Collaborative inquiry in teacher professional development

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Teaching and Teacher Education 28 (2012) 1206e1220

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Teaching and Teacher Education

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Collaborative inquiry in teacher professional development

Deborah L. Butler a,*, Leyton Schnellert b

a Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia, 2125 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z4b Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, EME3115-3333 University Way, Kelowna, BC, Canada, V1V 1V7

h i g h l i g h t s

< Relationships within a community of inquiry are varied and complex.< Teachers’ collaborative inquiry can be conceptualized as forms of co-regulation.< Teachers’ inquiry has the potential to foster meaningful shifts in practice.< Benefits arise from nesting practice-level inquiry within cycles of self- and co-regulated learning.< Inquiry-oriented approaches to professional development can support systemic change.

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 6 February 2012Received in revised form18 June 2012Accepted 30 July 2012

Keywords:Professional developmentInquiryCollaborationSelf-regulationCo-regulationFormative assessmentCommunity of inquiryEducational change

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a b s t r a c t

This article presents an in-depth case study of a complex community of inquiry. In this community,teachers worked collaboratively to build from situated assessments of students’ learning through readingto refine and monitor practices designed to enhance student learning in their subject-area classrooms. Inthis report, we present evidence to address three questions: (1) What did inquiry look like within thiscommunity?; (2) How was collaboration implicated in teachers’ inquiry?; and (3) How was engagementin inquiry related to meaningful shifts in teachers’ practice and learning? This research contributes byuncovering important links between teacher inquiry, collaboration, and educational change.

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Albeit from varying perspectives, multiple stakeholders call forteacher professional development as a means of fostering and/orenacting educational change (Borko, 2004; Cochran-Smith & Fries,2005; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Darling-Hammond, 1996,2000; Little, 2001; Timperley & Phillips, 2003; Zeichner & Noffke,2001). But tensions often arise between stakeholders withvarying roles, rooted in conflicting assumptions about where tolocate accountability, the nature of teaching as a profession, or therole of professional development in effecting change (e.g., Earl,1999; Fitz, 2003; Møller, 2009). For example, it is increasinglyprevalent to ask schools and districts to develop improvementplans that require uptake of certain practices and/or trackingoutcomes using large-scale assessment data, particularly when it

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appears that systemic improvements are needed. In contrast, criticsof such “top-down” initiatives suggest they lack sensitivity to localcontexts, fail to capitalize on the local knowledge generated withinand by school communities, and undermine or underestimate thenecessary role of teachers as contextualized decision makers(Barnett, 2004; Borko, 2004; Guskey, 2002; Robertson, Hill, & Earl,2004; Tierney, 2006). Nonetheless, across perspectives, it appearsthat stakeholders share: (a) a fundamental commitment toimproving outcomes for students, and (b) an emerging recognitionthat, to make a difference, change must be meaningfully situatedand sustained at the classroom level (e.g., Hopkins & Levin, 2000).

Thus, it is not surprising that emerging professional develop-ment models position teachers centrally in change efforts. Thesemodels often suggest that meaningful, sustained changes in class-rooms are fostered by engaging teachers jointly in locally situated,inquiry-based, longitudinal, and critical examinations of practice(e.g., Carpenter, Fennema, & Franke, 1996; Horn & Little, 2010;

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D.L. Butler, L. Schnellert / Teaching and Teacher Education 28 (2012) 1206e1220 1207

Loughran, 2002; Luna et al., 2004; Morrell, 2004; Schnellert, Butler,& Higginson, 2008). Further, an emphasis is often placed on thebenefits of collaboration within a community of inquiry for sup-porting teachers’ learning and practice revision (Cochran-Smith &Lytle, 2004; Guskey, 2000; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006; Morrell,2004; Robertson, 2000).

Given these emerging trends, research is needed to clarify howcollaborative, inquiry-oriented professional learning communitiesmight contribute to educational change efforts. To that end, thisresearch examined links between teacher professional develop-ment, inquiry processes, collaboration, and practice change.Specifically, we explored three interconnected research questions:(1) What did inquiry look like within an authentic community ofinquiry?; (2) How was collaboration implicated in teachers’inquiry?; and (3) How was engagement in inquiry related tomeaningful shifts in teachers’ practice and learning?

