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The pedagogy of facilitation: teacherinquiry as professional development ina Florida elementary schoolPhilip Poekert aa University of Florida, Lastinger Center for Learning , Miami, FL,USAPublished online: 11 May 2010.

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Professional Development in EducationVol. 37, No. 1, February 2011, 19–38

ISSN 1941-5257 print/ISSN 1941-5265 online© 2011 International Professional Development Association (IPDA)DOI: 10.1080/19415251003737309http://www.informaworld.com

The pedagogy of facilitation: teacher inquiry as professional development in a Florida elementary school

Philip Poekert*

University of Florida, Lastinger Center for Learning, Miami, FL, USATaylor and FrancisRJIE_A_474252.sgm(Received 4 November 2009; final version received 28 February 2010)10.1080/19415251003737309Journal of In-Service Education1367-4587 (print)/1747-5082 (online)Original Article2010Taylor & Francis0000000002010PhilipPoekertpoekert@coe.ufl.edu

Teacher inquiry is a powerful professional development method for teachers todirect their own learning and focus on the particular needs of their ownclassroom. Yet, the study of effective professional development must broaden itsfocus beyond what skills and content teachers must acquire to consider how tobest facilitate teachers’ learning and empower them as professionals. Thisqualitative study examines the pedagogy of facilitation by following theexperiences of six first-time teacher inquirers and the veteran facilitator thatguided them through the inquiry process. The results shed light on the variousstages of participants’ experiences and the facilitation methods that provedeffective at each stage.

Keywords: teacher inquiry; action research; professional development; in-servicetraining; facilitation

Introduction1

Take a minute, ask yourself a question, and then solve it. And a lot of times I get so busywith the paperwork and the discipline and the lesson plans and cleaning the room andteaching and all the other stuff that one more thing is a lot to self-motivate. And I thinkthe inquiry project, it was like Weight Watchers [a weight loss support group]. It wasthat support group there going, ‘No, take the time. Do it.’ You know, that’s, that’s all Ineeded. (Gabby, kindergarten teacher)

A general consensus is growing in regard to the benefits of inquiry-basedprofessional development that empowers teachers to direct their own learning. Thisbrand of professional development centers on problem-solving and encouragesteachers to analyze the particular dilemmas within their classroom, engage profes-sional literature, experiment with new strategies and generate professionalknowledge as a result of such experimentation (Cochran-Smith and Lytle 2009). Asteacher educators embrace this approach and reject prescriptive models of profes-sional development, their attention must broaden beyond what skills and content totransfer to teachers and consider how to facilitate teachers who are learning contentfor themselves. It is precisely the pedagogy of facilitation with which this paperconcerns itself. The results of this study, which followed the experiences of sixfirst-time teacher inquirers as they completed a year-long inquiry process throughthe Lastinger Teacher Fellows Program, shed light on effective methods of inquiryfacilitation.

*Email: poekert@coe.ufl.edu

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Teacher inquiry and teacher learning

Teacher inquiry can be defined as teachers’ systematic and intentional reflection ontheir own practice (Cochran-Smith and Lytle 2009; Dana and Yendol-Hoppey 2009).Teacher inquiry is grounded in the creation of ‘knowledge of practice’, which, ‘isgenerated when teachers treat their own classrooms and schools as sites for intentionalinvestigation at the same time that they treat the knowledge and theory produced byothers as generative material for interrogation and interpretation’ (Cochran-Smith andLytle 1999, p. 272). Participation in teacher inquiry promotes the development of aninquiry stance to knowledge generated both inside and outside the classroom amongall members of the school community. Maintaining an inquiry stance allows teachersto assess the ‘contextual validity of practice’ (Hollins 2006) of recommendedstrategies within the idiosyncrasies of their own classrooms and schools. In short,teacher inquiry allows teachers to generate new knowledge because it, ‘focuses on theconcerns of teachers (not outside researchers) and engages teachers in the design, datacollection, and interpretation of data’ (Dana and Yendol-Hoppey 2009, p. 4).

An overview of the literature on teacher inquiry demonstrates that it is generallyconducted in one of three ways: lesson study (for example, Crockett 2002); collegialstudy groups (for example, King 2002); and teacher research (for example, Snow-Gerono 2005). This study focuses on teacher research. The process of conductingteacher research as teacher inquiry is described thoroughly by Dana and Yendol-Hoppey (2009). In essence, it is a process in which teachers problematize their ownpractice. Teachers begin with a wondering about their classroom practice, craft aresearch question from this wondering, collect relevant data on that question, analyzethe data in reference to pertinent research literature, and take action in the classroombased on their findings. There is also an expectation that teacher inquirers will sharetheir findings with other teachers in some public forum (e.g. publication and/orconference). To this end, Smeets and Ponte (2009) postulate that such reflectiveinquiry grounded in classroom data is a form of teacher leadership.

The literature suggests that achieving changes in instructional practice and studentachievement requires professional development that is collaborative (Cordingley et al.2005), coherent (Desimone et al. 2002), based on content matter (Garet et al. 2001),focused on instructional practice (Borko 2004), and sustained over time (Yoon et al.2007). Webster-Wright (2009) further argues that professional development mustmove toward supporting authentic professional learning rather than deliveringparticular content. Thus, teacher inquiry is a promising method to promote effectiveteacher development. Teacher inquiry contributes to the generation of teacher knowl-edge by promoting the development of a culture of inquiry at the sites where it isutilized. A culture of inquiry is marked by a professional orientation toward commu-nity and collaboration and a shift toward the appreciation for uncertainty and dialogue(Snow-Gerono 2005). These conditions promote the risk-taking and experimentationwith teaching strategies that are essential to new teacher learning (Hirsh and Killion2009). Moreover, by empowering teachers with the ability to direct their own learn-ing, teacher inquiry can provide for a coherent and sustained examination of contentmatter and instructional practice in partnership with colleagues.

