The implementation of non-
text base primary sources increased this classs level of engagement,
content learning, and vital skills.From this study I learned many things
about myself as a teacher and about my students as learners.
She also linked her enhanced understandings of how people learn and the
relationships of teaching and learning to students performance.
In contrast, the weaker inquiry paper (Figure 2) described a candidates efforts to
improve the multiplication skills of fourth graders.
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INSERT FIGURE 2 ABOUT HERE
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This candidate used a narrower range of activities and assessments to document students
learning. For example, in her pre-post survey, all but one of the eight questions were
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about students feelings (e.g., Do you like math? Does math make you nervous?). Only
one question assessed students understandings (i.e., When I multiply, I know what is
going on: most of the time, some of the time, never), and none asked students about
when, why, or how they understood. This candidate used three similar drills for
increasing knowledge of multiplication facts. Although most students improved over
time, there was almost nothing in the data sources that got at what, how or why students
were or were not learning. When we looked closely at the work samples the candidate
included with the inquiry paper, we noted that students had had the option of skipping
math facts they could not remember, thus gaining speed with familiar items without
necessarily learning new facts. However, the candidate seemed unaware of this, and it did
not appear she had gained insight about learning by engaging in inquiry:
One of my methods was simply prompting a student with a flash card and
moving on to the next. I allowed them to talk during this time with each
other because I felt that it was important to have a context when trying to
memorize so having laughter and joking present amongst peers is helpful.
Consistently, what distinguished stronger from weaker inquiry papers was capturing
complexity in student learning, matching teaching strategies and measures to broad
learning goals, and using the inquiry experience as a springboard for further learning
about learning.
Learning from Classroom Research: Recursivity or Rigidity?
As we have made clear above, we were interested in whether, what and how
teacher candidates learned from the classroom research they did, especially since the
overall goal was for candidates to develop inquiry as a way of knowing that would guide
them over time. Not surprisingly, close analysis of the 12 papers revealed a range of
responses along these lines. Some papers contained rich and insightful analyses of
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classroom data, revealing the way teachers learned from practice and how they used their
evolving understandings of students learning to guide their own thoughts and actions in
an ongoing way. Other papers were disappointing to us as teacher educators, with little
evidence that candidates had learned from their inquiries about students perspectives or
strategies they might use to support them, and there was little discussion of the
implications of their inquiries beyond completing the inquiry as a program requirement.
In an address to educators, Ann Berthoff (1986) once railed against the
privileging in government funding initiatives of basic scientific research and the
exclusion of studies focused on practical classroom application or studies of curriculum,
course design, or sequences of assignments. She adamantly declared, We do not need
new information. We need to think about the information we have. We need to interpret
what goes on when students respond to one kind of assignment and not to another, or
when some respond to an assignment and others do not (p. 30). Berthoff championed the
importance of research by teachers, highlighting especially the recursive nature of
classroom inquiry, which she referred to as REsearch: REsearch, like REcognition, is a
REflexive act. It means lookingand looking again (p. 30, punctuation in original).
Berthoffs point helped us understand some of the differences between stronger and
weaker inquiry projects. We found that underlying differences in what and how
candidates learned from classroom research were differing ideas about research and
inquiry themselves. Some candidates had rich and recursive notions of the inquiry
process, understanding research as looking and looking again. Others had a more linear
view of classroom research as a scientific process, unconnected to their ongoing
choices about what to do and how to work with students. This applied across elementary
and secondary levels, across content areas, and across general and special education.
19
For example, one elementary candidate introduced strategies based on
accountable talk (Dudley-Marling & Michaels, 2005) into a first grade literacy program
over a period of four weeks. She focused on how students responded to texts with the
goal of enhancing their capacity to be accountable in the sense of making cogent
arguments based on textual evidence and logical reasoning. She used a close, careful
analysis of the students talk and her role to guide her own teaching on a day-by-day
basis. Based on transcriptions of the groups talk, she looked for evidence that students
were using higher-level thinking skills to make claims about texts and whether her own
talk was scaffolding their skills. Referring to one transcription, she wrote:
It is clear that my role as a teacher in the first few turns of the discussion was
critical. Not only did I inadvertently lead students to only one interpretation of the
question, but I failed to clarify the meaning of Jennas contribution What I
could have done instead, is ask Jenna to re-voice her contribution, so that I might
better understand her thinking. I could also ask questions for clarification (e.g.
What do you mean by ___? Can you explain ____?), thus making Jennas
reasoning not only more accessible to me, but to the other students as well.
This candidate used inquiry to understand the meaning students were making of text. In
doing so, she demonstrated her understanding that inquiry is recursivethat is, it
