Collaborative Inquiry Research Articles

Collaborative Inquiry Fuelled by Reflexive Learning: Changing Change

In this paper, we dig deeper into the reflexive learning that fuels collaborative inquiry by examining the unique ways in which changing itself takes place. We draw on two examples of collaborative inquiry, offering autoethnographic insights from our own lived experiences of changing change. These insights are underpinned by reflexive learning which we capture in textual form to show how learning in collaborative inquiry involves “impacting with” rather than “impacting on.” Our analysis reveals that reflexivity is not a homogenous or static experience but consists of several dynamically changing entangled “dimensions” of practice. Through dimensions relating to the process, content, and impact of reflexive learning, collaborators can arrive at a “stance”—a fluid, loosely shared basis for action that enables organizational practices to be reconfigured or preserve key principles.

Collaboration between Mathematicians and Mathematics Educators: dialogical inquiry as a methodological tool in Mathematics Education research

Collaboration between Mathematicians and Mathematics Educators is crucial in advancing knowledge on the teaching and learning of Mathematics, particularly in advanced Mathematics pedagogy. However, there is a need for the type of collaborations where Mathematicians and Mathematics Educators can find common ground, and the synergy of their expertise results in new, hybrid meanings and understandings that can benefit practice. This paper aims to help researchers from these communities come together by presenting a novel methodology for collaborative inquiry and qualitative data analysis—dialogical inquiry—based on Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism. In this framework, “truth” is conceived as never finalised but always coevolving through dialogue that involves participants with different “voices” and “languages”. We describe the three principles that underpin dialogical inquiry: motivation, power balance and a process for solving disagreements. These three principles interact together to create a space where critically productive dialogue allows for meanings to coevolve and new, hybrid understandings to emerge. We illustrate our operationalisation of these principles (i.e., the methods of dialogical inquiry) in two areas: understanding solutions to linear ordinary differential equations and making meaning of the Bakhtinian concept of superaddressee. We reflect on our use of this methodology in Mathematics Education research and invite the readers to create their own dialogic spaces of collaboration.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire: the emotional labor of excavating internalised racism

ABSTRACT This research comprises a collaborative auto-ethnographic narrative inquiry study conducted by a doctoral student and four undergraduates at a university in the Southwest of the US over two years – between 2017 and 2019. The intent of this study was to uncover ways internalised racism influenced the researchers in their earliest socialisation years. The authors’ interest in anti-racism provided the impetus to co-create a pedagogy of discomfort, which may be of value to teacher educators, as well as those who seek to do the work of excavating deeply-rooted internalised racism. Using a Critical Race Theory theoretical framework, the authors share their findings as a bricolage of synergistic stories. Their conclusions show how racism is passed down in families, the impact of whiteness on the sense of self, and how facing internalised racism can be simultaneously painful and healing. This article provides an exemplar of a process to conduct anti-racism inner work.

Modalities of Faculty Engagement with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

This article reports on a mixed-methods study examining the ways in which faculty and staff engage with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) at a medium-sized research-intensive university in southern Ontario, Canada. Survey data was collected from fifty-six faculty and staff respondents, along with eight faculty completing follow-up semi-structured interviews. We found respondents used multiple engagement modalities to stay informed on SoTL literature, carry out SoTL research, and disseminate their findings. Barriers to SoTL participation include lack of dedicated time, limited formal SoTL training, and inexperience with different disciplinary norms found in SoTL articles. Participants emphasized the importance of collaborative SoTL inquiry, highlighting in particular the benefits of partnering with students on scholarly projects. Additionally, participants underscored the importance of implementing evidence-based teaching strategies. Our findings mirror trends in the literature regarding SoTL engagement activities, barriers to participation, and faculty perceptions of SoTL. This study contributes novel insight into the ways faculty choose to engage with SoTL and common obstacles, as well as suggestions for how teaching and learning centers can use engagement data to better support faculty and staff SoTL scholars.

