Teaching As Inquiry With A Focus On Priority Learners

This book shows how teaching as inquiry can be built into the everyday work of classrooms to make a difference for all students, particularly priority learners. Based on findings from the Secondary Student Achievement project, it is richly layered with whole-school, classroom and learner perspectives. The author highlights the successes that emerged as teachers re-examined their curriculum and teaching practices with the goal of raising the achievement of the priority learners they had identified. The introduction takes the reader back to the basics of what teaching as inquiry is and then the book steps through aspects of the inquiry process, from identifying students' needs to developing feedback loops to evaluate student progress and teacher learning. It's a focused and deep approach, with just four or five students the subject of inquiry at a time. The research took place in secondary schools but the issues and strategies and the interactions with students will have resonance for all practitioners. This is a professional learning approach with wide application across sectors, as well as internationally. Detailed and varied case studies and guiding questions engage readers and will get them started on their own teaching as inquiry journey. Professor Lindsey Conner is the Director of the Science and Technology Education Research Lab at the University of Canterbury. Previously, Lindsey has been a teacher educator at the Christchurch College of Education and University of Canterbury, and a secondary school biology teacher and Head of Department. She has also been a national examiner, a developer and examiner of national standards assessments, and an international consultant on developing science curricula and assessment practices and development projects on teacher education.

Humans, especially children, are naturally curious. Yet, people often balk at the thought of learning scienceâ€"the "eyes glazed over" syndrome. Teachers may find teaching science a major challenge in an era when science ranges from the hardly imaginable quark to the distant, blazing quasar. Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards is the book that educators have been waiting forâ€"a practical guide to teaching inquiry and teaching through inquiry, as recommended by the National Science Education Standards. This will be an important resource for educators who must help school boards, parents, and teachers understand "why we can't teach the way we used to." "Inquiry" refers to the diverse ways in which scientists study the natural world and in which students grasp science knowledge and the methods by which that knowledge is produced. This book explains and illustrates how inquiry helps students learn science content, master how to do science, and understand the nature of science. This book explores the dimensions of teaching and learning science as inquiry for K-12 students across a range of science topics. Detailed examples help clarify when teachers should use the inquiry-based approach and how much structure, guidance, and coaching they should provide. The book dispels myths that may have discouraged educators from the inquiry-based approach and illuminates the subtle interplay between concepts, processes, and science as it is experienced in the classroom. Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards shows how to bring the standards to life, with features such as classroom vignettes exploring different kinds of inquiries for elementary, middle, and high school and Frequently Asked Questions for teachers, responding to common concerns such as obtaining teaching supplies. Turning to assessment, the committee discusses why assessment is important, looks at existing schemes and formats, and addresses how to involve students in assessing their own learning achievements. In addition, this book discusses administrative assistance, communication with parents, appropriate teacher evaluation, and other avenues to promoting and supporting this new teaching paradigm.

In order to increase knowledge and understanding of educational settings as inclusive communities we strive to understand what supports inclusion as well as to critique barriers. Increasingly we are seeking to understand inclusion from the inside, from the perspective of the students. Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child upholds children’s rights to express their views in matters that affect them and to have those views taken into consideration and acted upon, that is, actively included in decision-making. A serious consideration of Article 12 involves two rights: the right to express a view and the right to have those views given due weight. In this volume we will share a compilation of research from Aotearoa New Zealand and beyond that aimed to access and listen to the views of students. We have brought together voices of students from different educational contexts, seeking their perspectives on learning, wellbeing, disciplinary procedures, literacy intervention and what makes schools good.

This book provides authentic practice-based inquiries by pre-service teachers. Their reflective narratives showcase their individual inquiries as they navigated their self-chosen professional learning journeys through the teaching as inquiry framework. The narratives advance what it means to be a reflective practitioner in practice and highlight necessary dispositional skill sets to attain valuable professional learning through inquiry. Through an inquiry stance, pre-service teachers are liberated from being knowledge consumers to local knowledge producers relevant to their practice. The dissonance this shift creates, negates the ‘comfortable doing’ of teaching to make the act of teaching authentic, relevant, and powerful.

There has been a flurry of writing about teachers as inquirers and researchers as well as books about children as inquirers. This volume brings these two areas together -- teachers and students are inquiring at Ridgeway Elementary School. It demonstrates the importance of thought collectives as forums for student and teacher learning. The children in the primary classrooms in this book are working to understand the world around them and their place in it as literate individuals. Their teachers are studying themselves and the students. No other book describes the way this work affects children, teachers, and the ethos of the school in which the work occurs. In that sense, this book is groundbreaking in that it is an honest portrayal of the joys and sorrows, the successes and the stumbling blocks, the clear vision, and the obfuscating that teachers live as they enact a life of asking questions, being curious, wandering, and wondering. Acknowledging and honoring the many faces of inquiry in schools, this book demonstrates the children's inquiry, their teachers' inquiry, and the place of that inquiry in schools. It lays out the ways in which inquiry is fundamental to teaching and learning in a democracy in which all of the members of the community have a voice in deciding curricular directions and ways of presenting learning. Teachers are presented as thinkers and learners, not merely as technicians enacting others' views of what is to be learned and when. Readers will find teachers dealing with the real issues of life in schools; they will see how teachers can use their existing situations as points of departure for their growth and their students' learning.

Supported collaborative teacher inquiry (SCTI) describes the process of professional development in which teacher teams build collaborative structures for the purpose of inquiring into aspects of their own instructional practice. Professional development performed collaboratively and grounded in "the work teachers do" is a highly effective forum for challenging existing beliefs about content, learners, and teaching and using data and research to reflect on, and possibly change, instructional practice. The contributors to this volume describe supported collaborative inquiry as a framework for teacher professional development and provide specific empirical evidence found in examples of SCTI. The chapters focus on the building of collaborative support structures, nurturing an inquiry stance, progressing through an inquiry process, and the various kinds of support mechanisms necessary to engage in SCTI. This seminal work in teacher research will be of interest to scholars, students, teachers, and administrators seeking insight into teacher education, teacher leadership, and teacher inquiry.