Professional development to promote schoolwide inquiry
M. Bruce King
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Wisconsin Center for Education Research
1025 W. Johnson Street
Madison, WI 53706
608-263-4769
fax 608-263-6448
15 February 2001
MS # 1363, accepted for publication in Teaching and Teacher Education
This paper was supported by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement (Grant No. R308F60021-97), the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Spencer Foundation, and the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Any opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of supporting agencies. Helen Marks, Fred Newmann, Virginia Richardson, and Peter Youngs provided helpful feedback on previous drafts. The author also thanks two anonymous reviewers and Greta Morine-Dershimer for their comments on the initial manuscript.
Professional development to promote schoolwide inquiry
Abstract
This paper explores the extent of teacher inquiry, and how professional development can promote schoolwide inquiry, in seven urban elementary schools in the US. The regular and systematic inquiry present in two of the schools is highlighted. The schools’ organizational contexts that facilitate inquiry are also considered. As a key element of professional community, the ways in which inquiry contributes to, and interacts with, other aspects of teacher community are examined. The paper also reflects on the issue of strict or flexible community boundaries and how inquiry can help to keep a school’s faculty focused yet dynamic, as well as open to dissent and change.
Keywords: Teacher inquiry, Professional development, School organization
Professional development to promote schoolwide inquiry
I. Introduction
Teacher Inquiry
Two strands of the current school reform agenda, both in the US and internationally, are teacher inquiry and organizational learning. On the one hand, the restructuring and reculturing of schools should promote inquiry in which educators critically examine their own beliefs and practices (e.g., McLaughlin & Oberman, 1996; Richardson, 1994). This emphasis on inquiry and reflection has become one aspect of redefining teacher professionalism in many first-world countries (Conway, 2001). On the other hand, schools need to become learning organizations (Argyris & Schön, 1978). Schools as learning organizations help teachers interrogate, integrate, and apply knowledge and values in the process of continual improvement (Leithwood & Louis, 1999; Louis & Marks, 1999; also Crowther & Kaagan, in press).
This study begins to bring these two strands together. Much of the research on teacher inquiry has focused on pre-service teacher education or on the individual teacher or small group participating in some form of action research. But recent research is emerging that shows teacher inquiry to be necessary for ambitious instructional reform. Also, professional development that entails inquiry into subject matter and teaching has shown positive results on teacher learning, practice, or student learning (Darling-Hammond & Sykes, 1999; Lytle & Cochran-Smith, 1994; Smylie 1998; Wilson & Berne, 1999). This study seeks to further understand the contributions of professional development to schoolwide inquiry, as well as the benefits of inquiry to a school’s professional community.
Teacher inquiry entails a number of critical features. At the individual level, inquiry suggests a vision of the teacher “who questions her assumptions and is consciously thoughtful about her goals, practices, students, and contexts” (Richardson, 1994, p. 187). Inquiry puts teacher practice and student learning under scrutiny; and it generates and reinforces core beliefs, norms, and values of the community. Teachers become students of their craft as they struggle with key issues of determining academic content or subject matter, implementing instructional strategies, responding to students’ development, or understanding social conditions of schooling relevant to equity and justice concerns (Kruse, Louis, & Bryk, 1995).
At a minimum, then, collective inquiry involves teachers talking to each other about their practice and how it relates to student outcomes, and being willing to disagree. Other criteria indicate more complex inquiry, such as inviting or searching for dissenting viewpoints; making taken-for-granted assumptions explicit and challenging them; analyzing data, knowledge, and information; reaching collective understanding or decisions; and sustaining a focus on a specific topic. Similar to Cochran-Smith and Lytle’s (1999) “inquiry as stance,” this conception of inquiry suggests, not a one-time activity or project, but a defining feature of a community in which teachers investigate and critically examine practices, theories, and research, and collectively confront issues in a systematic and continuous way.
