Teachers Leading Educational Reform Through Inquiry Networks

• In Event: 18.046 - Teachers Leading Education Reform: The Power and Potential of Professional Learning Communities

Abstract

Purpose

For the past two decades we have been facilitating voluntary networks of schools in British Columbia and the Yukon, Canada. Over this time, we have seen the significant impact that teacher leaders can have when they are linked, supported and engaged in inquiry learning communities that use a common framework for disciplined inquiry.

Perspectives and Data Sources

Much of the early work on professional learning communities (PLCs) focused on the school as the unit of change. The impetus in the early days of professional learning communities was to get PLC’s flourishing in schools and then to look for ways to connect across schools. The approach we took in BC was to find, support and connect educators who sometimes were working in cultures that were not supportive of collaboration.

In the forthcoming Innovative Learning Environment Handbook, (OECD publications) David Istance argues that learning leadership is critical for reform and innovation. He further argues that the impetus for innovation comes neither exclusively from top down mandates nor from bottom up pressure. Rather, he suggests that innovation often occurs through rich connections in the meso level:

[Learning leadership] is exercised through strong visions and corresponding strategies intensely focused on learning. It calls for shared, collaborative activity, not relying only on the principal, in which learners themselves are privileged players. Such leadership may well extend beyond the school in contemporary learning environments embedded in a rich web of networks and partnerships. (Draft, March 2016: p, 29)


Findings

In this paper, we outline evidence about the ways in which teacher leadership embedded in rich webs of inquiry learning networks in British Columbia is contributing to system change. We also offer perspectives about sustaining and supporting learning communities both within and across schools. This paper is organized in five sections:
1. The links and distinctions between professional learning communities and inquiry learning networks
2. The key conceptual foundations for the BC inquiry learning networks
3. The importance of a disciplined approach
4. The evidence of impact
5. Sustaining teacher led reform through inquiry networks - considerations for other jurisdictions

Significance

It is proposed that teachers involved in inquiry learning networks in British Columbia and the Yukon are making a significant contribution to system reform. By finding the emerging practices, linking the influencers, continuously infusing new knowledge, developing new leaders at all levels of the system and persisting over time, these inquiry networks are helping to change the learning lives of young people in our province. We are convinced that inquiry networks create and cultivate spaces for professional curiosity and collaboration. As teachers participate in networks of disciplined, collaborative inquiry, they become the leaders of change.


References


Dumont, H., Istance, D. & Benavides, F (eds) (2010). The Nature of Learning: Using Research to Inspire Practice. Paris: OECD.

Halbert, J. & Kaser, L. (2013). Spirals of Inquiry for Equity and Quality.
Vancouver, BC: BCPVPA Press.

Istance, D. (in press 2016). Innovative Learning Environments Handbook. Paris: OEDD publications

Authors

• Linda Kaser, Networks of Inquiry and Innovation

• Judy Lindsay Halbert, The University of British Columbia