Previous research has pointed to the importance of facilitation to successfullynavigating the inquiry process (Nelson and Slavit 2007). Yet, current research oninquiry facilitation has only focused on the dilemmas faced by facilitators, such as the

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practical concerns about time and resources or the issues of power involved in sharedteacher leadership (for example, Hammerman 1997; Drennon and Cervero 2002).Little research examines the pedagogy of facilitation. The question then becomes:how can facilitators successfully encourage and support teachers through the processof teacher inquiry? The present study seeks to inform this gap in the research.

Study context and participants

Context

The Lastinger Center for Learning is an endowed center at the University of Floridawhose work focuses on developing partnerships with school districts in five countiesacross the state to provide high-quality, research-based, and job-embedded profes-sional development for schools with high-poverty, high-minority student populations.In Alachua County where the university is located, teachers at partner schools mayparticipate in the Teacher Fellows Program. The Teacher Fellows Program givesteachers the opportunity to align a state-mandated Professional Development Planwith a year-long teacher inquiry project. A professor-in-residence facilitates theirjourney through the inquiry process from conceptualization to publication throughmonthly meetings with the teacher participants at each school. The project culminatesin a brief write-up of their findings and a presentation at the annual Teaching, Inquiry,and Innovation Showcase held each April. For participation in the afterschool supportmeetings, the completion of the inquiry project and the presentation of their work,Teacher Fellows receive US$500 in compensation from the Lastinger Center.

All six of the teachers participating in this study worked at Marston Elementary onthe east side of Gainesville, which is a predominantly African-American community.2

The school served a population that is 88% minority, and 88.9% of the school’schildren receive free or reduced-price school lunches (Florida Schools IndicatorReport 2005/06), an indicator of poverty. According to the Florida School Gradesinitiative, which rates schools according to the ability to meet goals for AdequateYearly Progress, Marston received either a C, D, or F each of the four years prior tothe study, with the F grade being the most recent grade at the time of the study in the2006/07 school year (School Accountability Report 2008). Examples of the scores onthe state’s major assessment – the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test – that ledto such school grades are as follows:

● 88% of students met high standards in writing;● 35% of students met high standards in reading; and● 41% of students met high standards in math (School Accountability Report

2008).

Participants

There were 38 teachers working at Marston Elementary, and overall they had anaverage of 16.9 years of experience (Florida Schools Indicator Report 2005/06). Likeother teachers in Florida, these educators were under heavy pressure to improve theirstudents’ scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. The entire schoolfaculty was introduced to the Teacher Fellows program during a faculty meeting, and

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an invitation was extended for all to participate. Six teachers chose to complete theLastinger Teacher Fellows Program at Marston, and all of them participated in thisstudy. Three of the teachers were part of the kindergarten teaching team. Gabby andFran were novice teachers, with less than three years of experience, while the thirdkindergarten teacher, Sylvia, had been teaching for 25 years. Fran was actually a K/1Exceptional Student Education teacher, although her classroom was located amongstthe other kindergarten teachers, and she worked most closely with them. The otherthree participants were first-grade teachers. The situation was similar in the first-gradeteaching team since Willa and Nailah were novice first-grade teachers working along-side Isabella, a veteran of 30 years’ experience.

The facilitator, Rosanna, was a veteran university faculty member of 28 years’experience and had been facilitating teacher research since it was incorporated into theuniversity’s teacher preparation program in 1983. The researcher had access to eachof the participants as the co-facilitator of the Teacher Fellows Program at MarstonElementary, under the direction of the facilitator.

Methodology

The design and analysis of this study employ a constructivist perspective on teacherlearning. Constructivist theory conceptualizes learning as the process by which theindividual mind interprets the natural and social objects with which it interacts in theworld (Crotty 2004). Individuals learn by constructing new ideas or concepts based ontheir current or past knowledge. The learner relies on cognitive structures to givemeaning to and organize information from new experiences. In turn, the cognitivestructures can be transformed by those new experiences as the individual learns. As aresult, constructivists hold the ‘view that what we take to be objective knowledge andtruth is the result of perspective’ (Schwandt 1994, p. 125). Constructivism alsopromotes facilitator-supported learning that is directed by the learner. For this reason,the constructivist perspective on teacher learning was useful not only to examine theindividual experiences and learning of each teacher inquirer, but also to suit theresearch focus centered on understanding the means by which the facilitatorscaffolded the collective experience and learning of the inquiry group.

Data collection

Two data sources were chosen to examine the supports provided to the group as wellas individual participants’ learning throughout their first journey through the inquiryprocess. Individual interviews were conducted to allow participants the opportunity tofreely express their thoughts and feelings. Individual interviews were conductedtwice with each of the participating teachers, while the facilitator was interviewedonce. The facilitator was interviewed to understand her perspective on the supportsprovided throughout the inquiry process. The first teacher interview was conductedone month prior to teachers’ presentations at the Teaching, Innovation, and InquiryShowcase while teachers were still in the midst of collecting and analyzing data. Thesecond interview came after the Inquiry Showcase. The interviews gave insight intoteachers’ learning while they were still drawing conclusions and after the formaliza-tion of their learning through publication and presentation. The interviews were openended, allowing for probing and follow-up questions (Berg 2004). Interviews lasted

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from 25 to 40 minutes each, and each of the interviews was recorded and transcribedverbatim.

In an attempt to validate the results of the interviews, numerous artifacts producedthroughout teachers’ engagement in the inquiry process were also collected from theteacher and the facilitator. These artifacts served to confirm or disconfirm the resultsof the individual interviews. These materials included:

● Introductory Presentation on Fellows Program: a PowerPoint presentation bythe facilitator to all Marston faculty members to introduce them to the LastingerTeacher Fellows program;

● Facilitation Meeting Materials: meeting agendas and handouts created by thefacilitator for participating teachers;

● Participant Information Sheets: basic information and interest sheets completedby the teachers at the start of the inquiry process;

● Individual Monthly Action Plans: a template created by the National SchoolReform Faculty3 that helped the teachers create a preliminary plan for theirinquiry;

● Inquiry Check-In Sheets: information on the basic outline of each teacher’sinquiry project at a facilitation meeting conducted in the middle of the process;

● Inquiry Presentation Abstracts: a project summary created by each teacher forthe Inquiry Showcase program;

● Presentation Materials: any materials (presentations or handouts) created by theparticipating teachers for the Inquiry Showcase; and

● Inquiry Write-ups: a brief, two-page document detailing the inquiry project,including its purpose, methods, and findings.