Facilitating cardiopulmonary resuscitation training in high-risk areas of England: A study protocol

IntroductionBystanders’ interventions improve chances of survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) before Emergency Medical Services arrive. Some areas in England are of concern. These high-risk areas have a higher incidence of cardiac arrest combined with lower-than-average bystander CPR rates and are characterised by higher proportions of minority ethnic group residents and deprivation.Collaborating with people from the Black African and Caribbean and South Asian minority communities in deprived areas of England, we aim to develop and evaluate the implementation of theoretically informed intervention(s) to address factors contributing to lower bystander intervention rates. MethodsThe study is a collaborative realist enquiry, informed by the Theoretical Domains Framework and associated Behaviour Change Wheel. It consists of 1) a realist evidence synthesis to produce initial program theories developed from primary workshop data and published evidence. It will include identifying factors contributing to the issue and potential interventions to address them; 2) theoretically informed intervention development, using the initial program theories and behaviour change theory and 3) a realist mixed methods implementation evaluation with embedded feasibility.Public involvement (PPI) as study team and public advisory group members is key to this study.We will conduct realist evidence synthesis, qualitative and statistical analyses appropriate to the various methods used. DisseminationWe will develop a dissemination plan and materials targeted to members of the public in high-risk areas as well as academic outputs. We will hold an event for participating community groups and stakeholders to share findings and seek advice on next steps. Study registrationISRCTN90350842. Registration date 28.03.2023. The study was registered after its start date.

Cross-Border Dialogues: A Collaborative Instructional Design Inquiry to Promote Equity and Diversity

The COVID-19 pandemic complicates ingrained educational inequalities around the globe and foregrounds the pertaining challenges that teachers have encountered due to school closures and the shift to distance learning. This cross-border teacher education project intended to examine how academics and pre-service teachers in different geographic locales could collaboratively explore equitable learning opportunities for diverse learners through the use of critical media literacies to respond to interconnected global crises. In this six-week cross-border teacher education project, we recruited four Mandarin and English literacy teacher candidates in Hong Kong to interact with one another and one Canadian professor as part of the teacher preparation phase of a larger-scale cross-border research project that connects youth from Hong Kong and Canada in a social networking space. For the purposes of teacher professional development, the Hong Kong teacher candidates and Canadian researchers engaged in collective exploration of how instructional designs in literacy education could promote equitable learning opportunities for diverse learners. Findings show that the cross-border teacher education project supported teacher candidates’ development of pedagogical skills and espoused their agency in promoting educational equity and collective problem-solving through critical media literacies. Findings relate the teacher candidates’ shifted perspectives from focusing on students’ decontextualized language skills to nurturing critical media skills. Changing from a deficit-oriented view about what literacy learners could not do, the teacher candidates also adopted an asset-oriented view about the linguistic and cultural repertoires that diverse learners could bring to literacy classrooms.

Critical Family History: A Tool to Dismantle Racism

As schools and universities are under attack for educating students about race, racism, and other topics with deep roots that directly link to our current societal challenges, we must find and utilize meaningful tools of resistance. This article is a collaborative auto-ethnographic narrative inquiry that presents the stories of two professors and two students who engaged in the reflective work of critical family history (CFH). Currently, merely mentioning the word racism is so troubling to many politicians whose ideas are rooted in White supremacist ideology that laws are being passed in the U.S. to ban books on certain topics about race and LGBTQIA+ issues so that students cannot even read about these topics. A Tennessee law recently passed in both the state House and Senate seriously diminishes and limits how professors teach putative “divisive topics” related to race and its societal impact at the college level. A valuable teaching tool, critical family history, offers an impactful approach for us, especially for educators, to face the truth about the complexity of our lives and our ancestors, specifically in relation to issues of race—in a subtle, yet powerful way that is grounded in courage, wisdom, and compassion. The findings in this article are both surprising and troubling, which points to why educators need to seek ways to incorporate CFH in their work to dismantle racism.

Together a Catalyst: Learning From Our Co-Creative Arts-Based Inquiry About Our Teacher Selves During the Transition to Online Teaching

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated many adjustments to everyday teaching at higher education institutions. While face-to-face lectures were the preferred teaching method of teacher educators prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the shift to online teaching was heightened during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper draws attention to the shifts we transitioned to as teacher educators teaching and researching via online platforms-specifically Zoom—in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study explored how three teacher educators used co-creative arts-based inquiry to deepen their understanding of their shifting teacher ‘selves’ as online users. Object-inspired narratives and poetic inquiry were employed to co-flexively engage with our shifting teaching experiences and question our feelings of discomfort teaching online. Framed conceptually by an ethics of care and collaborative-creativity, we discuss the tensions and possibilities we experienced, and shared through our scholarly online conversations via Zoom to think through the shifts in our teacher selves and teaching. We highlight our online teaching experiences amidst the uncertainty and disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. We then share the methodological insight of collaborative arts-based inquiry and how it facilitated reflexive dialogues and deep conversations that ignited self-learning and collective insights into the potential and possibilities of online teaching. Findings highlighted that co-creative, online engagement enabled sharing of emotional experiences and offered possibilities for transforming teacher selves. In addition, co-creative, online engagement enabled the cultivation of relational scholarly thinking. The article highlights the methodological insight of co-creative arts-based research in productively disrupting instrumental university discourse of online teaching.