involves a repeated, almost unending process of asking questions, looking carefully at the
data of practice, altering practice based on new insights and ideas, asking new questions,
and so on.
We found evidence in some of the inquiry papers that candidates insights based
on recursively asking questions and modifying practice sometimes became guiding
principles or large interpretive frameworks. The teacher candidate above, for example,
used what she was learning about facilitating discussions to rethink her practices on a
20
daily and more long-term basis. In another example in a completely different context, a
special education candidate wanted to increase the expressive communication of an
autistic child who was fully included in a preschool setting. Based on daily analysis of
behavioral interventions and a tally of the childs responses, the candidate worked with
colleagues to adjust the interventions until the child had achieved a very good rate of
participation in the social greeting segment of the morning routine. Although this highly
behaviorist intervention is very different from examples where candidates are trying to
understand students understandings, the special education candidate had a similar
recursive understanding of classroom inquiry as did the candidate doing accountable talk.
Both understood teaching as inquiry and inquiry as recursivethat is, they understood
that teaching is a process driven by questions and continuously responsive to the data of
practice.
Some of the candidates among the 12 we concentrated on did not seem to work
from these ideas about inquiry. In fact, a few had what might even be called rigid
conceptions of inquiry and research, which prompted them to make what we perceived as
odd or inappropriate decisions. As mentioned, one secondary teacher candidate, for
example, launched an initiative to improve students writing by having them correct
grammar errors on worksheets and then in their own writing. The data she was collecting,
however, indicated that her students could not locate errors in their own writing, as
instructed, even if they were able to do so on worksheets. However, the candidate was
seemingly oblivious to her own data showing that students made little to no improvement
with the approach she was using. Instead of altering daily practice in response to this, she
persisted in the grammar lessons and concluded her inquiry in exactly the same place she
started: I continue to believe that the basic model with which I began this study may
21
prove an effective teaching technique. I intend to try something similar to these
interventions in my own classroom.
Along somewhat similar lines, an elementary candidate introduced a routine
wherein following initial instruction, students had quizzes every day. Prompted by the
notion that she could not tamper with her research design by re-teaching the processes,
the teacher persisted in this activity even when it was clear that some students needed and
wanted more instruction, including one child who explained exactly what he did not
know how to do. She wrote, I made a conscientious decision to prohibit explanations
beyond simple statementsThe only other suggestion I had for these students was to ask
a classmate or someone from another class during their free time. This kind of response
was exactly the opposite from that which we, as teacher educators, hoped to find and
expected of a teacher who was able to learn from continuous reflections on the data of
practice. Here the candidates strong residual ideas that research and science were
about experiments that could not be interfered with once begun, seemed to trump the
idea, which was emphasized in the program, that inquiry is an integral and ongoing part
of decision making in teaching. Across school levels and subject areas, we found that
what distinguished stronger from weaker inquiry papers was the development of a
conception of inquiry as an ongoing and integral part of everyday teaching as well as a
way to support longer-term reflection on many issues related teaching, learning, and
schooling.
Conclusion: Tensions and Tradeoffs
As noted in the introduction, the analysis offered here is part of an inquiry on
inquiry in the sense that it represents the efforts of a group of teacher educators who
engaged in inquiry about the outcomes of a newly-focused inquiry project completed by
the teacher candidates who were their students. As we suggested, this nesting of teacher
22
candidates inquiries within our own inquiry about the processes and outcomes of the
new project sharpened our questions and obligated us to turn on ourselves the same
expectations we had for our teacher candidates. We wanted them to develop an inquiry
stance (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999b, 2009) on the everyday realities of classroom life
and about the complex processes of working with a diverse group of students. We wanted
them to have inquiry as a way of knowing about teaching, learning and schooling over
the course of the professional lifespan. We wanted them to pay close attention to the data
of practice, interpreting it in rich ways that would enhance their students learning and
life chances and inform their own practice, both in the short and the long term.
Of course, then, we had to turn the tables on ourselves by asking what we, as
teacher educators, had learned from our inquiry. In this conclusion we focus on
improving local practiceour own teacher education programas well as what we
learned about teacher candidates and their learning and about inquiry as the centerpiece
of teacher education that may be of interest more broadly.
Developing an Inquiry Stance
CochranSmith and Lytle (1999b, 2009) suggest that the notion of inquiry as stance
is distinct from the more common notion of inquiry as project, which treats inquiry as a
time-bounded project or activity within a teacher education course or professional
development workshop. In contrast, inquiry as stance refers to a long-term and consistent
positioning or way of seeing, rather than a single point in time or activity. This concept is
intended to capture the lenses teachers see through and how they generate knowledge that
guides practice. Developing and sustaining an inquiry stance is a intended to be a life-long
