Preface

Some of the most important issues around classroom teaching have to do with fundamental disagreements about what should be taught, how students should be educated, and how learning should be evaluated. The knowledge base for teaching has been heavily influenced by academic outsiders to the school setting, whose findings are often generalized beyond the context of the research site. Classroom teachers are usually limited to the role of research subject rather than accepted as partners or designers of these studies. Consequently, the voices of teachers are absent from educational literature, and critical thinking and inquiry have not been valued as dispositions in teacher identity. This invisibility of teacher-generated knowledge persists today as the expertise of practicing teachers continues to be bypassed.

Although classroom teachers understand that effective instruction means continuous seeking deeper understandings about learning to inform classroom practice, subtle messages negate the validity of teachers as inquirers and thinkers in their classroom settings. To understand teacher identity and inquiry, viewed within a patriarchy analysis and understood historically as a system of social structures and domination, one must first understand how the gendered history of classroom teachers as caregivers continues today to silence their analytical and critical voices.

The context of contemporary schools is rapidly changing in our postmodern society. School settings today are messy, multifaceted, and unpredictable real-world environments. The complexity of teaching includes social and cultural factors, both inside and outside the school setting. Teachers are unique "insiders" positioned to redefine themselves as professionals to bring a new understanding to this rapidly changing social milieu.

Effective teachers must be reflective, engaged in the school context, and active in school initiatives. Active experimentation develops new curriculum and strategies to meet these changing needs. The need for teachers to have a clearer understanding of how beliefs and teaching practices impact classroom learning has never been greater.

Proponents of practitioner teacher inquiry support postmodern theories that teachers must be adaptable and flexible, able to accommodate uncertainty and change. As teachers strive to meet the ever-changing needs of youth, empirical research with its treatment and control groups and statistical analysis offers less credibility and legitimacy to specific contexts in which teachers work.

Practitioner teacher inquiry is grounded in the realities of educational practice as teachers investigate their own questions and facilitate classroom change based on the knowledge discovered. Teachers as researchers develop into knowledge-generators and, as such, gain access to more control over the knowledge base surrounding the teaching profession. This shift has the potential to change the nature of critical analysis in areas relating to teaching such as self, academic curriculums, impact on student learning, and the larger society.

Schooling is regarded as a major mechanism to socialize youth for citizenship and must therefore be thought of as a political activity. Creating an ethical stance produces complexities and role ambiguity for classroom teachers. Effective teachers develop habits of inquiry, either individually or collaboratively, seeking to understand themselves and others. Inquiry research that includes student participation and action studies challenges top-down policy and can be used as a powerful mechanism for transforming school culture and empowering teachers and pupils. Visions for better schools inform teacher decisions and shape the issues they explore.

Designed to be more qualitative, open-ended, and reflective, practitioner teacher inquiry is also collaborative, engaging with youth, other teachers, and community. Practitioner teacher inquiry encourages teachers to disconnect from norms of professional isolation and reconnect and capture accounts and rich descriptive perspectives of others. Teachers study and develop empathetic understanding of others, such as students and parents, to engage community in new curriculum designed for a postmodern world. Community-based research offers the potential to actively examine broader social change and improvement, where values, meanings, and practice can be studied and transformed. Practitioner teacher inquiry offers a new paradigm in which schools grow into cultures of teachers, students, and communities, learning collectively about themselves in an ever-changing society.

Practitioner teacher inquiry begins with imaginings and envisioning the possibility of "otherwise." Teachers as inquirers adapt and modify designs and methodologies to effectively study not as outsiders but as insiders in schools. Teacher inquiry is not an easy endeavor. These insider studies require a willingness to act with personal integrity, openness, and honesty within a subjective and practical wisdom stance.

Classroom teachers recognize issues as complex, uncertain, unique, and conflicting as they empower themselves to frame and name their stories and experiences. Teachers must collaborate and collectively think critically about how to design, conduct, and analyze insider studies in school settings. Many classroom teachers will require training in group problem solving, teamwork, and leadership. As more practitioner teacher inquiry studies are conducted and shared with larger audiences, new information about how teachers go about these studies will be available to others in the field.

The final question that must be addressed is whether teaching is to become a full profession or merely a technocratic career where the knowledge base is developed by those outside the school setting. Should teachers be prepared as intellectuals and inquiring professionals, capable of exploring issues impacting educational settings, or is the concept of practitioner teacher inquiry merely a passing fad that has no authentic value or possibilities for sustainability? Until formal inquiry becomes a disposition in which all teachers experiment, explore, and design studies inside schools, we will not know the true value or benefit inquiry study can have on classroom teachers and our youth in contemporary society.

Organization of the Book

Practitioner Teacher Inquiry and Research addresses three concepts: an analysis of historical and gendered discourse that has impacted teachers as inquirers and researchers, guidelines and strategies for conducting practitioner inquiry studies as insiders, and examples of previously unpublished teacher inquiry stories. The text provides a constructivist application to insiders' conducting studies in schools, supported by theories from fields such as anthropology, sociology, and organizational psychology.

The text consists of two sections. Part 1 combines theoretical and practical understandings regarding practitioner teacher inquiry and prepares the reader with background knowledge about the traditional role of classroom teaching that has emphasized caring dispositions at the expense of critical thinking and inquiry dispositions. Part 1 describes traditional empirical research and provides guidelines and strategies for conducting practitioner teacher research, adapted primarily from qualitative designs.

The chapters in Part 2 are written by eight contemporary classroom teachers who reflect on inquiry projects conducted among various developmental levels, content areas, and school contexts. These teachers have approached this writing from the context of their school settings. Through the chapter readings of Part 2, readers apply concepts and themes from Part 1 for critical thinking and discussion.

The text is intended for teachers or teacher candidates preparing to explore and analyze some aspect of schooling, as insiders, and is applicable to both initial and advanced teacher preparation as well as professional development initiatives in school settings. State and national educational standards increasingly focus on teacher training models that examine effectiveness of teaching on student learning. The concept of practitioner teacher inquiry research aligns philosophically to university field and clinical practice involving reflection and self-analysis of effectiveness and is increasingly used in teacher preparation programs at both the initial and advanced levels. Conducted in school settings, teacher inquiry uses methodologies to explore and think critically, reflect on one's practice, and strengthen teaching and learning. Practitioner Teacher Inquiry and Research is designed for use with face-to-face instruction as well as with hybrid and online teaching formats and includes higher order questions at the end of each chapter as well as websites with additional information.

Part 1-Perspectives, Strategies, and Methodologies

A major challenge when facilitating inquiry studies involves changing the mindset of teachers about conducting formal inquiry studies in classroom settings, mindsets that are often the result of stereotypes and long-standing beliefs. Practitioner Teacher Inquiry and Research addresses two themes related to this challenge in Part 1.

The first theme of Part 1 is the exploration of underlying sociocultural and historical perspectives surrounding teaching that have contributed to lingering stereotypes and beliefs that negate inquiry and critical thinking as part of teacher identity, undermining and silencing teacher power and voice. Part 1 emphasizes how historical silencing has allowed teaching to stall into a semiprofession, with educational reforms...