1. Inquiry processes within professional development

Emerging professional development models engage teachers ininquiry as a means of promoting shifts in practice and teacher devel-opment (Ball, 2009; Campbell, McNamara, & Gilroy, 2004; Cole &Knowles, 2000; Loughran, 2002). These models build from concep-tions of teaching as requiring, not application of scripted routines, butrather contextualized decision-making that instantiates pedagogicalprinciples and practices to best meet students’ needswithin particularclassrooms (Ball, 2009; Borko, 2004; Butler, Novak Lauscher, Jarvis-Selinger, & Beckingham, 2004; McIntyre, 2005; Palincsar, 1999).Rather than relying on one-shot workshops to enhance skills, theseinitiatives create opportunities for teachers to draw on resources (i.e.,from practice, peers, readings) to inform sustained inquiry andreflection-on-actionasameans for spurringteacher learning (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2004; Hobson, 2001; Horn & Little, 2010; Witterholt,Goedhart, Suhre, & van Streun, 2012). This study adds to priorresearch byconsidering how teacher professional learning andpracticechange might be fostered within a community of inquiry (Campbellet al., 2004; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Dillon, O’Brien, & Heilman,2000).

Fig. 1. Multiple lay

To that end, we drew from the research literature and our pastwork (see Butler et al., 2004; Schnellert et al., 2008) to constructa multi-layered representation of teachers’ engagement in inquirycycles (see Fig. 1). To develop this framework, we integratedconceptions of inquiry offered across literatures. For example, whileteachers’ inquiry has been associated with activities ranging fromreflective teaching to more formalized research (see McLaughlin,Black-Hawkins, & McIntyre, 2004), common across discussions iswhat Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1990) describe as “systematic,intentional studies by teachers of their own classroom practice” (p.2). For example, Lewison (2003) characterizes teachers as engagedin framing problems from new perspectives, considering researchand evidence to generate solutions, and trying out and evaluatingideas. Joyce and Showers (2002) describe iterative cycles whereinteachers learn through experimenting and reflecting on newteaching strategies. Common across frameworks are descriptions ofteachers engaging in problem-defining, action-oriented, reflective,and iterative cycles. Our model of teacher inquiry is consistent withthese descriptions.

Our conceptualization of inquiry is also informed by a socio-constructivist model of self-regulated learning (e.g., see Butler &Cartier, 2004; Cartier & Butler, 2004; Paris, Byrnes, & Paris, 2001).Parallel to definitions of “inquiry,” self-regulation constitutesa recursive cycle of goal-directed, strategic activities that includedefining problems or expectations, setting goals, selecting, adapting,or inventing task appropriate strategies, self-monitoring outcomes,and revising goals or approaches to better achieve desired outcomes(Butler & Winne, 1995; Winne & Hadwin, 1998; Zimmerman &Schunk, 2001). Most frequently models of self-regulation havebeen applied to describe students’ engagement in academic work.But, like just a few others (e.g., Kremer-Hayon & Tillema, 1999), weextend a model of self-regulation to consider teachers’ engagementsinpractice and professional learning (Butler et al., 2004; Schnellert etal., 2008). We have found this model particularly useful in charac-terizing how teachers might engage in iterative cycles of knowledgegeneration, through which they coordinate tacit and more explicitforms of knowledge (see Hargreaves, 1999).

ers of inquiry.

D.L. Butler, L. Schnellert / Teaching and Teacher Education 28 (2012) 1206e12201208

At the heart of our model (see Fig. 1) is attention to fosteringstudents’ active, self-regulation. When focused on student learning,models of self-regulation have been applied to better understandstudents’ strategic engagement (i.e., learning how to learn) whenfaced with the demands of academic work (e.g., see Butler, 1998,2002a; Zimmerman and Schunk, 2001). Note that, in this study,teachers’ common goal was to support adolescents’ self-regulatedlearning through reading (LTR) in subject-area classrooms (seeCartier, 2000; Lewis, 2007; Lindberg, 2003; Moje, 2007; Shanahan& Shanahan, 2008). We traced how teachers worked alone and/orjointly to foster students’ self-regulated LTR as contextualizedwithin classrooms.

Correspondingly, this report focuses most centrally on thesecond layer of inquiry represented in our model (see Fig. 1), whichwe have labeled “practice-level” inquiry. Here we interpret thatteachers self-regulate practice when they identify instructionalgoals for students (e.g., to draw inferences while LTR), accessexternal resources to inform their work (e.g., research reports;other teachers’ ideas), plan approaches for achieving goals (e.g., anactivity, instruction, assessment), define and collect indicators ofprogress, monitor and reflect on outcomes in relation to goals, andadjust practices responsively. Inquiry processes are more iterativeand less linear than depicted here (Winne & Hadwin, 1998).Nonetheless, in broad terms practice-level inquiry can be concep-tualized as teachers’ recursive engagement in planning, enacting,monitoring, and revising practices in order to achieve valued goalsfor students. Ideally teachers adopt an inquiry stance on an on-going basis within and across classes, linking action and reflec-tion (Marcos & Tillema, 2006). Also ideal is for teachers to integrateresearch and resources into practice in ways that productivelyinform their work (Bromme & Tillema, 1995; Simmons, Kuykendall,King, Cornachione, & Kame'enui, 2000).