and constant pursuit for new teachers, experienced teachers, and teacher educators alike.
The analyses presented in this article coupled with other analyses we have
reported elsewhere, led us to realizealbeit reluctantlythat by requiring a major
23
inquiry paper focused on students learning during the student teaching period, even
though inquiry was supposedly a major theme of the overall program, we were bolstering
the notion of inquiry as project rather than inquiry as stance. The idea of teaching to the
test is useful here. When teachers teach to the test, they concentrate on transmitting to
students the knowledge and skills covered by a high stakes assessment rather than
building an array of knowledge and skills within a larger conceptual framework without a
necessarily immediately instrumental value. Through our close content analysis of a
range of inquiry projects, we discovered that many teacher candidates were inquiring to
the rubric and the requirements. In other words, they were engaging in those aspects of
inquiry that were spelled out on, and required by, the rubric and program requirements
rather than making inquiry an integral part of teaching itself and understanding that
inquiry does not necessarily have an immediate instrumental purpose. This was evident
especially in weaker inquiry projects that sutured together multiple points and pieces that
did not fit together conceptually and/or that disregarded what the data were actually
revealing about students learning. This was also evident in the relatively small number
of projects that revealed a rich sense of understanding and knowing ones students. This
is directly related to our second lesson, joining inquiry and accountability.
Joining Inquiry and Accountability
To a certain extent, our move to require teacher candidates to concentrate on
students learning was an attempt to marry inquiry and accountability. It was our hope
that candidates would use data to improve students achievement at the same time that
they reflected deeply on the nature of learners and learning and the school and classroom
conditions that support learning. Some did just that, and these are the positive examples
we use throughout this paper. But for other candidates, this was not the case.
24
Some candidates experienced significant angst as they struggled to negotiate the
messiness of learning to teach while attempting to inquire into practice in a systematic
and effective way. Often they did not see the natural connections between teaching and
inquiry, and regarded these as two disparate entities. Those who were most successful
had real ownership of their questions and developed a rationale that drew on knowledge
acquired in coursework and research and connected these to classroom practice. While
some cooperating teachers actively supported and participated in the inquiries, others
were uninterested. On the other hand, because the inquiry paper was a required part of the
student teaching experience, every candidate had the opportunity for some independent
experience in the classroom that required construction and modification of practice, and
reflection on students and self learning.
Our analysis suggests that requiring candidates to focus on students learning did
not guarantee deep reflection and appropriate modification in practice. Similarly,
requiring candidates to make classroom decisions informed by evidence did not
guarantee change in candidates beliefs and practices. Although some candidates made
great strides, others seemed to continue to teach the way they were taught. The content
analysis revealed that using a scoring rubric that in some ways disconnected teaching
from learning distracted some teacher candidates from focusing on the power of ongoing
inquiry and instead encouraged a procedural understanding of inquiry.
Inquiry and Social Justice
Changing the requirements of the inquiry project was part of the process of
shifting it from an almost exclusive focus on teacher candidates learning toward more of
a focus on candidates and K-12 students learning. As mentioned but not elaborated in
the beginning of this article, the rubric we created for scoring the inquiry projects had
four categories, one of which addressed students learning specifically and one focused
25
on social justice specifically. When we closely examined the purposively selected inquiry
papers, we found that in our efforts to be explicit about students learning, we had created
an artificial division between social justice and learning. Although the program defines
teaching for social justice in part as a bottom-line commitment to enhancing students
learning and life chances, we separated social justice from learning on the scoring rubric,
and we could see differences in scores. It was not until we completed the in-depth
qualitative analysis of stronger and weaker inquiry papers, however, that we discovered
that low scores on the category of social justice were actually an artifact of the rubric
itself rather than a thoughtful representation of teacher candidates work in classrooms. In
order to develop the rubric, we had identified and artificially separated key elements of
what social justice teaching is, rather than accounting for the factexplicit in our own
conception of teaching for social justicethat this is inextricably part of content,
pedagogy, learning opportunities, and classroom environment.
Post Script
As we complete this article, our teacher education faculty is in the process of
using the results of this in-depth analysis along with the results of candidates responses
to survey items regarding inquiry and case study data about the role of inquiry during the
early years of teaching to completely rethink and redesign the inquiry component of the
curriculum. The analysis described in this article, along with other kinds of evidence
from our portfolio of studies, have led us to more nuanced understandings of what kinds
of learning opportunitiesand limitationsour current inquiry requirements create for
teacher candidates. Our goal now is to revise the inquiry aspects of the curriculum so that
inquiry is genuinely promoted as a stance or way of knowing about teaching and learning
that is integrated into all courses and all fieldwork experiences, rather than a procedural
activity carried out at the programs completion.
26