Artifacts were organized according to the participant that produced each documentand then arranged chronologically. This organizational scheme allowed for analysis ofeach individual’s learning and for comparative analysis of everyone’s learning atvarious points throughout the inquiry process.

Data analysis

An inductive analysis of the data was driven by two guiding questions: What was theexperience of first-time teacher inquirers going through the Lastinger TeacherFellows Program? and: How was teachers’ learning scaffolded by the facilitatorthroughout the inquiry process? Data from interviews and artifacts were coded usingconstant comparative analysis to yield a grounded theory (Charmaz 2006) of theexperience of teacher participants and the supports that facilitated their progressthrough the inquiry cycle.

The analysis proceeded in two phases. In the first phase, the first round of inter-views and related artifacts were open coded in gerunds to begin to conceptualize thedata. Typical codes that arose during the first round of analysis included ‘identifying’,‘applying’, ‘tweaking’, and ‘contrasting’. Memos were written throughout the analy-sis process to identify themes across the participants and create categories. Instancesof each code were compared using a coding worksheet that listed extracted datasegments related to that code. The codes were refined through successive iterations ofopen coding. The categorization of codes yielded a taxonomy that conceptualized

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teacher participants’ journey through the inquiry process as a series of six stages. Eachcategory within the overall taxonomy represented a stage in the overall process andwas named to describe teachers’ activities within that stage. This process of analysisyielded a narrative that described the general experience of the collective group, whichderived from a constructivist examination of each individual participant’s experience.Furthermore, codes that described the actions of the facilitator, such as ‘scaffolding’and ‘pushing’, were categorized according to the stages of the inquiry process to givea view of what supports were helpful to participants at each of the stages.

In the second phase of data analysis, categories developed during the first phase ofanalysis were subjected to further inquiry in the collection of the second round ofinterviews. The analysis allowed the researcher to empirically test the emergent cate-gories. This process allowed for theoretical sampling to obtain further data to helpdefine categories more completely (Charmaz 2006). For example, after the category‘Getting external support’ emerged, the protocol for the second round of interviewswas modified slightly to focus more specifically on questions around the pedagogy offacilitation. The first interview protocol focused more intently on participants’ expe-riences, asking questions such as: ‘Briefly describe your journey through the inquiryprocess thus far’. However, the second interview focused on facilitation, includingquestions such as: ‘Who or what helped you to make sense of the inquiry process?’

Limitations

This study did not involve direct observation of teacher practice in the classroom andtherefore cannot substantiate claims of changes in teacher practice beyond the reportsof teacher participants. Nor does this study provide evidence of the impact of teachers’innovations on student achievement. Nevertheless, it does provide a comprehensiveaccount of teachers’ experiences within the inquiry process and the facilitation strate-gies that guided them, which are shared here.

Findings

Data analysis around the first guiding question regarding participants’ experiencesyielded a grounded theory of teacher inquirers’ collective experience of the inquiryprocess that is comprised of six stages: Introducing, Wondering, Experimenting, Eval-uating, Learning, and Sharing (see Figure 1). At each of the stages, teachers wereengaging in a variety of activities, such as ‘targeting’ subgroups of students in theWondering stage or ‘troubleshooting’ difficulties at the Evaluating stage. Overall,teachers’ progression through the process was not perfectly linear from one stage tothe next. Rather, the process was iterative, with teachers looping through the stages ofExperimenting, Evaluating and Learning before moving into the final Sharing stage.In addition, after sharing their results and collaborating with colleagues, teachers oftencycled back to the Wondering stage where they wanted to begin the inquiry processagain with a new question. For this reason, the process is depicted as two cycles, onewithin the other. The overall cycle excludes the preliminary Introducing stage becauseit reflected the experience of first-time inquirers who were unfamiliar with theprocess. Each of these stages will be described in more detail below.Figure 1. Teachers’ collective experience.Examining the second guiding question regarding inquiry facilitation demon-strated that the inquiry facilitator had to accommodate the needs of teacher inquirers

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throughout the process. In addition to providing an overall structure by maintainingmonthly meetings and employing an individual coaching style, the inquiry facilitatorutilized different strategies to move teacher inquirers through the process effectively.Chiefly, the pedagogy of facilitation involved maintaining an appropriate balancebetween the supports that teachers wanted and the challenges that they needed atvarious parts of their journey. Within this study, the code ‘scaffolding’ was used tosignify those facilitator actions that provided a support to first-time teacher inquirersas they undertook an often-uncomfortable learning process. In addition, the code‘pushing’ was used to represent those facilitator actions that gently nudged a partici-pant forward in an attempt to maximize her learning from the experience.

The following theorization of the six stages of the inquiry process builds on ageneralized account of teachers’ experiences. Interview and artifact data are used toprovide examples and describe teacher and facilitator activities at each stage of theprocess. Moreover, the conceptualization includes teachers’ and the facilitator’sperceptions of the scaffolding and pushing that are effective in maximizing teacherinquirers’ learning at each stage. Thus, the pedagogy of facilitation articulated hereemerged from the data analysis as the appropriate responses to participants’ generalexperience within each of the six stages of the inquiry process.

Introducing stage

Within the Introducing stage of the inquiry process, first-time teacher inquirers arebecoming acquainted with teacher inquiry. At this point, teachers feel intimidated bywhat the process will look like. Four of the six teacher participants made reference tothese feelings of initial anxiety. The veteran first-grade teacher, Isabella, explained thefeeling: ‘When a person starts a new experience, it can be a little intimidating and alittle scary because it is the unknown, and the unknown is always scary’. Further, fiveof the teachers reported feeling confused as they began. The K/1 special education

Figure 1. Teachers’ collective experience.

