Teacher Inquiry Communities Focused on Difficult Topics in Curriculum and Practice: A Case Analysis

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Abstract

This paper reports a case analysis of an inquiry community of 20 educators who engaged in practitioner inquiry as professional learning for addressing the difficult topics that they teach within their curricula or otherwise encounter within their professional practices. Through an inductive thematic analysis of interviews with 12 participants, the authors identified four themes characterizing how the inquiry community supported teachers to lean into difficult topics. The community helped teachers define difficult-topics inquiry while connecting them across divergent political and professional perspectives. The community build teachers’ agency for engaging difficult topics through purposefully structured inquiry talk, and it prompted them to (re)conceptualize difficult-topics teaching as inquiry. The article demonstrates the potential of difficult-topics inquiry communities as professional learning for turbulent times.

Authors

• Logan Rutten, University of North Dakota

• Danielle Butville, Pennsylvania State University