Professional Learning through Inquiry

Professional Learning Through Inquiry

Jackie Coomes, EWU, May 6, 2017

Teaching

Content

Disciplinary ways of knowing

Students

Requires teaching to attend to coherence of disciplinary knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, ways students may have learned prerequisite knowledge and how they may use disciplinary knowledge in the future.

Requires teaching to attend to HOW students learn in the discipline and empowers them to gain expertise in disciplinary habits of mind: critical reading, abstracting, reasoning, generalizing, communicating with precision, use of disciplinary tools, (Standards for Mathematical Practices).

Teaching requires us to attend to student cultures, needs, backgrounds, mindsets, ways of knowing, and to build relationships with them that support their growth and ways of knowing.

As you listen to presentations and talk with colleagues today, make connections among the work being done by others and your own work.

What could we learn as a large group? How could this change how our students experience our system?

What is so challenging about teaching?

Cross-cutting intellectual and practical skills

Requires teaching to attend to critical thinking, collaboration, curiosity, creative thinking, problem-solving, and other "21st Century Skills"

Inquiry Process

How do teachers continue to learn and to improve their teaching?

Iterative Cycle

Why Inquiry?

Investigate shared problem

Question assumptions

Define problem

Learn with and from colleagues

Share and connect learning

Examine and compare expectations within our contexts

• Natural and powerful way of exploring, understanding, and approaching the problems and complexities of teaching.
• Professionals own the problems and solutions.
• Teachers see deeper connections among the many facets of their work, encouraging a coherent and lasting change in their teaching.
• Builds a learning culture emphasizing experimentation, evidence, and reflection.

Sharing what we learn helps us reflect and allows others to learn and to build on our knowledge.

Why Cross-Disciplinary?

Seek expertise and

perspectives

of others beyond

the group

• Initially: because we were required to.
• It became a powerful aspect for participants and leaders.

Consulted literature on what has been done

Act, reflect, and

refine practice

Use evidence

and data

Why Cross-sector?

Why Collaboration?

Both to clarify the problem and to examine results of teaching changes

• Instructors develop better understandings of the problems since participants bring different knowledge, perspectives, and experiences.
• Testing solutions in different contexts builds collective capacity.

• Goal was to target transition points for students. By working together, instructors share their ownership of the problems and solutions, and also increase their understanding of the challenges students face as they transition.