Teaching without boundaries: interviews exploring the adaptation of collaborative inquiry to the American context.

This study qualitatively examines the efforts of implementing teacher-led collaborative inquiry in American public schools to improve instruction. We focus on a model called Teacher Peer Excellence Group (TPEG), designed to capture the essence of Japanese lesson study and Chinese teaching-study groups that involve lesson planning, peer observations, feedback, and revision. We conduct qualitative case studies in three pilot schools using a constructivist research paradigm. We identify action steps essential to introducing and sustaining the TPEG model and pathways to local adaptation. The study contributes to the body of research that seeks to understand the role of instructional leadership and teacher decision-making in successful school-level initiatives.

Reorienting toward complexity in teacher education

ABSTRACT We are teacher educators committed to reorienting toward complexity in teacher education, given the multiplex terrain of the education landscape that awaits teacher candidates (TCs) upon receiving their Bachelor of Education degree. Within our context, we are preparing teachers to work with a recently revised curriculum and many regional, national, and global challenges and mandates, especially the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Report of Canada (2015). By encouraging the agency of the TCs – the scholar-practitioners – with whom we work, we aspire to a reflective and deliberative approach of engaging with issues, needs, and problems as caring humans. This paper traces our journey of collaborative inquiry as we revisit, reframe and repurpose influential scholarship. This involves pedagogical conceptions of experience and reflective thinking, informing the mindful complexity of being and becoming in place, while foregrounding local Indigenous Ways of Knowing and experiential learning as illustrations of a scholar-practitioner stance. Through inquiry in community, recognising the importance of drawing upon individual Teacher Candidate identity, we articulate how we learn as teacher educators to address the complex, contemporary issues of: equity, diversity, inclusion; decolonisation; education in times of crisis; and the challenges of ecological well-being.

The role of collaborative inquiry in Iranian EFL teachers’ reflective teaching: the case of teaching experience

ABSTRACT Teachers’ collaborative inquiry is a process of learning through which teams of teachers evaluate and analyze their teaching practice, and reflective practice contributes to teachers’ professionalism. The present descriptive survey study aimed to investigate the role of collaborative inquiry in Iranian EFL teachers’ reflective teaching and whether teaching experience (novice and experienced teachers) affects collaborative inquiry and reflective teaching. For this purpose, 185 Iranian female and male language institute EFL teachers were randomly selected and responded to the survey instruments. The data were collected by the Survey of Reflective Practice and Collaborative Inquiry Survey and were analyzed by multivariate analysis of variance and Pearson correlation. The findings demonstrated a significant positive correlation between pedagogical reflection and collaborative inquiry and a significant negative correlation between critical reflection and collaborative inquiry. Furthermore, novice teachers obtained higher scores in pedagogical reflection whilst their experienced counterparts were more critically reflective. The present study findings contribute to further uncovering the links between reflective teaching practices and collaborative inquiry of EFL teachers. Therefore, school principals can design collaborative learning experiences, especially for novice teachers, to foster reflection. Furthermore, teachers should regard collaboration as a self-growth opportunity and help their colleagues develop and improve their teaching practices.

Reflective Letters to Navigate the Pandemic: Exploring Emotions to Strengthen our Leadership Practices as Educators

<i>Two South Asian educators from the neighboring countries, Nepal and India, embarked on a collaborative autoethnographic inquiry into the emotional dimensions of teaching during the time of the pandemic using reflective letter-writing as a method of generating data. We have used a narrative dialogue method to analyze our reflective letter-writing method and draw attention to the themes that emerged throughout the process of generating data. Our research points out the significance of affective understanding through listening and sharing each other’s narratives as a way to build resilience as teacher leaders during times of crisis to improve our practices and gain insight into each other's lived experiences. </i>

Towards a critical translanguaging biliteracy pedagogy: the ‘aha moment’ stories of two Mandarin Chinese teachers in Canada

