Teacher Inquiry

Harness the Power of Curiosity to Foster Students' Love for Learning From their youngest years, our children are innately curious. Cultivate an inquiry mindset both as a teacher and in your students! Adopt an inquiry approach that results in the most authentic and inspiring learning you've ever experienced!

The importance of educational research for professional development and classroom practice is becoming increasingly significant. This collection looks at both enacting teacher research and the methodologies involved within it.

What does it mean to teach for human dignity? How does one do so? This practical book shows how the leaders at four urban public schools used a process called Descriptive Inquiry to create democratic schools that promote and protect human dignity. The authors argue that teachers must attend to who a child is and find a way to create classrooms that allow everyone to feel safe and express ideas. Responding to the perennial question of how to cultivate teachers, they offer an approach that attends to both ethical development and instructional methods. They also provide a way forward for school leaders seeking to listen to, and provide guidance for, their staff. At its core, Descriptive Inquiry in Teacher Practice champions a commitment to schools as places in which children, teachers, and leaders can learn how to live and work well together. Book Features: 679;;Illustrates how to take an inquiry stance toward the difficult issues that educators face every day. 679;;Examines how themes regularly addressed in foundations can be used to improve schools. 679;;Includes engaging portraits of progressive urban schools that showcase the qualities of the leaders that guide them. 679;;Demonstrates the power of a progressive and humanistic education for children of color and for those from lower-income backgrounds.

Learning Stories and Teaching Inquiry Groups is a practical text focused on how ECE practitioners can establish teacher inquiry and reflection groups and integrate the use of learning stories to strengthen their assessment, teaching practices, and knowledge of child development. Drawing on relevant research and the authors' direct work with teachers, the book focuses on describing ways the authors have adapted the framework of the learning stories approach from New Zealand to specific US educational contexts via examples from several urban and rural ECE contexts. The book provides practical examples of novice through veteran early childhood teachers engaging and collaborating in onsite and cross-site inquiry and reflection with a focus on learning stories. This text will be useful for infant, toddler, and preschool teachers taking courses at the AA, BA, and MA levels, as well as teachers engaged in onsite professional development. This text will help early childhood educators learn to write learning stories as an observational and assessment approach to document young children's learning experiences and to deepen teachers' understanding of the role of narrative in linking child development knowledge with effective environmental design, high-quality curricular approaches, and socially and culturally inclusive relationship practices. The text will support early childhood educators' professional development through easily understood instructions and case study samples of inquiry work with learning stories through community of practice. Educators will learn how linking learning stories with regular, systematic forms of teacher inquiry, documentation, and reflection promotes a new image of children as holistic learners.

Margaret Carr′s seminal work on Learning Stories was first published by SAGE in 2001, and this widely acclaimed approach to assessment has since gained a huge international following. In this new full-colour book, the authors outline the philosophy behind Learning Stories and refer to the latest findings from the research projects they have led with teachers on learning dispositions and learning power, to argue that Learning Stories can construct learner identities in early childhood settings and schools. By making the connection between sociocultural approaches to pedagogy and assessment, and narrative inquiry, this book contextualizes Learning Stories as a philosophical approach to education, learning and pedagogy. Chapters explore how Learning Stories: - help make connections with families - support the inclusion of children and family voices - tell us stories about babies - allow children to dictate their own stories - can be used to revisit children′s learning journeys - can contribute to teaching and learning wisdom This ground-breaking book expands on the concept of Learning Stories and includes examples from practice in both New Zealand and the UK. It outlines the philosophy behind this pedagogical tool for documenting how learning identities are constructed and shows, through research evidence, why the early years is such a critical time in the formation of learning dispositions. Margaret Carr is a Professor of Education at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. Wendy Lee is Director of the Educational Leadership Project, New Zealand.

Teacher inquiry helps improve educational outcomes Practitioner Teacher Inquiry and Research explores theconcept and importance of the teacher practitioner, and preparesstudents in teacher education courses and programs to conductresearch in the classroom. Author Carolyn Babione has extensiveexperience in undergraduate- and graduate-level teacher trainingand teacher inquiry coursework. In the book, Babione guidesstudents through the background, theory, and strategy required tosuccessfully conduct classroom research. The first part of the booktackles the "how-to" and "why" of teacher inquiry, while the secondpart provides students with real-life practitioner inquiry researchprojects across a range of school settings, content areas, andteaching strategies. The book's discussion includes topics suchas: Underlying cultural and historical perspectives surrounding theteaching profession Hidden stereotypes that limit teacher beliefs about power andvoice Current curriculum innovation and reflections on moderndevelopments Practitioner Teacher Inquiry and Research successfullyguides and encourages budding teachers to fully understand theimportance of their involvement in studying and researching theirclassroom settings, giving a better understanding of how theirbeliefs and teaching practices impact classroom learning.

This volume describes supported collaborative inquiry as a framework for teacher professional development. The chapters focus on the building of collaborative support structures, nurturing an inquiry stance, progressing through an inquiry process, as well as the various kinds of support mechanisms necessary to engage in SCTI.

Parents are those social factors that can positively influence their child’s learning of mathematics. Using Teacher Inquiry for Knowing and Supporting Parents with Mathematics serves as a teacher’s inquiry guide for supporting parents in this critical role. Steps for investigating the manner in which parents and children work together on mathematics tasks, such as homework and projects, are shared. Findings gleaned from such investigation cultivate a state of knowing that positions teachers to support parents, and in turn their students, in meaningful and relevant ways. This book includes teacher inquiry approaches, related tools, and supportive resources for parents in grades Pre-K though 12. Teachers’ inquiry findings on their journey towards being "in the know" about parents and mathematics, along with their responsive action steps, are shared to help guide the reader’s use of inquiry for knowing and supporting parents with mathematics. Some key additional features of this book include: Support for both individual and collective teacher inquiry Resources for supporting parents through the grades Online teacher inquiry resources Anchor tasks for developing parents’ knowledge of mathematics content, and ways of supporting children’s understandings of that content