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Teacher groups were encouraged to:
• Focus on problems of practice directly tied to their instructional goals;
• Collect student work samples relative to a common teaching action; and
• Analyze these in a way that uncovered patterns in student understanding, not just levels of performance.
Examples of inquiry questions included:
• How can we encourage high-quality questioning by students?
• How we can help students reflect on their work in order to improve it?
• How can we improve students’ written communication skills in mathematics and science?
• How do we use classroom based learning in science and math to teach students to evaluate and apply their knowledge to different situations?
• Will a standard format for writing a science lab report conclusion improve the quality of students’ reports?
• How can the use of rich mathematics tasks, worked in cooperative groups, increase student engagement and problem solving ability?
• Will the deliberate and systematic use of learning objectives to design and implement formative assessments improve student achievement?
• How can we anticipate students’ problems and support them as we (students and teachers) learn a new mathematics curriculum?
• How can we support students’ understanding and use of scientific process vocabulary?
Horn, I.S. & Little, J.W. (2010, March). Attending to problems of practice: Routines and resources for professional learning in teachers’ workplace interactions. American Educational Research Journal, 47(1), 181-217.
Kazemi, E. & Franke, M.L. (2004, September). Teacher learning in mathematics: Using student work to promote collective inquiry. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 7(3), 203-235.
National Staff Development Council. (2009). Building a case for collaborative professional learning. Midvale, UT: School Improvement Network.
Nelson, T.H., Slavit, D., Perkins, M., & Hathorn, T. (2008). A culture of collaborative inquiry: Learning to develop and support professional learning communities. Teachers College Record, 110(6), 1269-1303.
Slavit, D. & Nelson, T.H. (2010, June). Collaborative teacher inquiry as a tool for building theory on the development and use of rich mathematical tasks. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 13(3), 201-221.
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