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teacher, Fran, questioned herself as she began the process: ‘Okay, what do I do now?Am I doing everything I am supposed to be doing?’ As Isabella remarked, however,these feelings surface from teachers’ unfamiliarity with the inquiry process and can beeasily allayed as teachers get more deeply involved. After her initial confusion, Franexplained that, ‘once I did it, I kind of know what the monster is, and so it’s no longerscary. I don’t have the fear of the unknown anymore’. Thus, just by beginning the inquiryprocess through researching alternative strategies to implement in one’s classroom orcollecting baseline data, teachers’ preliminary fears and concerns were often eased.

Facilitation at the Introducing stage

Of course, the facilitator has a large role in bringing teachers into the fold at theIntroducing stage. The facilitator here is responsible for previewing the inquiryprocess overall and providing a road map to participants to ease their feelings of intim-idation and confusion. Fran pointed out that it was of essential importance that ‘theprocess was laid out well’. The veteran inquiry facilitator, Rosanna, used a couple ofmethods to help teachers feel more comfortable and to understand where their voyagethrough inquiry might take them. First, she used the term teacher inquiry rather thanaction research. Having facilitated action research in the past, Rosanna explained:‘The word, inquiry, is an easier sell with teachers because the research word feelsscary, whereas inquiry doesn’t feel so scary’.

Second, numerous documents were presented to teacher inquirers to provide anoverview of the inquiry process and segue the teachers to initial action. The first docu-ment provided to teacher inquirers was a PowerPoint presentation that provided anoverview of the inquiry process as a whole, a description of the Teacher FellowsProgram, and a comparison of the inquiry process to the more familiar, state-mandatedProfessional Development Plan process. The presentation also provided some exam-ples of the kinds of questions, or ‘wonderings’ that teachers might engage throughinquiry. This PowerPoint was shown to the entire faculty at Marston Elementary toencourage faculty members to participate in the program.

Two additional documents were given to interested teachers at a follow-upmeeting roughly one month after the initial introductory overview. The first was aTeacher Inquiry Timeline that outlined the general progression of each of the activitiesin the Teacher Fellows Program. These activities included individual and group meet-ings with the facilitator to clarify implementation and assessment, a data analysismeeting, and the culminating Inquiry Showcase. The other document given to teachersat this follow-up meeting asked them to get started in thinking about their inquiry. Theform, which was completed before teachers left the meeting, asked for teachers’contact information (including when and how to best get in touch with them) as wellas any potential collaborative partners and questions, or wonderings, that they mightaddress. Together, these three documents (the PowerPoint, the timeline and theGetting Started sheet) provided crucial scaffolding to teachers at the Introducingstage. To allay teachers’ initial anxiety, it is essential that the facilitator provideteachers with a clear sense of how the process will unfold and what is expected.Furthermore, it is also essential to get teachers engaged in thinking about their projectimmediately to move them directly into action, which eases their early trepidation.Clearly, the balance between scaffolding and pushing leans toward supportivescaffolding at this stage in the process.

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Wondering stage

The Wondering stage of the inquiry process marks the start of teachers’ conceptualwork about their inquiry project. Codes that marked teachers’ activities at this stagewere ‘identifying’, ‘targeting’ and ‘helping’. Teachers begin to identify particulardilemmas or issues that they want to engage. They often target specific subgroups ofchildren, and they strategize how to help improve the problem. In their interviews,each of the teachers referenced a particular problem or issue that they addressedthrough their inquiry. For example, one of the novice teachers, Willa, noted in herfirst-grade class that:

A lot of the parents don’t place a high priority on reading every night with their kids ortaking time to let them see them reading a book or a magazine, and it’s kind of heart-breaking because well, the kids come in and they’re like, ‘Well Mom and Dad don’t doit, and we can’t do it’.

Willa felt that she needed to help by providing encouragement to these students,especially struggling readers, in order to improve their interest and ability in reading.Thus, Willa paired up with one of the kindergarten teachers, Gabby, and they beganto wonder: ‘what would happen pairing a first grade student with a kindergartener, ifit would motivate our low-achieving kindergartners and our low-achieving first grad-ers … to become better readers’. She hypothesized that the buddy program would helpbecause, ‘the first grader will get encouragement from the kindergartener, and thekindergartener will get encouragement from the first grader’. Each of the other fiveteachers also described how they focused on a particular issue within their classroomand speculated on potential strategies to address the problem. The Wondering stagesignifies the transition from becoming acquainted with the inquiry process to actuallyproblematizing practice.

Facilitation at the Wondering stage

Not one teacher identified a single action by the facilitator at this stage in the inquiryprocess that helped support their learning. Yet, the facilitator, Rosanna, saw this as themost crucial stage of the whole process in terms of facilitation. Rosanna noted: ‘It’sthat initial question that can be really challenging. If the initial question is too narrow,it really limits what they learn’. Because of the importance of this initial question,Rosanna explained that she definitely pushed teachers during this stage of the process.When asked what she meant by ‘pushing’ teachers, she said:

I might ask them if that’s an important question. If you get the answer to that question,what good will happen? What’s going to happen with the kid? What’s going to be betterfor the kid if you get there? So I try to push them to sort of back up to a slightly broaderquestion, which gives them more latitude in terms of strategies.

The broader the initial question, the more range teachers have in terms of thestrategies that they can apply and the learning that might result from their innovations.Clearly, Rosanna tried to nudge teachers to reflect carefully on the issue they plannedto address. However, she realized that, ‘it’s a delicate balance. If you push too hard, itbecomes not their question any more’. Nevertheless, it is clear that a facilitator mustlean toward pushing rather than scaffolding teachers at this stage to ensure they havegreater possibilities for learning.