AbstractLearning Mandarin Chinese as a heritage or additional language at Chinese complementary schools has long been a tradition for many Asian Canadians. However, research that looks at teachers' experiences and perceptions in Canadian settings, especially the power dynamics embedded in biliteracy development at complementary schools, is scant. Moreover, the COVID‐19 pandemic brought challenges and opportunities to Chinese complementary schools. In this paper, we, as two Mandarin teachers and literacy researchers, used collaborative autobiographical narrative inquiry to tell our stories to unfold (1) how power dynamics regarding biliteracy/multiliteracy were enacted and reflected in a Chinese complementary school during the pandemic and (2) our re‐understanding of Mandarin teaching and learning from critical literacy and translanguaging perspectives. Although the pandemic is over, racial discrimination and social inequity continue to remain in our lives. By analysing our teaching moments and reflections, we hope this study could provide some insights into how critical literacy and translanguaging can be integrated into language and literacy education in multilingual and multimodal settings in the pandemic and post‐pandemic contexts.

Evolving from Didactic to Dialogic: How to Improve Faculty Development and Support Faculty Developers by Using Action Research

Problem : Since competency-based medical education has gained widespread acceptance to guide curricular reforms, faculty development has been regarded as an indispensable element to make these programs successful. Faculty developers have striven to design and deliver myriad of programs or workshops to better prepare faculty members for fulfilling their teaching roles. However, how faculty developers can improve workshop delivery by researching their teaching practices remains underexplored. Intervention : Action research aims to understand real world practices and advocates for formulation of doable plans through cycles of investigations, and ultimately contributes to claims of knowledge and a progression toward the goal of practice improvement. This methodology aligns with the aim of this study to understand how I could improve a faculty development workshop by researching my teaching practices. Context : In 2016, we conducted four cycles of action research in the context of mini-Clinical Evaluation Exercise (mini-CEX) workshops within a faculty development program aiming for developing teaching and assessment competence in faculty members. We collected multiple sources of qualitative data for thematic analysis, including my reflective journal, field notes taken by a researcher-observer, and post-workshop written reflection and feedback in portfolio from fourteen workshop attendees aiming to develop faculty teaching and assessment competence. Impact : By doing action research, I scrutinized each step as an opportunity for change, enacted adaptive practice and reflection on my teaching practices, and formulated action plans to transform a workshop design through each cycle. In so doing, my workshop evolved from didactic to dialogic with continuous improvement on enhanced engagement, focused discussion and participant empowerment through a collaborative inquiry into feedback practice. Moreover, these processes of action research also supported my growth as a faculty developer. Lessons Learned: The systematic approach of action research serves as a vehicle to enable faculty developers to investigate individual teaching practices as a self-reflective inquiry, to examine, rectify, and transform processes of program delivery, and ultimately introduce themselves as agents for change and improvement.

How is student scientific attitude profile toward chemistry learning with research-oriented collaborative inquiry learning?

This study aims to describe the profile of scientific attitudes of XI grade high school students in Sleman who learned with the Research-Oriented Collaborative Inquiry Learning REORCILEA. The sample in this research was 30 high school students who were selected using a purposive sampling technique. REORCILEA is an integrated learning model between research-based, inquiry, and collaborative learning. The research was descriptive qualitative designed, and the results of the descriptive analysis revealed that high school students who taught with REORCILEA had a 10% good, 86, 67 % enough, and 3.33 % low scientific attitude profile. Scientific attitude toward chemistry learning profile assessed with a questionnaire developed by the researcher. Students' scientific attitudes are described by seven aspects of scientific attitude, specifically curiosity, rational thinking, openmindedness, concern with evidence, and honest acting according to the rules.

Embodying Affective Intra-Actions Online: Enacting Posthuman Methods in Virtual Spaces

This article explores how the posthuman concepts of affect, intra-action, and diffraction helped me reimagine collaborative inquiry, a traditionally place-based action research method that emphasizes human affect as the root of all personal becoming, for an online context and posthuman world. I begin with a brief introduction to posthuman philosophies and the ways a 21st-century world increasingly mediated by digital technologies may be considered a shared posthuman present reality. Next, I look to the literature to show how scholars in digital contexts have used and created posthuman concepts, exploring some of the methodological implications of emerging posthuman perspectives for qualitative research, particularly in online spaces. Considering the insights various posthuman studies offer my attempts to design a virtual collaborative inquiry, I suggest an artful and embodied heuristic for starting from human experience to better understand and to create digital posthuman worlds.

