The Evolution of Questions Through Inquiry: An (Un)Intentional Process

• In Event: Roundtable Session 39
  In Roundtable Session: Transitioning From Teachers to Teacher Educators: Forming and Sustaining an Inquiry Community

Abstract

Objectives:
Central to the formation and practice of teacher inquiry is participation in an inquiry community. Following practitioner community frameworks from Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1992), our community was founded on the principles of social, co-constructed dialogue in an effort to enact change in our sites of practice as active participants in inquiry. Community members, in particular, were critical in that role by revealing new perspectives or challenging members to explore new ways of seeing and thinking. This presentation offers an example of how the process of working in an inquiry community can (un)intentionally shift the purpose of inquiry from that of enacting change to critically re-considering and developing new questions.

Theoretical Framework and Methodology:
As stated, this presentation, similar to the others in this session, is founded on inquiry as stance. In particular, the emphasized perspective of “working within inquiry communities to generate local knowledge, envision and theorize . . . practice, and to interpret and interrogate the theory and research of others” informed our community’s practice (Cochran-Smith, 2003, p. 8). Related, self-study researchers, such as Laboskey (2004), emphasize the importance of ongoing inquiry, stating “that there cannot, and indeed should not be any singular or final answers to . . . questions. They must be asked with regularity” (p. 834). This theoretical emphasis is manifested in the self-study methodology, as described in the overall session summary and applicable for all four papers.

Data Sources:
To investigate the evolution of questions, a variety of qualitative and narrative data sources were collected. They included inquiry community meeting notes, written blog posts shared amongst the group documenting inquiry questions, as well as reflections and journal entries. These data sources are viewed as being in dialogue with one another, illustrating the evolution of inquiry questions as informed by new perspectives gleaned from community conversations that both encouraged and challenged individual and collective inquiry processes.

Conclusions:
Investigating the evolution of questions unearthed that inquiry questions did, indeed, morph and change over the course of the inquiry community process. Questions were not only refined, but also shifted dramatically, uncovering deeper or more complex questions that had to be posed to get at the heart of particular problems of practice. This process, which may be criticized for not working to actively answer initial questions, illustrates the beautifully complex nature of education questions which require ample time for reflection, dialogue, and challenge to adequately consider the true question at hand when considering problems of practice.

Authors

• Elizabeth Cox, Boston College

• Michael T. O'Connor, Boston College