Finally, even if teachers learn a great deal in and throughpractice-level inquiry, their learning may be enhanced if they alsodeliberately focus attention on knowledge generation, at least forthemselves, if not for a broader public (Hargreaves, 1999;McLaughlin et al., 2004). As is represented in the outermost layer ofour model, teachers may self-regulate their own learning (i.e., in“teacher-learning” focused inquiry) when they identify goals fortheir own development (e.g., to learn more about LTR), accessresources to inform their thinking (e.g., research, professionaljournals, colleagues), plan strategies for advancing their knowledge(e.g., create a study group), monitor their learning, and makeadjustments as needed. Our model suggests that teachers’ profes-sional development is enhanced when practice-level inquiry isnested within cycles of deliberate, self-regulated attempts toadvance their own learning.

Thus, as a foundation for this research we drew heavily onmodels of self-regulation, descriptions of “inquiry” from acrossfields of study, and findings from our previous empirical research toconceptualize important relationships between three layers ofinquiry. We were attentive to teachers’ ultimate goal, which was tofoster students’ learning (here their self-regulated LTR). Then, toaddress the first of our three research questions (i.e., What didinquiry look like within this community of inquiry?), we focusedattention on whether and how teachers engaged in dynamic cyclesof practice and/or teacher-level inquiry.

2. Collaboration as supportive of inquiry

Our second research question focused on how collaborationmight be implicated in teachers’ engagement in inquiry. Manyresearchers have described why collaboration within a communityof inquiry might be beneficial to teachers’ professional practice andlearning (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2004; Guskey, 2000; Hopkins,

2000; McLaughlin et al., 2004; Morrell, 2004; Robertson, 2000;Schnellert, 2011). For example, in his analysis of five systemicchange initiatives across countries, Hopkins (2000) listed benefitsof establishing networks as breaking down isolation, enablingcollaborative professional learning, finding joint solutions to sharedproblems, exchanging practice, knowledge and expertise, andfostering school improvement. Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999)contend that the social structure of a group adopting an inquirystance helps teachers persevere in the exploration and applicationof new ideas. Van Horn (2006) suggests that, when teachers haveopportunities to collaboratively solve problems and have access torich resources, they aremore likely to take risks, sustain attempts tomake change, and develop, adapt and/or apply approachesdesigned to support students in their classrooms.

But additional research is needed into what collaboration lookslike within an intact inquiry community. To add to the extantliterature, we conceptualized teachers’ collaboration as forms of co-regulation (see Hadwin & Järvelä, 2011; Meyer & Turner, 2002;Volet, Summers, & Thurman, 2009). Building from our multi-layered model (see Fig. 1), we suggest that co-regulation occurswhen a social agent provides support to or “scaffolds” another’sengagement in cycles of inquiry, whether as an equal partner or asa mentor. From this perspective, it could be argued that workingwithin a network or community of inquiry creates conditions forteachers not only to access rich resources, but also to engagetogether in developing practice and learning. Thus, to address oursecond research question, we traced how teachers were co-regulating practice and learning as a means of characterizingcollaboration, and then considered how teachers created relation-ships with others across a networked, inquiry community.

3. Collaborative inquiry in relation to shifts in practice

Our third research question considered how teachers’ engage-ment in collaborative inquiry might be related to their makingshifts in their practice and learning. While researchers recognizethe potential of collaborative inquiry to support teacher learning,not enough is known about how professional inquiry communitiesfunction, in all their complexity, to affect change in classrooms(Borko, 2004; Elster, 2009; Horn & Little, 2010; Huziak-Clark, VanHook, Nurnberger-Haag, & Ballone-Duran, 2007; Little, 2003;McLaughlin et al., 2004).

First, participants in studies are often a select group of volun-teers (Butler, 2002b). In contrast, in this research we investigatedhow inquiry unfolded across a “messy” network of professionalsworking within and across schools with the common goal ofadvancing students’ self-regulated LTR. As might be expected ina change effort unfolding in an authentic, complex, multi-layeredsystem (see Hargreaves, 1999), participants varied greatly inexpertise and experience, and were not equally invested in makingchange and/or like-minded in terms of their dispositions towardteaching or professional development.

Second, research has suggested the importance of havingcommon values and goals to nurturing teachers’ sustained andcollaborative engagement in inquiry (e.g., Durrant, 2009; Lasky,2005). Thus, in this research, we focused particular attention onhow structures and resources available to teachers, including datafrom assessments that could be used formatively to set goals andmonitor outcomes, might have created conditions that shapedcollaboration, inspired teachers’ co-regulated engagement ininquiry, and led to meaningful shifts in practice.