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Experimenting stage

After reflecting on their practice and honing their focus, teachers begin the morepractical work of inquiry in the Experimenting stage. Teacher actions during this stagewere described using the codes ‘accessing’, ‘applying’ and ‘extending’. In otherwords, teachers access a wide variety of resources to generate new ideas for address-ing their classroom dilemmas. They then apply those ideas and strategies within theirclassrooms. All six of the teachers described accessing some outside resources andthen applying new strategies in their classrooms. In some situations, teachers’ strate-gies extend beyond the classroom through parent contacts or after school tutorials onand off the school campus. Three of the six teachers engaged in an inquiry thatextended beyond the classroom in some way.

Nailah, a first-year, first-grade teacher, had been working with a local programcalled Home Improvement for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY). Herparticipation in the program served as an external resource that gave her access toideas and materials that she incorporated into her inquiry. Nailah explained: ‘Mywhole inquiry idea was based off another program I was working with called theHIPPY program; that’s where I got a lot of my ideas from’. The HIPPY program hadNailah:

… meeting with a lot of [her] students in their homes … because they had youngersiblings, and [she] was servicing these younger siblings, giving them materials to workwith, giving the parents materials to work with their three and four year old kids at home.

Thus, Nailah took the basic premise of the HIPPY program of ‘providing assistancewith the parents to work with their children at home’ and implemented it with herstudents in and out of the classroom. She made home visits, she met students and theirparents at a local library, and she invited parents into the classroom to observe howshe modeled reading strategies to students. She gave resources to students to takehome and work on with their parents. At the library, she directed them to differentwebsites so parents without home computers could get materials for their childrenonline. She hoped that these strategies would extend the students’ learning beyond theclassroom and let, ‘the parents know that this is … going to be an effort on my part aswell as her part … to work together to help the child, the student increase their readingscores’. Each of the other teachers also described similar stories in which theyaccessed resources internal and external to the school and began innovating with newstrategies to resolve the issue they identified.

Facilitation at the Experimenting stage

A blend of monthly group facilitation meetings and individual sessions with each ofthe teachers helps to promote teacher learning at this stage. As Gabby explained, themonthly meetings pushed everyone participating in the Teacher Fellows Program tobegin implementation because they involved, ‘knowing that somebody was going tocheck on me and make sure that it was coming along and say, “No, that’s not reallysomething you can slack off on”’. In addition to promoting accountability, themonthly meetings also serve as a support to participants. Sylvia, Fran and Gabby eachmade reference to the wealth of ideas they received by working with their colleaguesduring the monthly facilitation meetings. Sylvia noted: ‘Some of my very best input

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came from other people’. In describing the collaboration with other teachers in suchmeetings, Fran went so far as to say, ‘I feel like that’s where I learn most of what Iuse when I teach’.

In addition to the monthly group facilitation meetings, however, individual coach-ing plays a large role in facilitating the Experimenting stage. While some teachersrelied on the ideas generated within those meetings, three of the teachers referencedresources the facilitator provided that proved useful to them. Rosanna, the facilitator,provided Sylvia with a checklist of strategies for working with attention-deficitdisorder (ADD) and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) children as wellas directing her to a website for additional resources. For Nailah, Rosanna simply gaveher ‘some tips as to how to approach the parents’. And Fran benefited from a numberof ‘really good articles’ about dealing with extreme behaviors.

Within the Experimenting stage, facilitation requires a balance between pushingparticipants to meet expectations amid the myriad responsibilities they have as teach-ers and supporting them with resources and suggestions that promote innovation.Gabby explained that the monthly meetings were a way to be ‘held accountable’. Onthe other hand, Nailah explained that the individual coaching strategy allowed eachteacher, ‘to come in and sit and talk and discuss our problems, and [Rosanna’s] givenus solutions and things to help us with our projects’, which proved to be a crucialsupport at this stage of the process.

Evaluating stage

After beginning to implement their innovations, teachers move into the Evaluatingstage in which they systematically monitor the effectiveness of their new strategies inachieving their desired outcomes. At this stage, teachers engage in a variety of activ-ities that were described using the codes ‘recording’, ‘impacting’, ‘snagging’, ‘trou-bleshooting’ and ‘adjusting’. Teachers record evidence of the effectiveness of theirinterventions. Teachers notice an observable impact of their efforts or encounterobstacles that snag their progress. When they encounter obstacles at this stage, theytroubleshoot the difficulties they encounter either individually or collaboratively atmonthly meetings. To overcome obstacles, participants then adjust their project insome way in order to continue the process. All six teachers described the differentways in which they recorded their data, and each teacher remarked on seeing someimpact of their interventions. All of the teachers, with the exception of Fran, describedsome obstacle they encountered during the process, which they overcame or workedaround by troubleshooting the difficulty and adjusting their project appropriately.

Sylvia, the veteran kindergarten teacher, encountered a snag right from the start ofher project. In attempting to improve the on-task behavior of her ADD/ADHD chil-dren, she struggled with how to effectively record data to compile some baseline datato monitor the interventions she planned to implement. She explained:

The first thing we had talked about was using the timer, and I discovered that we didn’tmake three seconds on any given time, and if I was going to have to keep timing it everythree seconds trying to get to four or five seconds, that was just impossible.

At this point, an individual check-in with the facilitator prompted Sylvia to invite theresearcher, serving as the co-facilitator, to come in and monitor a reading lesson. From

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the observation notes, Sylvia decided on a couple of adjustments. First, she changedher method of collecting data. She kept a ‘behavioral list’ everyday to monitorstudents’ behavior. Sylvia had kept such behavior lists since the beginning of the year.Looking back over lists from the start of the year allowed her to establish a strongbaseline of the number of issues she had with each student and monitor whether herinterventions were effective in decreasing the number of behavior incidents encoun-tered with each child. Second, Sylvia also decided to implement her first interventionto improve on-task behavior. Because the observation notes provided feedback thatthe ADD/ADHD students Sylvia was targeting were sitting outside her general line ofsight during her reading lesson, Sylvia decided to rearrange the seating. Sylvia noticedthat the impact of the seating change ‘made a difference in the overall tone of thegroup’, and she continued to record data to evaluate her success. Looking back on theproject, Sylvia realized that she went through several iterations of the Experimenting,Evaluating and Learning loop stage as she remarked:

When I accomplished my first thing, which was changing the seating, I saw a change,but I didn’t see as much change as I had hoped for, so now I wanted to take it a stepfurther. So, I actually had three different ways that I tried to accomplish solving theproblem.

