ABSTRACT

How might inquiry enhance the professional practice of student and practising teachers, teacher educators and other practitioners? What effect might this have on the learning of young people in and outside of the classroom?

Based on the findings of an international colloquium and drawing upon a range of practices from the UK, USA, Canada, Europe and Australia, this book is designed to make explicit the connections between Practitioner Inquiry and Teacher Professional Learning in Initial Teacher Education and Ongoing Teacher Professional Development.

Considering issues such as

  • the relationship between practitioner inquiry and pedagogical content knowledge
  • whether it is possible to scale up from small local and intensive innovations to more broadly-based inquiry
  • inquiry’s role in professional identity, both individual and communal
  • prevailing socio-political contexts and consequences for social policy formation.

It brings together writers who work in designing teacher education courses, and those who are practice-based researchers and policy makers. Crucially, many of these writers inhabit both spheres, and their accounts of how they successfully combine their multiple roles will prove vital reading for all those involved in examining and improving practice leading to enhanced teacher professional learning.

chapter |15 pages

Learning across boundaries

Developing trans-professional understanding through practitioner inquiry

chapter |15 pages

Postgraduate programmes as platforms

Coming together and doing research for a common moral purpose

chapter |13 pages

Academic induction for new teacher educators

Forging authentic research identities through practitioner inquiry

chapter |13 pages

Teacher researchers in the UK: what are their needs?

Some lessons from Scotland

chapter |14 pages

The place of assessment

Creating the conditions for praxis inquiry learning

chapter |16 pages

Learning by doing

A year of qualitative research

chapter |14 pages

Networks of researching schools

Lessons and questions from one study

chapter |13 pages

From lesson study to learning study

Side-by-side professional learning in the classroom

chapter |13 pages

Learning outside the classroom

A partnership with a difference

chapter |8 pages

School leaders using inquiry and research

A podcast between Philippa Cordingley, Kris Needham and Mark Carter and discussion by Susan Groundwater-Smith and Anne Campbell

chapter |7 pages

Joining the dots

Connecting inquiry and professional learning