Third, our theoretical stance suggests that practice shifts aremost likely to occur when teachers engage in practice-level inquiry,because it is at this level that teachers draw on resources and toolsto define goals for students, strategically direct activity, monitor


outcomes, and make shifts accordingly (see also Cochran-Smith &Lytle, 2004; Hobson, 2001; Horn & Little, 2010; McLaughlin &Talbert, 2006). Significantly, our model also suggests that it iswhen external resources feed into teachers’ contextualizeddecision-making that they can inspire (or scaffold) practice changesin ways that are meaningful in context, thereby creating those oft-called for research-practice links (see Butler & Schnellert, 2008;Hargreaves, 1999; McIntyre, 2005). Thus, in the research reportedhere, we traced how teachers’ engagement in inquiry, as forms ofself- or co-regulated practice, might be associated with importantpractice changes.

Finally, our theoretical perspective elaborates how teacherlearning might develop in and through practice, both incidentallyandmore deliberately. For example, research suggests that teachersconstruct knowledge about teaching and learning by reflecting inand on classroom practice (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2004; Dana & Yendol-Hoppey, 2008). At the sametime, our model suggests added value if teachers also take a stepback to self-regulate their learning, particularly if that is connectedto practice-level inquiry. By moving deftly between self- and co-regulating learning and practice, teachers can engage iterativelyin accessing resources to inform practice and generating knowl-edge through reflections on activity.

4. Contextualizing our study

The literature cited above, written by authors working ina variety of national contexts (e.g., Canada, the US, the UK, NewZealand, Europe), suggests how the issues taken up in this researchare relevant across jurisdictions. That said, because educationalpractice and policies are fundamentally shaped within particularcultural, social, and political contexts, in this section we locate thecommunity of inquiry under study within a particular context andeducational system.

This study was conducted within an urban, multicultural schooldistrict in western Canada. In Canada, education is a provincialrather than federal responsibility. Further, in the Province wherethis study was located, public schools are clustered into schooldistricts, overseen by school boards. At the time of this study, theprovincial Ministry of Education instituted an accountability cyclerequiring school districts to develop goals, implementation plans,and assessment strategies. However, the provincial governmentalso supported local decision-making. As long as school districtscould account for outcomes (using provincial-level and/or self-generated data), they could set their own goals and strategies forachieving them. In this context, the Ministry put into placea funding program to support literacy-focused initiatives.

Our participating school district also supported decentralizeddecision-making. For example, schools were encouraged to set localgoals with their School Planning Councils. Further, it was bybuilding from a convergence of school goals that the district seta goal on adolescent literacy. This goal was incorporated into thedistrict’s accountability contract with the Ministry. The district alsoaccessed Ministry funding to support an adolescent literacyinitiative.

The participating district also explicitly supported inquiry-basedprofessional development. As part of its literacy initiative, thedistrict nurtured a distributed community of inquiry comprisingteachers, school-based leaders, and district-level supportpersonnel. It is significant that the community of inquiry studiedhere was supported by, but not dependent on researchers. Instead,we studied how a group of teachers within an existing initiativewere working collectively to improve student learning. Within thiscontext, participants were drawing on multiple forms of resources.Correspondingly, in our analysis of collaborative inquiry, we

considered how initiative structures and available resources mayhave directed teachers’ attention to goals and shaped inquiryprocesses.

5. Research design and methodology

To review, in the research reported here, we investigated howteachers in a community of inquiry worked alone and/or togetherso as to improve outcomes for students. Our three research ques-tions were: (1)What did inquiry look like within this community ofinquiry?; (2) How was collaboration implicated in teachers’inquiry?; and (3) How was engagement in inquiry related tomeaningful shifts in teachers’ practice and learning?

Case study designs are particularly useful for investigatinga complex, dynamic, and multidimensional phenomenon ina naturalistic setting (see Butler, 2011). Thus, to address theseresearch questions, we chose to conduct an iterative, in-depth, casestudy of one complex community of inquiry in action (Creswell,2007; Merriam, 1998; Yin, 2003).

5.1. Participants

The community of inquiry investigated spanned three schoolsmost actively engaged in the literacy project, as defined by theparticipating district. Two of these schools enrolled students ingrades 8e12; one enrolled students in grades 7e9. Teacher teamsof various sizes were constituted within each school, depending oninterest and how their school community chose to focus theirefforts (e.g., all students at grade 8; particular subject areas). Theseteams of teachers had opportunities to come together within andacross schools in interactive sessions (see Fig. 2). Literacy leaders,who had opportunities to work together as part of cross-schoolnetwork, were designated at each school to help in leading andcoordinating the project. Support teachers also came together overtime to design “second shot” literacy classes for struggling readers.At the time of this study, one of this paper’s co-authors was thedistrict-level consultant responsible for the literacy initiative. Theother is a university-based researcher who had been engaged incollaborative research with the district for a number of years. Asresources to the community, our roles were to help teachers co-construct situated literacy assessments and interpret data to setgoals, plan practices, and monitor outcomes. Along with literacyleaders and other colleagues, the district-level consultant was alsoavailable for on-going support as requested (e.g., for planning or co-teaching; for gaining access to materials).