Nevertheless, the process Sylvia underwent in this first iteration is demonstrativeof the way in which teachers would record data, notice the impact of interventions,encounter difficulties, troubleshoot and tweak their projects in order to maximize theireffectiveness and learning.

Facilitation at the Evaluating stage

The Evaluating stage is clearly where teacher inquirers feel the bulk of the facilitator’ssupport. In describing the actions of the facilitator, teachers remarked on how Rosannahelped them to record data effectively and consistently, how the monthly meetingsprovided opportunities to troubleshoot their difficulties, and how Rosanna providedmuch needed encouragement and wisdom when teachers’ efforts encounteredsignificant obstacles. First, Rosanna acknowledged that she pushed a focus on studentlearning; however, she helped free teachers from thinking of student learning only interms of quantitative representations of student engagement and achievement. Sheallowed teachers to report qualitative data such as observations or journals. Willaremarked: ‘One of the ways [Rosanna] helped me understand is collecting data. Datadoesn’t necessarily have to be pie graphs or things; it could just be anecdotal, takingnotes and sharing with people’.

In addition, the facilitator provided the teachers with useful handouts to help themthink about how to monitor the effectiveness of their innovations. She gave them anIndividual Monthly Action Plan Form. This form asks teachers to not only conceptu-alize what dilemma they are targeting within their inquiry, but also what evidence theywill be able to provide of their progress. Further, Rosanna provided the teachers witha brief excerpt regarding organizing and analyzing data. Nailah explained, ‘the infor-mation we received from [Rosanna], that helped us … with the format, the way every-thing was laid out as far as the data we need to collect, and how to organize it’. Lastlyin regard to data, the seeming formality of the Teacher Fellows Program and theinquiry project helped to remind teachers to collect data consistently. As Fran

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explained: ‘Otherwise I may not have kept up the data quite as stringently as I did,knowing that I had to keep data for the project’.

Most importantly, facilitation at the Evaluation stage involves offering teacherssupport when they encounter a variety of obstacles. Rosanna appeared to be so goodat providing this support that Gabby commented: ‘She’s really great at taking anegative and turning it into a positive’. Willa explained: ‘She is kind of there to guideus as teachers when we run into a wall’. Gabby and Willa encountered a significantobstacle when their principal told them that their collaborative inquiry project thatpaired first-graders and kindergarteners as reading buddies would have to be stoppedafter four months of implementation. The time allotted to the reading buddies wasinterfering with the reading block, which was mandated at Marston since it is a TitleI school, which receives federal funding. Gabby and Willa approached Rosanna withthe news, and Willa described what happened: ‘[Rosanna] was very encouraging.“Don’t throw in the towel. Take what you have for this short amount or period, and… it’s long enough that you could probably pull something from there”’. Gabbyfurther explained the conversation in her interview:

We were talking to Rosanna. We were like, ‘Well what do we do now?’ And she said,‘Well, you got a great project. You got some initial data. Now take that data from thatstopping point and either try to do something new or maybe … continue taking the samedata that you were looking at’.

By continuing to take the same data through the rest of the school year, Gabby andWilla were able to compare improvements in students’ reading and interest levels thattook place with the buddy program and without the buddy program. Thus, facilitationat this stage is also a blend of supporting and pushing as teachers stumble and progress.

Learning stage

While teachers assess the impact of their applied strategies within the Evaluating stageby compiling evidence, they also make sense of those results by drawing conclusionsabout their meaning in the Learning stage. Teacher actions at this stage were codedusing the terms ‘reflecting’, ‘concluding’, ‘attributing’ and ‘justifying’. Teachersreflect on the results of their innovations and thus come to conclusions about theireffectiveness. Further, they attribute the results to the success or failure of theirstrategies, and they often point to specific evidence or data to justify those assertions.This sense-making process is ongoing while teachers are looping through theExperimenting and Evaluating stages, as they go through various iterations of theirinquiry project, innovating, assessing and learning throughout the process.

A good illustration of this sense-making process is the way that the kindergartenteacher, Gabby, described what she learned from one of her projects examining theimpact of making positive parent contacts on students’ homework completion. Gabbybegan recording her students’ homework completion on a classroom chart at the startof the year. She decided to make positive parent contacts either by telephone or face-to-face at parent pick-up to inform parents of their child’s successes. Gabby describedher reflection process as: ‘looking back at what you’ve done and really analyzing, didit work? Does it not work? Why did it work? Why did it not work? What could I dobetter?’ That analysis process led Gabby to conclude, in a specific sense: ‘I really,really have to put those phone calls in’. She justified this conclusion by referring back

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to her data: ‘I’ve got homework charts. I’ve got charts for when they turn in theirfolders … and it’s amazing. And you can really see a difference when there’s thathome contact.’ Further, she attributed this difference in homework completion to herefforts in contacting parents: ‘When I did let the parent know, especially the positives,when the kids were doing well … there really was a better response from the studentwith turning in homework’.

When asked what she learned as a result of participating in inquiry, Gabby alsospoke in a more general sense. She explained that, through collaborating with hercolleagues at monthly meetings and attending the Inquiry Showcase, she realized,‘I’m not alone, which a lot of teachers, especially new teachers, think they’re alone,that what happens in their classrooms is not happening anywhere else’. These exam-ples from Gabby are excellent examples of the specific and general learning teachersachieved as a result of inquiry.

Facilitation at the Learning stage

This stage of the inquiry process is largely an individual process by which teachersconstruct their own meaning from their experiences and the evidence that they collectthroughout the process. Thus, facilitation of teachers’ learning is little more thanestablishing the conditions for teachers to direct their own learning. Fran explainedthat the monthly meetings gave her ‘the extra reason to go through all the steps versusjust get stuck in the middle, take data and forget to look at them later’. In other words,the monthly meetings encouraged teachers to reflect on their learning throughout theprocess. At these meetings, Sylvia explained:

[Rosanna] did give some guidelines in terms of, as we were going through, some of thethings to look at and so when we sat down, we had discussions, and each of us took turnstalking about what we were finding and hearing other people, as they’re going throughthe inquiry.

