Teachers’ perspectives on collaboration with didacticians to create an inquiry community

Abstract

A research and development project, Learning Communities in Mathematics (LCM)1 was designed to create opportunities for ‘co-learning inquiry’ between mathematics teachers in eight schools and didacticians in a university in Norway (UiA). The focus has been on improving mathematics teaching and learning at school levels from lower primary to upper secondary and on the developmental processes and partnerships involved. A central aim was to create a community of inquiry through which aspects of mathematics teaching and learning could be explored, and through which both teachers and didacticians could learn in practice. Theoretically, ‘Community of Inquiry’ derives from ‘Community of Practice’ as expounded by Lave and Wenger, and particularly Wenger's concept of ‘belonging’. The project included three, one-year phases of joint activity. At the end of Phase II, didacticians led focus group interviews with teacher teams to gain insights into schools’ and teachers’ perceptions of the project and its activity. We report on insights into how teachers thought about the activities of the project and what an inquiry community looks like in terms of the learning of those involved. We relate this back to the theoretical perspectives of communities of practice and inquiry.

Keywords:

• research and development project
• co-learning inquiry
• focus group interviews

Notes

1. The LCM project was accepted by the Research Council of Norway (RCN) as part of its KUL (Kunnskap, Utdanning og Læring) programme. Project number 157949/S20. LCM publications can be found at http://fag.hia.no/lcm/papers.htm

2. Didacticians in the project were mathematics educators in a university in Norway, working within a department of Matematikk Didaktikk.

3. Initially, the team had six members. We recruited two further colleagues, five doctoral students and a project coordinator and secretary. Thus the team became fifteen in all.

4. Data reduction in our case involved a summarising of the data according to key ideas and issues. For the focus group data, this began from the questions asked, with other categories emerging as researchers worked with the data. The resulting summaries, stored as secondary data, allowed researchers to search on key categories across a large quantity of data and home in on relevant episodes for more detailed scrutiny.