Studying Student Learning Through Collaborative Inquiry

• In Event: The Challenge of Using Adaptive Models of Collaborative Inquiry: Tensions Between Knowledge Generation and Dissemination Within Schools and School Districts

Abstract

Purpose and Perspective
The purpose of the Student Work Study Teachers initiative is to gain deeper understanding of student achievement for elementary students who struggle with success in classrooms from kindergarten to grade 6, as a way to both inform large-scale policy direction and local teacher and school actions.

Educational reform across many jurisdictions over the past ten years has targeted teacher improvement as its core purpose, for example, the No Child Left Behind strategy in the United States and the National Strategies in England (Podgursky & Springer, 2007). However, often these reforms do not start from a position of honouring teachers’ commitment to serve students within their professional practice. This notion is what Goodlad (1991) and Sergiovanni (2007) thought of as teacher stewardship. It is a stance within educational change that places student actions and learning as the predominant rationale and motivation of and for teacher action, learning and change (Greenfield, 1991).

Recognition of professional stewardship within this policy makes the SWST initiative a potentially innovative approach to improving school and classroom practice. This initiative focuses on capturing student activity and understanding as the primary source that informs action and builds knowledge. In so doing, it sits firmly within what Coburn and Stein (2010) argue is a conception of building knowledge of practice in which teachers learn and adapt professionally through opportunities to collaboratively interrogate their own practice.

Methods and Data
Data for this paper draws from 75 case studies written by teacher-researchers in 325 elementary schools. Each case study used the same template to document observed student learning, teachers’ collaborative processes, methods of data collection, and potential learning conditions that might best support the student learning that they studied. From January to June 2010, teacher-researchers collected data on student learning in nearly 1,000 classrooms for almost 17,000 hours. This paper will also use data drawn from three focus groups of teacher-researchers occurring over the course of the initiative, survey data from teacher-researchers, and from a purposive sample of classroom teachers, and a cross-role evaluation of the initiative conducted by teachers, teacher-researchers and school principals. These data provide a description of the initiative, the kinds of student learning explored, and the challenges and potential of this type of initiative as a professional learning model nested within other initiatives in a large-scale school improvement strategy.

Results and Significance
Findings from this study suggest there is a crossover of similar instructional strategies geared towards student oral articulation of task and learning before, during and after tasks that may be an essential area for student learning. Equally, the importance of building a wider notion of curriculum in which the student can draw and make connections to their own lived experiences may be a central catalyst for deep learning experiences. Additionally, data from this initiative suggest that a core catalyst and motivator for teacher action and professional learning occurs in response to increased student learning and engagement in situ and as a result of the collaborative work done by the teachers.

Authors

• David Cameron, Ontario Ministry of Education

• Dianne Oliphant, Ontario Ministry of Education