It was from this intact community of inquiry that our studyparticipants were recruited. Ethical approval was obtained forrecruitment strategies and all study procedures following institu-tional and school board guidelines. Ultimately participantsincluded three literacy leaders and fifteen other teachers (seeTable 1). Most of the teachers were female (16 female, 2 male).Teachers’ years of experience varied from 1 to 33 years. While someteachers had developed a rich background in adolescent literacy,others were drawn into the project because of their connectionwith a school-based team.

During interviews teachers described how they worked withothers to improve literacy outcomes for students. Some partici-pants identified collaborators not included in our study (seeTable 1). Some of these collaborators worked within the schoolsfrom which our participants were drawn. Two collaboratorsworked at a fourth school, not included in this study. This paper’sco-authors were also identified as collaborators. Thus, while wereport here on data collected with/from 18 participants workingacross three sites, it was clear that networks associated with thiscommunity of inquiry extended beyond these borders.

Fig. 2. District, researcher, and school-based activities across the year.


5.2. Data collection

Multiple forms of data were collected to provide convergingevidence related to our research questions (Merriam, 1998; Miles &Huberman, 1994; Yin, 2003), including: (1) semi-structured inter-views near the start (Winter) and end (Spring) of the year; (2)copies of Fall and Spring literacy assessments and associatedreports; (3) documents and artifacts representing teachers’engagement alone or together in inquiry processes (e.g., e-mailcorrespondence; classroom materials); and (4) field notes frommeetings or classroom visits between teachers and the researcheror district-level consultant (see Fig. 2).

As part of the district-level initiative, teachers and literacyleaders constructed and administered two coupled, curriculum-based assessments that could be used to identify student needs(in the Fall) and monitor outcomes (in the Spring). These assess-ments included a Performance-Based Assessment (PBA; seeBrownlie, Feniak, & Schnellert, 2006) and a Learning throughReading Questionnaire (LTRQ; see Butler & Cartier, 2004; Cartier &Butler, 2004). In other papers we report on student-level data andprovide fuller descriptions of these two measures (see Butler,Cartier, Schnellert, Gagnon, & Giammarino, 2011). In this paper,we focus instead on how teachers were building from theseassessments to make practice changes in ways that benefited theirstudents. We accessed classroom-level data as a form of corrobo-rating evidence if teachers reported achieving literacy gains fortheir students.

Semi-structured interviews were framed by orienting questions.In the Winter (W), teachers were asked to comment on: (1) theirprofessional goals, support they might need, and how they wouldknow those goals had been met; (2) goals for students, how theywould achieve those goals, and how they would judge those goalshad been met; (3) outcomes observed in relation to goals (forthemselves; for students); (4) how participating in the districtliteracy initiative was shaping their thinking; and (5) what aspectsof in-service activities were most and least helpful. Questions were

parallel in the Spring (S), but asked teachers to reflect back acrossthe past year and think ahead to the future. At both times, teacherswere asked to share documents or artifacts to illustrate practicesthey had enacted. Other forms of data (i.e., literacy assessment data,classroom artifacts, documents, e-mail, field notes) were collectedthrough the year to trace how participants worked together, inrelation to practices they enacted alone or in tandem.

5.3. Data analysis

Interviews served as the initial foundation for data interpreta-tion. All interviews were transcribed and then analyzed in aniterative and recursive process (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Merriam,1998). Subsequently, and throughout our analysis, data frominterviews, documents, artifacts, and field notes were cross-referenced to generate and warrant interpretations (Merriam,1998; Yin, 1994). For example, if a teacher described making prac-tice changes in a classroom, we considered how other evidence(e.g., classroom artifacts) was reflective of those descriptions.

Following Agar (1996), we describe our interpretive process asabductive, in that we moved iteratively through cycles of inductiveand deductive analysis. In our coding we were informed by ourtheoretical framework and research questions, and at times focusedattention on the fit between data and what we anticipated a priori.But, as a starting point we also looked towhat teachers were sayingfrom amore open, inductive stance. As wemoved through cycles ofanalysis, we continually checked tentative assertions againstmultiple forms of data. We deliberately and comprehensivelysearched for confirming and disconfirming evidence, were sensi-tive both to common patterns and variability, and created condi-tions that allowed for moving beyond our original theoreticalframeworks to accommodate what we were learning (e.g., byinvolving multiple coders, working from different perspectives,into the analysis process). The result of this open, cyclical approachwas that, over time, and through successive interpretations and re-representations of data, we refined our research questions (to those

Table 1Participants and roles within the community of inquiry.

