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Lesson 05: Teacher Inquiry: What Counts as Evidence?
Thinking About Your Teacher Leader Inquiry Proposal
This section of the lesson provides examples of how teacher leaders can prepare inquiries as individuals or in groups. These two examples may give you an initial feel for how inquiry could look when put into practice and how you might put your own unique stamp on the process.
Watch Videos
Video 5.1, Teacher Inquiry Project: Digital Story, shows how a math teacher used her past and present experiences to frame a problem and conduct a solo inquiry study about her own teaching. It is a personal story that will hopefully give you a feel for how teacher inquiry can be conducted by an individual. Notice how the teacher relies on intentional reflection to frame problems and assess her own teaching. Also notice how her inquiry process returns to a theory, which ultimately helps her more deeply understand her teaching practice. This method is just one approach to inquiry. Yours may look very different.
Video 5.2, Association of Raza Educators—Teacher Inquiry Groups, shows how a group of educators come together around concerns and problems in their school to frame a collaborative or group inquiry. Their core issue is social justice, and their pedagogy assumes that teaching is a political act. In this lesson, we should make no comment or judgment about this issue or assumption but focus on how a group of educators gathers around a topic and concern for the purpose of conducting teacher inquiry. Pay attention to the questions they are asking about their teaching and how they envision their colloquium (an upcoming event) will help frame their group inquiry.
Applied Learning
To check your understanding, summarize the approaches to inquiry discussed in Videos 5.1 and 5.2, and comment on how each approach may apply, or not, to an inquiry project you might design.
Note: There is nothing to submit. This is a formative assessment for you to gauge your understanding of the content. If you have questions, please email your instructor or post in the Raise Your Hand forum.