Inquiring About Practice: Using web‐based materials to develop teacher inquiry

Abstract

This paper explores a new pedagogical approach to teaching teachers to assume a learning or inquiry stance in their practice. It is based on an assumption that professional learning is a core capability of good teaching that is responsive to the changing needs of children, schools, and communities. One source of teacher learning is practice—one's own practice and the practice of others. Whereas there is much written about teachers learning from their own practice, there is scant attention in the field currently about learning from the practice of others. What do we mean by learning from the practice of others? Beyond visiting their classrooms, how might teachers access the practice of others so that they can learn from it? How does learning work proceed? This paper grapples with these questions as a frame for discussing one teacher education attempt at preparing teachers to learn from the practice of others. It begins by making a case for learning as a centerpiece of good teaching, and then proceeds to describe one example of how the inquiry practice of experienced teachers was used to teach teacher inquiry to a group of novice teachers in California.