Typical professional development activities represent the antithesis of careful inquiry. These activities tend to be imposed by external authorities without significant input from teachers and rarely sustained or followed-up. Often, professional development is divorced from teachers’ work contexts, and presents material that teachers see as irrelevant to student learning in their specific school settings. Different activities throughout a year or a period of years tend to lack consistent focus, either for individual teachers or for a school. And, perhaps most importantly, traditional professional development mirrors traditional forms of instruction where the learners, the teachers, are passive. In contrast, professional development that promotes inquiry will involve teachers in determining content and process, will relate specifically to their students, will be sustained and systematic, and will entail active learning that may lead to important changes in beliefs and practices.
Inquiry and Professional Community
If innovative approaches to professional development stress only individual teachers’ learning, while neglecting to help a whole faculty to integrate their learning for the collective advancement of students in that school, organizational learning is diminished. We would not expect substantial changes in practice or student learning for a school as a whole. From this organizational perspective, inquiry should not be a solo activity, but one aspect of a school’s professional community. Recent research has shown the importance of teachers’ professional community for school reform. Drawing on the conceptual and empirical work of Louis, Kruse, Marks, and colleagues (e.g., Louis, Kruse, & Associates, 1995; Louis, Marks, & Kruse, 1996; Newmann, King, & Rigdon, 1997; also Westheimer, 1998), a strong schoolwide professional community consists of (a) a clear shared purpose for student learning, (b) collaboration among staff to achieve the purpose, (c) professional inquiry by the staff to address the challenges they face, and (d) opportunities for staff to influence the school’s activities and policies.
Although teachers can engage in careful individual inquiry about their practice, inquiry as a collaborative activity among teachers at a school is what contributes to professional community. Because they are in an organizational setting, teacher reflection becomes a joint responsibility that encourages them to work collectively toward shared understandings and commitments (Kruse, Louis, & Bryk, 1995). Inquiry that is pursued individually by teachers in a school, even if a significant number of them are doing it, could lead to organizational fragmentation that weakens overall student and staff learning.
Some caution is warranted, though, in advocating a strong professional community in a school. The term “community” tends to be associated with positive, even progressive, social conditions. But like other social arrangements, community can have ambivalent tendencies (Wagner 1994). On the one hand, community entails harmony, consensus, mutual understanding. On the other, there is an urge to unify to the point where homogeneity is valued, even enforced (Young, 1990). As Noddings (1996) points out, “In all strong communities, there is a significant measure of normocentricity … (which) can produce admirable or deplorable results” (p. 254).
Thus shared norms, values, and goals define communities but these can lead to either strict or flexible boundaries to the community. With strict boundaries, where norms are highly explicit with little room for negotiation or interpretation, comes silence or exclusion. Disagreement and diversity are perceived as a threat, and minority viewpoints are unwelcome. Critical reflection seems essential to avoid these potentially negative outcomes of community. Inquiry should be seen as an integral part of professional community because when communities inquire about their norms, values, and goals, as well as practices to achieve them, difference or conflict is inherent but their cultivation contributes to flexible boundaries. That is, norms are continually revisited and refined, dissent or new perspectives are welcome, and the community is dynamic rather than stagnant.
In this paper, then, I will explore the extent of inquiry, and how professional development can further schoolwide inquiry, in seven urban elementary schools. From these schools, different examples of inquiry are highlighted, including the regular and systematic inquiry present in two of them. Aspects of the organizational contexts of the schools that facilitate collective inquiry, including leadership and structures, will be considered. I’ll then analyze how inquiry contributes to, and interacts with, other aspects of teacher professional community in these schools, and return to the issue of strict or flexible boundaries and how inquiry can help to keep a professional community focused yet dynamic, as well as open to dissent and change. The conclusion will draw implications from the study’s findings and suggest further research.