From College to Classroom: Using Virtual Collaborative Inquiry to Support First-Year Teachers With Classroom Management

This study describes an initiative to support first-year teachers and address the following questions: During a year-long, asynchronous support/study group to help first-year teachers with classroom management, what SEL practices would the teachers identify as effective in supporting their classroom management and what SEL competencies would those practices help their elementary and secondary students develop? Data were collected from questionnaires and wiki space discussions. Findings demonstrate that the first-year teachers’ initial conceptions of classroom management became increasingly aligned with the ways in which culturally responsive SEL practices can support classroom management and help elementary and secondary students foster important SEL competencies.

Analytics‐supported reflective assessment for 6th graders' knowledge building and data science practices: An exploratory study

AbstractPreparing data‐literate citizens and supporting future generations to effectively work with data is challenging. Engaging students in Knowledge Building (KB) may be a promising way to respond to this challenge because it requires students to reflect on and direct their inquiry with the support of data. Informed by previous studies, this research explored how an analytics‐supported reflective assessment (AsRA)‐enhanced KB design influenced 6th graders' KB and data science practices in a science education setting. One intact class with 56 students participated in this study. The analysis of students' Knowledge Forum discourse showed the positive influences of the AsRA‐enhanced KB design on students' development of KB and data science practices. Further analysis of different‐performing groups revealed that the AsRA‐enhanced KB design was accessible to all performing groups. These findings have important implications for teachers and researchers who aim to develop students' KB and data science practices, and general high‐level collaborative inquiry skills. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Data use becomes increasingly important in the K‐12 educational context. Little is known about how to scaffold students to develop data science practices. Knowledge Building (KB) and learning analytics‐supported reflective assessment (AsRA) show premises in developing these practices. What this paper adds AsRA‐enhanced KB can help students improve KB and data science practices over time. AsRA‐enhanced KB design benefits students of different‐performing groups. AsRA‐enhanced KB is accessible to elementary school students in science education. Implications for practice and/or policy Developing a collaborative and reflective culture helps students engage in collaborative inquiry. Pedagogical approaches and analytic tools can be developed to support students' data‐driven decision‐making in inquiry learning.

Towards a new (or rearticulated) philosophy of mental health nursing: A dialogue-on-dialogue.

The following dialogue takes up recent calls within nursing scholarship to critically imagine alternative nursing futures through the relational process of call and response. Towards this end, the dialogue builds on letters which we, the authors, exchanged as part of the 25th International Nursing Philosophy Conferencein 2022. In these letters, we asked of ourselves and each other: If we were to think about a new philosophy of mental health nursing, what are some of the critical questions that we would need to ask? What warrants exploration? In thinking through these questions, our letters facilitated a collaborative enquiry in which philosophy and theory were generative tools for thinking beyond what is and towards what is yet to come. In this paper, we expand the dialogue within these letters-in a 'dialogue-on-dialogue'-and take up one thread of our discussion to argue that a new philosophy of mental health nursing must rethink the relationships between 'practitioner'/'self' and 'self'/'other' if it is to create a radically different future. Further, we posit solidarity and public love as possible alternatives to foregrounding the 'work' of mental health nursing. The possibilities we present here should be received as partial, contingentand unfinished. Indeed, our purpose in this paper is to provoke discussion and, in so doing, to model what we believe is a necessary shift towards criticality in our communities of nursing scholarship.

Supporting and understanding students’ collaborative reflection-in-action during design-based learning

Design-Based Learning (DBL) is a pedagogical approach where learning is situated in the context of design activities that are typically carried out in groups. During collaborative design inquiry, reflection is of vital importance for learning from design experience. The paper presents a research-through-design study with the intention to generate knowledge on how to design for supporting reflection-in-action during design-based learning. This study addresses the research question: how can a media tool support a group of students in externalizing reflection while they are engaging in DBL? This paper describes the design and evaluation of ReflectionSchema, a tool intended to support reflection-in-action in such a learning environment. The tool offers visualized guidance for coordinating a group of students’ understanding of how they can combine reflecting with making design representations. The tool was trialed by 13 groups of students aged 12 to 13, who used the tool to record short reflection videos along their whole DBL process. We analyzed the efficacy of ReflectionSchema in terms of supporting collaborative reflection-in-action. Furthermore, we investigated the process of reflection-in-action during Design-based learning processes by examining the collaborative reflection patterns in the reflection videos that include the actions, roles, recording preference/style, and strategies employed. We discussed how these findings can inform the design of other reflection tools for similar settings.