Location Participant Gender Exp Role(s) Subject area

ParticipantsSchool 1 OX Female 6 LL, CT, RT GeneralistSchool 1 DN Female 18 RT, CT HumanitiesSchool 1 BB Male 33 CT HumanitiesSchool 1 EN Female 14 PD chair, CT HumanitiesSchool 1 XQ Female 13 CT, Librarian HumanitiesSchool 1 MX Female 21 CT Humanities/dramaSchool 1 HG Male 23 CT ScienceSchool 2 NE Female 6 LL, CT HumanitiesSchool 2 ED Female 13 CT HumanitiesSchool 2 TD Female 14 CT Humanities/businessSchool 2 FH Female 4 CT Humanities (French

immersion)School 2 SS Female 10 CT Humanities/FrenchSchool 2 CU Female 2 CT HumanitiesSchool 2 NW Female 7 CT HumanitiesSchool 3 BH Female 6 LL, CT HumanitiesSchool 3 NC Female 1 CT HumanitiesSchool 3 TU Female 3 CT HumanitiesSchool 3 ET Female 17 RT Generalist

Collaborators (mentioned by participants)District DLT Male 14 DLC Cross-curricularResearcher Res Female 12a Res Cross-curricularSchool 1 AM Female 20 CT Science/mathSchool 1 OJ Female 21 CT HumanitiesSchool 1 TS Male 14 VP MathSchool 2 OD Male 18 CT HumanitiesSchool 2 LA Male 26 P ScienceSchool 2 NA Female 8 CT Sciences (French

immersion)School 3 AD Female 13 CT EnglishSchool 4 RK Female 8 CT HumanitiesSchool 4 AJ Female 11 CT Humanities

(French immersion)

Note. Exp ¼ years of experience at the start of the study; CT ¼ classroom teacher;LL ¼ literacy leader; RT ¼ resource teacher; PD ¼ professional development chair;DLC ¼ district literacy consultant; Res ¼ researcher; VP ¼ vice principal;P ¼ principal.

a Experience in a formal role as a university-based researcher.


reported on here), and elaborated conceptual frameworks forviewing and interpreting patterns.

Generally speaking, our analysis moved from descriptive tosuccessively more abstracted layers of interpretation. For example,we began by clustering ideas expressed by teachers into broadthematic groupings informed by our research questions, focusingfor example, onwhat kinds of goals teachers set for themselves andtheir students, practices teachers described (and provided evidencefor) enacting, and how teachers described working together andwhy. Once excerpts from transcripts were grouped into broadthemes, we clustered ideas and assigned “low inference” labels torepresent what appeared to be a common meaning (e.g., goalsteachers set focused on enhancing student learning, classroompractice, and/or their own learning and development). Tworesearchers generated the initial set of codes through an openreading of interview transcripts. Then initial codes were reex-amined against the data and refined through discussion. Thisincluded deriving relationships within and between codes andposing questions related to data and previous theoretical models.

To move from description to interpretation, coded data werecollected into a variety of displays to reveal patterns and test forconceptual coherence (Miles & Huberman, 1994). First-leveldisplays pulled together all data related to any given researchquestion. Second-level displays were constructed from thecomprehensive, first-level displays to reveal larger patterns. Finally,we built from second level displays as seemed warranted to createmore detailed forms of data coding, representation and checking.At every step in the analytic process, displays or more sophisticated

coding frameworks were constructed by two research assistants,and then carefully crosschecked against original transcripts by thelead researchers.

As we moved to more interpretive levels, and, as we started toobserve variations in teachers’ engagement in inquiry, we devel-oped criteria for characterizing teachers’ self-regulation of practiceand learning as falling into one of six categories, ranging from 0 (noinquiry) to 5 (iterative inquiry into practice, teaching, and learning)(see Appendix A). We conducted basic statistical tests (e.g., ANOVA,follow-up paired t-tests) to support interpretations related to thequalities of teachers’ engagement in self-regulated inquiry.

We also created displays to visualize the quality of collaborativeengagement in inquiry among participating teachers. Appendix Bpresents a more elaborated coding framework we generated intandemwith these figures to characterize the depth of teachers’ co-regulation in practice-level inquiry cycles. We then built from thiscoding to construct an overall “collaboration map” of relationshipsusing Agna (Benta, 2003) and VisuaLyzer (Medical Decisions Logic,2007) software, using line width to represent the strength anddepth of teachereteacher collaborations based on our qualitativecoding.

In this article, we present our findings both descriptively, and inrelation to these more interpretive levels of analysis. In some cases,we present excerpts from displays, not only as a means of por-traying patterns observed, but also to warrant our conclusions.