Beyond providing the forum for teachers to voice their findings and hear from otherteachers, the monthly meetings at the middle of the year did little to steer teachers ina particular direction. In fact, Willa pointed out that one of the most helpful things thatRosanna did for her was to allow her to answer her own questions at times. She said:‘Instead of telling the answer, the more we talked with her [Rosanna], we would even-tually come to a conclusion about the problem. So it was nice to have her to bouncequestions off of’.

Toward the end of the inquiry process, however, the facilitator must become moreinvolved in helping teachers analyze their data and draw conclusions. Rosannaexplained that she not only provides participants with readings on data collection andanalysis, she also tries to encourage teachers to use a variety of ways of looking atdata. She said:

It really is helpful for them if they will represent their data in two or three different waysbecause it’s by trying to figure out how to graphically represent their data that they beginto look at it in different ways, and they get more information out of it.

Further, as teachers neared the Inquiry Showcase, the facilitator asked teachers tosummarize their projects in abstract form for the Showcase program. She provided

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them with a form that gave guidelines about what to include and had an example froma previous Inquiry Showcase. This abstract asked teachers to summarize their inquiryproject and learning within two to three sentences, which pushed them to formalizetheir learning.

Thus, facilitation at the learning stage involves allowing teachers the freedom andrange to experiment and take risks throughout the year-long inquiry process in addi-tion to encouraging teachers to reflect on their progress. Toward the end of the year-long process, however, the facilitator must become more active, pushing teachers toanalyze their data in various ways and formalize their learning.

Sharing stage

The Sharing stage involves teachers’ public presentations of their learning. Teachers’actions at this stage were described using the codes ‘presenting’, ‘collaborating’,‘contrasting’ and ‘projecting’. Teachers make a formal presentation of their learningby publishing an inquiry write-up and giving a brief presentation. In so doing, theycollaborate with other teachers from various school sites who may have similar dilem-mas. In describing their learning, teachers may contrast the inquiry process with otherforms of professional development, and they project into the future about what theycan do differently in their classrooms or what inquiry they might pursue in the future.Each of the six teachers said they were interested in pursuing teacher inquiry in thefuture (and they did), and some teachers had specific ideas about what their projectwould look like in the next year. For this reason, the diagram of the inquiry process(refer back to Figure 1) loops back to the Wondering stage where teachers begin theprocess anew, without the initial anxiety of when they were first introduced to it.

It is noteworthy that while teachers made comments about their fear of presentingat the Showcase at the beginning of the inquiry process, there were few descriptionsof nervousness during their actual experiences presenting or afterwards. The prepara-tion seemed to be the worst part. For example, Sylvia talked about wanting to be sureshe was ready:

We’re looking at it in terms of, we’re going to make a presentation, and we want to besure that we’re doing everything according to what’s required for the presentation so thatwe haven’t missed something that maybe would help other people or is expected withinthe presentation.

After attending the Inquiry Showcase, teachers spoke of the presentations in terms ofcollaborating with fellow inquirers to solve the problems that many teachers shared.Gabby explained that by:

… actually seeing how many other people have presented and the topics they were talk-ing about, I saw a lot of different ways, different things I could look at with my ownteaching. Some questions that they posted, like they’re asking all of this of me, how canI schedule it all in? … I’ve had that same problem, I could look at it, and I went to thatpresentation, and I brought some of that back.

Thus, the fear seemed to be overcome when teachers experienced the benefits ofsharing among a community of teacher inquirers at the Inquiry Showcase.

In addition, five of the teacher participants represented their learning bycontrasting learning through the inquiry process and learning through typical forms of

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professional development, such as the state-mandated Professional DevelopmentPlans, ‘book learning’ and faculty meetings. When talking about the monthly meet-ings required within the inquiry process, Fran explained:

Sitting in a faculty meeting or sitting in a classroom by myself working in the afternoondoesn’t do near as much for making me a better teacher or for giving me more tools touse with my kids. I can read a book all day long and it wouldn’t be half as helpful assome of the suggestions other teachers have given me.

Moreover, the inquiry was more meaningful to teachers because it was grounded intheir own dilemmas. Willa compared the inquiry with typical practice at her school:

I’m so used to people telling me, ‘Ok, this is what you’re going to do’. I actually got tothink of a question, and [conclude] ‘This is why I’m having a problem in my classroom’;instead of somebody telling me, ‘Well this is, try this, this is going to work’. I actuallygot to experiment and find out what worked and what didn’t work.

Thus, the inquiry process seemed to allow teacher participants the luxury of dictatingtheir own learning in response to the needs they felt within their own classroom, ratherthan their having mandates imposed on them from above.

The final way in which teachers shared their learning was through speculationabout what they would do differently in the future. Each of the six teachers madereference to ways they would change their teaching practice. After being pre-emptedby the need to maintain the reading block, Gabby and Willa made a case to their prin-cipal for finding time within the master schedule for the buddy reading program thefollowing year. Gabby spoke of looping up to the first grade with her kindergartenclass and having Willa move down to kindergarten so they could examine whether thenew first-grade class would maintain their enthusiasm for reading. She wondered:

If we keep it going, if that ups it even more and encourages them to read outside of classmore so that they’re getting more of the reading, more of the vocabulary, so that wemight see it in our test scores going up.

It was also evident that Gabby became savvier about the research process ingeneral when she wondered about the possibility of doing inquiry projects acrossschools sites that addressed similar problems. Clearly, through presenting, collaborat-ing, contrasting and projecting, teachers are engaged in articulating the knowledgethat results from their experiences within the inquiry process.