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Figure 1: Students Learning in a Secondary Humanities Class


Academic Learning Goals

Social/Emotional
Learning Goals

Activities Addressing
Learning Goals
-Building literacy
skills
-Building writing
skills
-Learning through
discovery
-Conducting
research
-Using primary
sources
-Becoming
strategic
researchers
-Support beliefs
-Speak
intelligently
-Use facts and
arguments
-Make mistakes
and learn from
them
-Know the best
way of learning for
the individual
Sourcing
-Provide evidence
-Taking notes
-Thinking
historically
-Set own purposes
for learning
-Engagement
-Academic
enjoyment

-Questioning
-Compare and
contrast
-Chronology
-Higher order
assumptions -
Thinking
critically
-Summarizing, -
Contextualizing
-Inferring
-Monitoring
-Corroborating
-Analysis
-Consider
multiple
perspectives
-Construct
meaning
-Critically
examining
-Interpret
-Draw
conclusions
-Come up with
own ideas
-Understand
relativity of
history
-Consider
context
-Observation
-Generalizing
-Make Guesses
-Higher level
thinking
-Talking to people
-Listening
-Disagreeing
-Discussing
-Demonstrating
respect
-Student participation
-Learn from peers
-Cooperation
-Be respectful
-Being empathetic
-Academic risk taking
-Personal connection
to learning
-Emotionally engaged
-Self confidence

-pre-and post surveys of
pupil efficacy in doing
history and learning
styles
-Analyze pupil responses
during discussion in four
categories of responses
-Analyze classroom
observations when using
primary sources, using
primary source categories
-Analysis of student
work samples for doing
history categories
-teacher candidate and
observer field notes
-candidate journal entries



31
Figure 2: Students Mathematics Learning in a Fourth Grade Classroom


Academic Learning Goals

Social/Emotional
Learning Goals

Activities Addressing
Learning Goals

-Mastery of multiplication
facts
-Instant recall of math facts
-Efficiently handle
increasing complexity
-Apply multiplication facts
within word problems
-Develop mnemonic devices


-Small group work
-Reverse any [math]anxiety
-Attitude changes regarding
the learning of
multiplication and math in
general


-Pre-post survey of pupils
feelings (anxiety,
like/dislike) about math and
flashcard games.
-Worksheets testing speed
of math skills
-Five minute math
assessment;120
multiplication problems to
be done in 5 minutes
-Blank multiplication table
to fill in 5 minutes



























i
A Jesuit university, BC serves some 15,000 undergraduate and graduate students with
the Lynch School of Education preparing approximately 270 undergraduate and graduate
teacher candidates per year. In addition to methods courses and practica, candidates at the
32

masters level, on which this study draws, take foundations courses in the social contexts
of education, teaching students with diverse and special needs, and human learning, as
well as an inquiry seminar focused on classroom research. Students also take courses in
teaching bilingual students and language acquisition models; the Donovan Scholars
program focuses explicitly on teaching in urban schools. All courses, field experiences,
and inquiries have a social justice emphasis.

ii
TNE is an initiative funded primarily by the Carnegie Corporation of New York to
change how teacher education is enacted at eleven selected institutions across the nation.
The TNE initiative is driven by three design principles: respect for evidence, deep
participation by arts and sciences faculty in the education of teachers, and teaching as a
clinically taught practice profession, including residency and induction programs.
Charged with developing evidence and assessing teacher education, BCs TNE multi-
disciplinary Evidence Team developed an evidence portfolio with quantitative,
qualitative, and mixed-methods studies designed to examine impacts and relationships
among teaching, learning, learning to teach, and social justice. The project reported in
this article is part of that portfolio. The Evidence Team includes Boston College faculty
members and administrators: Marilyn Cochran-Smith (Chair), Sarah Enterline, Alan
Kafka, Fran Loftus, Larry Ludlow, Patrick McQuillan, Joseph Pedulla, and Gerald Pine;
TNE Administrators, Jane Carter and Jeff Gilligan; and doctoral students, Joan Barnatt,
Robert Baroz, Matt Cannady, Stephanie Chappe, Lisa DSouza, Ann Marie Gleeson,
Jiefang Hu, Cindy Jong, Kara Mitchell, Emilie Mitescu, Aubrey Scheopner, Karen
Shakman, Yves Fernandez Solomon, and Diana Terrell. For more information about the
TNE project and the work of the Evidence Team, see the TNE website
(http://tne.bc.edu/).

iii
The first and second analyses, including information about how the rubric was
constructed and used to evaluate inquiry projects, see Barnatt (2008) and Barnatt,
Friedman, Pine, Baroz and Cochran-Smith (2007), located at the BC TNE website:
http://tne.bc.edu. The full rubric with categories, sub-categories and indicators is
available as Appendix A at: http://tne.bc.edu/?tpl=papers&nodeID=207#Inquiry08