6. Findings and discussion

6.1. What did inquiry look like in this community of inquiry?

To characterize how inquiry processes were enacted in thiscommunity of inquiry (i.e., to address our first research question),we first built from our multi-layered model (see Fig. 1) to considerthe qualities of teachers’ self-regulated inquiry of practice andlearning.

A key finding here was that all teachers engaged in self-regulated inquiry, at least to some extent (see Table 2). Asdescribed earlier, as part of our abductive analysis we developedcriteria for describing the depth and scope of teachers’ self-regulation in each inquiry process (see Fig. 1), and then overall,on a scale from 0 to 5 (Appendix A). Our findings were that allparticipants set context-specific goals related to fostering students’learning. The majority of teachers enacted practices matched to thegoals they had set for students (mean of 3.72 out of 5) but,considering the full inquiry cycle, participants were significantlyless likely to focus on planning and reflecting/monitoring (means of3.00 and 3.22, respectively). They were least likely to describeadjusting approaches over time based on monitoring of outcomesassociated with practice changes (mean of 2.50).

Further, the extent to which individual teachers engaged itera-tively in the full cycle of inquiry processes varied considerably (seeTable 2). What these differences looked like in practice was that theteachers most actively engaged in inquiry adopted an integrativeand long-term approach to planning, while in more limited formsof inquiry teachers tackled shorter-term goals without reflecting onconnections across lessons. Further, while some teachers adoptedan inquiry stance that undergirded most of their activities (withinplanning; within classes as they were interacting with students;across classes), others were less systematic, targeted, and/orexplicit in their attempts tomonitor andmodify their approaches toteaching.

Thus, while teachers were making important changes to prac-tice in order to meet student needs, the extent to which theyreflectively engaged over time in successive cycles of trying out,monitoring, and adjusting practices varied. The significance is that

Table 2Qualities of teachers’ self-regulated inquiry.

Teacher School Goal(s) Planning Enacting Reflecting/monitoring Adjusting Average

OX (LL, RT) 1 Y 5 5 5 4 4.75MX 1 Y 5 5 5 4 4.75BB 1 Y 1 1 1 1 1.00XQ 1 Y 1 3 3 2 2.25DN (RT) 1 Y 5 5 5 4 4.75EN (PD) 1 Y 2 3 3 3 2.75HG 1 Y 1 4 2 1 2.00NE (LL) 2 Y 5 5 5 3 4.50FH 2 Y 4 4 4 3 3.75TD 2 Y 2 2 2 1 1.75NW 2 Y 1 3 2 1 1.75CU 2 Y 2 5 4 2 3.25ED 2 Y 3 3 2 2 2.50SS 2 Y 3 4 3 3 3.25BH (LL) 3 Y 2 2 2 2 2.00TU 3 Y 3 4 2 2 2.75NC 3 Y 4 4 4 4 4.00ET (RT) 3 Y 5 5 4 3 4.25Mean (%) 100% 3.00 3.72 3.22 2.50 3.11SD n/a 1.57 1.23 1.31 1.10 1.20

Note. F (3, 68) ¼ 2.69, p < .054, for a comparison of mean levels across aspects of teachers’ self-regulated practice. Follow-up paired t-tests on differences between meansshowed statistically reliable differences (p < .05, two-tailed or lower) for all paired comparisons except for that between planning and reflecting/monitoring.


it cannot be assumed that all members of a complex community ofinquiry engage in the sameway in inquiry processes. It follows that,if we are to investigate outcomes associated with this form ofprofessional development (Little, 2003), research designs mustallow for a nuanced association of the qualities of inquiry andpractice engaged by teachers in relation to outcomes for students.

Whether and how teachers engaged in full cycles of inquirycould not be associated with school site (see Table 2) or years ofteaching experience. Classroom experience of teachers engaged inthe fullest cycles of self-regulated inquiry (i.e., average scores 4.00or above) ranged from 1 to 21 years. Years of experience forteachers engaged in more limited forms of inquiry (i.e., scores 2 orbelow) ranged from 6 to 33 years. But teachers’ engagement couldbe associated with their roles in the initiative. While there wereexceptions (e.g., BH), teachers most actively engaged in cycles ofinquiry tended to be literacy leaders (OX, NE) or support teachers(DN, ET), whose roles were to serve as collaborators or mentors forcolleagues (see Table 2). Interestingly, this is consonant withHargreaves’ (1999) suggestions that individuals in mid-level lead-ership roles, like those played by literacy leaders in this context, canhelp in bridging vision and the “chaotic reality” of its imple-mentation (p. 133), and that mentoring (through supervising pre-service teachers, in his argument) may be “a powerful stimulus toreflection” (p. 132).