Facilitation at the Sharing stage

By this point in the inquiry process, the facilitator’s role is minimal. There was onlyone mention by a teacher participant of the supports that were helpful at this stage inthe process. Sylvia explained that the guidelines given by the facilitator helped inpreparing the presentation, ‘something that said that these, at the presentation, theseare the types of things that we would like you to be presenting’. The facilitator alsohelped teachers by giving them some guidance on how to prepare the Inquiry Write-up. This document helped teachers by providing them with a structure to prepare theirdocumentation with, focusing on the topic they addressed, the strategies they imple-mented, the data collection methods they used and the conclusions they reached. In

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addition, the facilitator sent out an email almost two weeks prior to the Inquiry Show-case to remind them of expectations and to help them plan for the day. The emailincluded logistics such as location, schedule, and resources available (e.g. LCDprojectors); it also included guidance on how to prepare the presentation (e.g. providehandouts, plan for 15 minutes of presentation and five minutes of questions). Beyondthese simple actions by the facilitator, however, teachers largely complete this stageon their own as they formalize their learning and collaborate with fellow teacherinquirers. The facilitator merely stands aside while teachers complete their own learn-ing processes. The following section explains the implications of these findings aboutparticipants’ experiences and the scaffolding involved in supporting them.

Implications

While numerous implications can be drawn from the results of this study, three willbe shared here to draw out key points.

Facilitators must help teachers get beyond an initial focus on the logistics of completing the inquiry in order to meaningfully reflect on their practice and learn

Examining the six participants’ experiences, it is clear that the learning of Isabella,whose project was marked by inconsistency, is much different from that of Gabby,whose two projects remained fairly steady throughout. Isabella was continually tryingsomething new. She lacked the systematic approach to innovation that distinguishesinquiry from teachers’ everyday classroom adjustments. Because Isabella was unableto maintain a consistent strategy or focus throughout the project or collect meaningfuldata, she had nothing of substance to reflect on at the end of the process. For this reason,her learning was limited to a broadened awareness of the difficulties of working in alow-income school. On the other hand, Gabby was able to maintain a consistent focusthroughout the process and collect meaningful data. She then had material that promptedreflection and led her to draw specific and general conclusions about her teaching.

The facilitator is instrumental in helping the teacher to maintain focus and coachingher to collect substantive data that will prompt reflection and change teaching practice.This notion is echoed in the literature by Dana et al. (2002) as well as Nelson and Slavit(2007), who point out the importance of helping teachers to move beyond seeingteacher inquiry as simply completing a project so they can take an inquiry stance totheir teaching and ask the kinds of questions that truly probe their practice.

Inquiry facilitation is a matter of maintaining a balance between scaffolding and pushing teachers at appropriate points to maximize their learning

It is clear from the results of this study that teachers needed different forms of facili-tation at each of the various stages of the inquiry process. While teachers need a gooddeal of support at the Introducing stage to help overcome initial anxiety, facilitatorsmust do a good deal of pushing at the Wondering stage to ensure that teachers do notdelimit their learning possibilities too narrowly. The bulk of a facilitator’s supportshould come at the Experimenting and Evaluating stages when teachers need help inlocating resources, selecting appropriate strategies, recording data and troubleshooting

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difficulties. At the Learning and Sharing stages, participants simply need guidance onhow to analyze and present their data appropriately. The facilitator can largely standout of participants’ way at the later stages of the process.

While offering teachers support by providing resources and advice comes easy tomost facilitators, the work of pushing teachers appropriately is not always a simpletask. The work of the National School Reform Faculty is useful here, specifically theliterature and resources available for Critical Friends Groups. Deborah Bambinoexplains that the work of Critical Friends Groups is: ‘critical because it challengeseducators to improve their teaching practice and to bring about the changes thatschools need … The work involves friends who share a mission, offer strong support,and nurture a community of learners’ (2002, p. 27). Through the National SchoolReform Faculty website, prospective facilitators can access literature on how to buildrelationships with teachers and resources that help to structure reflective conversationsabout teaching, such as structured conversation protocols or the Individual MonthlyAction Plan document previously mentioned.

Although these protocols and resources may be helpful to prospective facilitatorsin promoting critically reflective conversations about teacher practice and studentlearning, Wood (2007) asserts that these protocols must be a means to an end, not theend themselves. In other words, simply using a protocol does not create the conditionsfor reflective dialogue. The facilitator must use these tools effectively to scaffoldteachers’ learning by creating the proper conditions for professional critique andmaintaining the group’s focus on improving student learning. Without such conditionsand focus, DuFour (2004) reminds us that teacher collaboration can have no impacton student achievement.

Facilitating teacher inquiry as a blend of monthly meetings and individual coaching is an effective form of professional development

The results of this study suggest that, as a professional development strategy, teacherinquiry fulfills its promise of enhancing teacher learning and collaboration toward theend of improving teacher practice. The interviews and artifacts document the numer-ous specific and general conclusions teachers drew about their practice as a result oftheir inquiry. Moreover, teacher participants pointed to the numerous benefits of beingable to collaborate with their colleagues at the monthly inquiry facilitation meetingsas well as being able to receive the differentiated support of the facilitator through theindividual coaching strategy.

This style of professional development embodies the kind of participant-driven,active learning opportunities that lead to enhanced knowledge and skills as well aschanges in classroom practice that were described by Desimone, Garet and colleagues(Desimone et al. 2002; Garet et al. 2001) in their national, longitudinal survey studyof effective professional development. In addition, it represents the kind of sustainedprofessional learning opportunity that is associated with a more coherent and focusedteacher development approach, as described by Yoon et al. (2007) in their review ofresearch studies that demonstrate a positive impact on student learning. While thisstudy is far from conclusive in demonstrating the impact of teacher inquiry on teacherpractice and student learning, it demonstrates the promise of the approach, provides auseful conceptualization of teachers’ experience in the process, and suggests guide-lines for the effective facilitation of the process.

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Notes

1. A version of this paper was previously presented at the annual meeting of the AmericanEducational Research Association, 28 March 2008, New York, USA.

2. All names given to schools and teachers are pseudonyms.3. See http://www.nsrfharmony.org.

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