Inquiry in Teacher Education: Competing Agendas

Teacher Education Quarterly, Summer 2005 by Donnell, Kelly, Harper, Kelly

School-based practitioners and university-based teacher educators do not necessarily agree about what is important in pre-service teacher education. The perennial tensions between what prospective teachers learn in the academic environment and what they learn in field placements have been studied by Dewey (1904), Wehlage (1981) and Cannella and Reiff (1994). Controversies continue about the extent to which theories are useful in preparing students for the complexities of classroom life.

To address the lack of connection between theory and practice, a number of recent reforms in teacher education have included inquiiy-based programs and/or new types of education courses (Darling-Hammond, 1994), which encourage student teachers to be reflective problem solvers and change agents. Additionally, student teachers have been encouraged to be critical consumers of professional research (Zumwalt, 1982) as well as generators of their own knowledge (Cochran-Smith, 1991). Pre-service teachers need to connect and expand their professional knowledge by examining their own understandings of teaching and learning (Olson, 2002). Wodlinger (1996) argues that these experiences increase teachers' sense of autonomy and control of educational priorities and enable teacher candidates to make a shift from thinking like students to thinking like teachers. An increasing number of teacher education programs have adopted some form of inquiry approach to learning from and about teaching (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993,1999; Zeichner & Noffke, 2001). Teacher research is viewed as an exciting avenue to both knowledge creation and social change (Burnaford, Fischer, & Hobson, 2001; Cockrell, Placier, Cockrell, & Middleton, 1999; Fecho, 2000)

Based on a pilot course for student teachers, the researchers, also aspiring teacher educators, studied the process of implementing an inquiry approach toward teaching and learning to teach while simultaneously responding to the issues and needs of the student teachers. The researchers utilized the model of inquiry-asstance developed by Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999) in which inquiry-as-stance is defined as a way of reflecting on and documenting the relationships among teacher learning, pupil learning, and professional practice across the professional lifespan. The process of inquiry was defined as "critical and transformative, a stance that is linked not only to high standards for the learning of all students but also to social change and social justice and to the individual and collective professional growth of teachers" (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993, p.38). Three questions were posed, as follows.

(1) What happens when inquiry-as-stance is intended to anchor the learning of both beginning teacher educators and student teachers?

(2) What themes and issues emerge among the student teachers and teacher educators as they attempt to make sense of the inquiry process and also meet the daily demands of classroom teaching?

(3) What kinds of questions about inquiry-as-stance and teaching are raised by the student teachers and the teacher educators?

Method

Context

As the student teachers were required to reflect on their own practice to improve their teaching, the teacher educators also inquired into the process of introducing inquiry to understand the immediacy of the situation and to illuminate possible directions for prospective class meetings. A qualitative approach best fit the questions and the available data.

Participants

The participants were 52 pre-service student teachers pursuing a Master's degree in education and the course facilitators, fourteen doctoral level teacher educators and one professor. The doctoral level teacher educators were first through third year doctoral students, thirteen in Curriculum and Instruction, one in Educational Administration. Every facilitator had classroom teaching experience ranging from three to twenty years, and several continued to teach full- or part-time in schools during their doctoral program. The group included three men and eleven women, ranging in age from 25 to over 45 years old. One was a person of color.

The student teachers' placements included Kindergarten through grade 12 classrooms, urban and suburban settings, and both special needs and general education classrooms. Almost half of the student teacher group (24) were members of an urban teaching cohort. All of the participants attended the year-long inquiry seminar which met five times each semester. The activities consisted of a large group lecture followed by small group discussions facilitated by pairs of doctoral level teacher educators. After each session, the doctoral level teacher educators and the professor met to discuss the progress of the student teachers and future directions of the seminar.

Data Sources

Data sources included materials related to the understanding of the process of the seminar. These included course materials such as written notes, transcripts, and summaries of each seminar session, notes from discussions between the doctoral level teacher educators and the professor, student feedback on course evaluations; and responses from a survey distributed at the end of the course (see Appendix A). Data sources related to outcomes included student teachers' critical reflections, seminar facilitators' comments on student teacher journals and papers, written assessments of the students' progress in December and May, and student teachers' final papers.