Inquiry on Inquiry: Practitioner Research and Student Learning

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 lifelong 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 the outcomes focus of teacher education policy and practice and to 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 practitioner-researchers to examine how and what teacher candidates learned when they were required to conduct classroom inquiry focused on student 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' learning to that 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 that candidates conceptualized and assessed learning, and the candidates' understanding of the recursive nature of the inquiry process. The article also identifies a number of problems that were created with the new emphasis.