II. Research Methodology and Analysis
This investigation is part of a larger study of professional development to build school capacity. Our definition of capacity included the following five dimensions: the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of individual staff members; professional community; program coherence; technical resources; and principal leadership.[1] Seven public elementary schools in the US participated from spring 1997 through fall 1999. They were selected through a national search for schools serving large proportions of low-income students which a) had histories of low achievement, b) had shown progress in student achievement over the previous three to five years, c) attributed their progress to schoolwide and sustained professional development, d) participated in site-based management, and e) had received significant professional development assistance from one or more external agencies.[2] In addition to the five criteria, the schools were chosen to represent different approaches to professional development and different kinds of assistance from district, state, and independent providers (see the Appendix for professional development and demographic information for each school).
The study intentionally sought out schools that used professional development in exemplary ways according to the criteria outlined above. One indication that we did in fact locate such schools is that, according to teacher survey data, all the participating schools scored consistently higher on dimensions of school capacity than did a comparable sample of schools in Chicago. On measures of inquiry (or reflective dialogue), the seven schools in the professional development study were significantly higher than the Chicago schools (Smith 1999).
Initial data collection in spring and fall of 1997 involved fieldwork in the seven schools for three days by a team of two researchers. Visits to the schools were scheduled so that significant professional development activities could be observed. Observed activities included workshops or in-services with outside authorities, but also activities internal to the school such as common planning or release time for teachers to meet in committees, cadres, grade teams, and as a school as a whole, as well as meetings to network with teachers from other schools. Researchers also interviewed school staff (10 to 12) and representatives from external providers of professional development and collected pertinent documents as well as achievement, demographic, and fiscal information.[3]
Four of the schools (Falkirk, Kintyre, Lewis, and Renfrew[4]) with the greatest potential for comprehensive professional development, that is professional development that consistently addressed most or all dimensions of capacity, were visited three more times through 1999. The other three schools (Carlisle, Pitlochry, and Wallace) were visited once more in 1999. Research methods in the follow-up visits followed the same general pattern as in the initial visits, but interviews raised issues that emerged in prior visits on how professional development addressed the different dimensions of capacity.
We conducted two stages of analysis to determine the level of teacher inquiry at each school, as well as the extent to which professional development addressed inquiry over the course of the study. The first stage of analysis occurred after each school visit when research staff compiled field notes from their observations and interviews and wrote a report addressing the research questions of the full study. At this stage of analysis, the school report focused on how professional development addressed three aspects of capacity: teachers’ knowledge, skills and dispositions; professional community (each of four dimensions including inquiry); and program coherence.
The second stage of analysis took place after all data collection had been completed and all of the school reports were written. We used the reports to rate each school (high, medium, or low) on several variables. One was the level of collective inquiry at the time of the first visit and the final visit. A second was the extent to which inquiry was addressed by professional development over the course of our study. To be rated high on inquiry, professional development activities at a particular school met at least four of the following criteria. Teachers
¨ have considerable control over process and content;
¨ critically discuss issues of school mission, curriculum, instruction, or student learning;
¨ address areas of disagreement and entertain diverse viewpoints;
¨ draw upon relevant data and research to inform deliberations;
¨ sustain a focus on a topic or problem, and reach a collective decision.
Research staff assigned individual ratings for each variable; when there was disagreement, the ratings were discussed until consensus was reached. The ratings were used to inform explanations for why some schools used professional development to address capacity more comprehensively than others did. The next section presents the three major findings of this study.
III. Findings
1. In a select sample of schools, only two used professional development to strongly address schoolwide teacher inquiry. In the other five schools, the extent of collective inquiry was limited.
Even though all the schools in this study used professional development in innovative ways and demonstrated some gains in student achievement, we found schoolwide inquiry to be low in five of them. In short, teachers’ work in professional development rarely met the criteria for inquiry. There seems to be at least two possible explanations. One, while inquiry was low at these schools, it may have been somewhat better than at other schools with little success in raising achievement. The comparison to the sample of Chicago schools noted above provides support for this explanation. Alternatively, the low levels may indicate that in the short term, collective inquiry may not be necessary for school improvement that enhances achievement. In part IV. Conclusions, I’ll return to this issue and argue why in the long term, professional development should promote schoolwide inquiry.