ABSTRACT
For two decades, we have worked with each other and with a wide array of students, inquiry communities, and school-, program-and university-based colleagues in order to conceptualize and engage in research about teaching, learning and schooling. We use ‘practitioner inquiry’ as an umbrella term that encompasses a number of inquiry approaches and genres. Over the years, we have learned that when practitioners do research, they dramatically realign their relationships to the brokers of knowledge and power. Along these lines, we have argued that, when taken seriously, practitioner inquiry represents a radical challenge to the cultures of schools and universities, questioning fundamental assumptions about: the knowledge needed to improve teaching, learning and schooling; how knowledge is produced, interpreted, exchanged, and used; and the tendency of those who work at universities to call for school transformation without parallel self-examination and restructuring.
