Facilitating the Tilt: Reflections on Professional Development That Promotes Inquiry in High-Stakes Times

• In Event: Tilting Toward Inquiry: Implications for Teaching, Learning, and Professional Development

Abstract

Purposes
For the past four years, a university-facilitated professional development program involved 77 secondary teachers from multiple content areas and six secondary schools to employ a teacher inquiry process to support student learning through inquiry. This presentation aims to describe the program in terms of its theoretical and practical structures while also offering a reflective retrospective through the lens of the university-based designers and facilitators who work with teacher participants. In particular, facilitators reflect on what it means to facilitate professional development for inquiry in the context of reforms that create and constrain opportunities to support such an “ambitious pedagogy” (Windschitl, Thompson, & Braaten, 2011).

Perspectives
Among several conceptions of student inquiry, McDonald and Songer’s (2008) framework as well as Bonnstetter’s (1998) continuum helped facilitators to present and assess conceptualizations of inquiry that position authenticity of task and autonomy of the student as key qualities of inquiry.
Utilizing Cochran-Smith and Lytle’s (2009) body of work discussing “inquiry stance” helped designers to understand appropriation of this pedagogy among participants. Appropriation came to mean not just the increased use and mastery of “tools” (Grossman, Smagorinsky, & Valencia, 1999) but also an interaction of beliefs and actions towards inquiry representing a deep commitment to its use with all students.

Modes of Inquiry
This self-study was conducted to foster critical programmatic inquiry as a means to stimulate deep understanding, and, ultimately, program transformation (Loughran & Russel, 2002). Monthly planning meetings enabled reflective discussions to make sense of the data, driven by the questions of what it means to facilitate inquiry professional development in the context of current reforms.

Data
In addition to consulting relevant program documents, additional data included a review of program survey results. Moreover, monthly discussions surfaced key themes as experienced by each facilitator in implementing the program and documented in facilitator reflections at several points over the years.

Results
Results will highlight designers’ perspectives on the program, key theoretical frameworks, structures for support, and critical changes in the design over the four years. Next, program facilitators will highlight key themes that emerged from reflective discussion of program data. Initial analyses reveal several themes: the project/process tension, focusing on student vs. teacher inquiry, broadening notions of assessments, and fitting in vs. fostering critique of policies impacting school environments. Last, a final section will discuss implications for professional development.

Significance
Much research suggests that professional development can have sustained impacts on teachers (Supovitz, Mayer, & Kahle, 2000) and that coherence is particularly achieved when programs embrace a shared language and common framework (Horn & Little, 2010). This university-based program is consistent with these research-based practices for professional development. The contribution of this paper is its focus on the interdisciplinary nature of professional development for inquiry at the secondary level, its explicit design to relate the teacher and student inquiry processes, and the sharing of facilitators’ perspectives on the negotiations involved in coordinating professional development within reform contexts that, at times, open up and constrain opportunities for inquiry.

Authors

• Christine D. Clayton, Pace University

• James F. Kilbane, Cleveland State University

• Dr. Lauren Beth Birney, Pace University

• Joan S. Kass, Pace University

• Beth Kava, Pace University