Conditions and Contexts for Teacher Inquiry: Systematic Approaches to Preservice Teacher Collaborative Experiences

Abstract

The focus of this article is to describe a social organization of instruction and identify the conditions and contexts of critical classroom inquiry that are essential components of contemporary teacher education programs. Novice teachers must develop both the need to know and dispositions for knowing in order to move away from transmission-oriented teaching and learning toward inquiry-oriented practice. Theoretical arguments for and practical applications of inquiry within teacher education programs are described, including: (a) recursive cycles of inquiry, (b) reflective practice, (c) continuity of experiences within critical friend teaching partnerships, (d) discourse and documentation (making visible children's and teachers’ thinking), and (e) the role of teacher educators in creating contexts of need for classroom inquiry. These are discussed and applied across four levels of contiguous courses and related practica. Selected examples of the processes and products that exemplify the development of preservice teacher collaborative inquiry within an early childhood, fifth-year teacher education program are included, although applications may be extended to the broader field of teacher education.

Notes

¹ The preservice teachers in this program are predominantly white, middle class students from the southeastern United States. They range in age from 19 to 55 years, with the majority under age 25. Of the approximately 120 students enrolled in the undergraduate program, less than five percent are males. Each year, the program licenses approximately 40 graduate level interns who teach in Pre-K through grade four classrooms in their fifth year. The voices and the experiences of the preservice teachers used herein to exemplify and clarify the nature of collaborative inquiry within the contexts of need, were taken with permission of these students across the past 36 months.

² Level I is Preschool Curriculum/Environments I; Level II is Preschool Curriculum II; Level III is Elementary Teaching Methods; and Level IV is Action Research in Elementary Schools.

³ The documentation of moments is the deliberate decision to record those teaching and learning moments that occur in classrooms every day that are often left to recall. A moment is intended to be a brief, thoughtful record deemed by the student as worthy of study. Students document an event and organize records on one 8½ × 11” page (two or more records are required such as photographs, transcriptions, work samples, sketches, and field notes) in order to later study, use, and perhaps share with others. Each moment must include both a description and the “so what?” of the event, that is a conceptual or theoretical analysis and the value of the moment to the student.

⁴ Pseudonyms replace real names.

⁵ From a social constructivist perspective, appropriation happens when students’ thinking is transformed as a result of engagement in shared, purposeful activity, from which new understandings are constructed. Likewise, mediation refers to the “go-between function” that is inherent in the use, in this case, of mechanical tools (e.g., cameras), that channel attention and intention (focused inquiry) of the learner. Mediation is the bridge between first needing the camera (for example) in order to focus inquiry and later possessing the function mentally, so that she no longer needs the camera to effectively discern seminal information in the moment.