As part of our first research question, we sought to investigatewhether and how participants were self-regulating practice (i.e., toachieve outcomes for students) and/or self-regulating their ownlearning (see Fig. 1). To that end, we examined teachers’ responseswhen asked about their goals, success criteria, achievements, andlearning (see Table 3). Findings were that teachers most often

Table 3Converging evidence related to teachers’ focus of attention during practice- andteacher-level inquiry.

Focus of responses Studentlearning:own class

Improvingpractice

Ownlearning

Professional goals 100% 61% 22%Accounting for success? 89% 89% 11%What have you achieved? 89% 89% 39%What have you learned? 94% 83% 33%

described goals and gains in relation to shifts in classroom practicesor achieving student outcomes (see Table 3, columns 1 and 2). But,even after considerable probing, few teachers described themselvesas deliberately self-regulating their own learning (see Table 3,column 3). For example, only 22% explicitly described goals for theirown learning. Similarly, when asked about achievements, only 39%of participants explicitly framed responses in terms of gains forthemselves as learners. Overall, teachers appeared to be highlymotivated to engage in the literacy initiative because theyperceived important gaps in student learning that they wished toovercome. But for most participants, pursuit of their own profes-sional learning appeared to be a means-to-an-end rather thana deliberate target for development.

Thus, our findings converged to suggest that participants wereprimarily focused on goal setting and enacting practices in order toachieve better outcomes for students. Recognizing that conditionsin change initiatives can support or constrain ways of working (e.g.,Brownell, Adams, Sindelair, Waldron, & Vanhover, 2006; Durrant,2009; Edwards, 2005; Sailors, 2009; Timperley & Phillips, 2003),we considered how teachers’ emphases may have been shaped byliteracy initiative structures. For example, as described earlier, allparticipants worked in school-based teams to collect, interpret andplan from data. Multiple forms of data converged to suggest thatteachers built from those experiences to set grade- and/or class-level goals matched to the literacy needs of their students. Forinstance, NC described building from literacy assessments “in termsof goals that we have outlined for our classes. [We] originallydecided on three goals, but then we narrowed it down to two, notetaking and main ideas” (W9eW13). In her Spring interview OXnoted that:

Having the time to go over these [literacy assessments]thoughtfully and together as a team e group scoring and havethe planning time at the end to say, ‘what is it that wewant to doas a team? How will we address all the things we are seeing?’ efor me that is the biggest thing. If I had to think of anything fornext year, I wouldn’t want to lose any of the time we have now.(S381eS388)

Similarly, multiple resources were made available on whichparticipants could draw to plan and design classroom practices,including district-sponsored workshops, materials in schoollibraries, and support from colleagues, study groups, literacy


leaders, and district-level consultants. Correspondingly, data (i.e.,classroom artifacts, e-mail correspondence, interviews) revealedhow teachers were drawing on these kinds of resources in theirattempts to refine practices in their classrooms. For example OXexplained that, “MX and I have our own conversations going on allthe time and those conversations are so varied, from, ‘Do you havethis; I need this?’ to really talking through ideas or things thatworked or didn’t work” (W338eW341). Finally, it is notable againthat the teachers most richly engaged in inquiry processes wereoften those with dedicated roles in supporting colleagues or theoverall initiative. Initiative structures appeared to both require andenable these participants to engage more fully in inquiry processes,for example, when working with colleagues through practicechange processes.

Implications here are that initiative structures may be highlyinfluential in inspiring but also delimiting participants’ attentionand activity. Here, it was promising that initiative structuresencouraged goal setting and practice changes so consistently acrosscommunity members. But additional supports may have furtherscaffolded teachers’ bridging from goal setting to fuller, iterativecycles of planning, enacting, monitoring and adjusting. They mayalso have more explicitly supported teachers’ deliberate cyclingbetween self-regulating practice and learning.

6.2. How was collaboration implicated in teachers’ inquiry?

Research has suggested ways in which structures associatedwith networks or communities of inquiry, including opportunitiesfor collaboration, have the potential to foster sustained andmeaningful shifts in practice (Hilden & Pressley, 2007; Hopkins,2000; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006; Morrell, 2004; Wiliam, 2007/2008). Thus, as our second research question, we sought to char-acterize in a richly descriptive way the kinds of collaborative rela-tionships that developed within our diverse community of inquiry.

To begin, we were again sensitive to how collaborative rela-tionships were influenced by the literacy initiative structure. Forexample, the district and schools had chosen to focus primarily ongrade 8 students, which shaped development of school-level teams(i.e., comprising more and less enthusiastic grade 8 teachers).Further, district- and school-based activities (e.g., workshops, studygroups) provided teachers with opportunities to share ideas withothers from across the district. Again, all team members hadopportunities to participate in meetings where situated assess-ments were developed, data were interpreted and discussed,grade-level goals were established and progress was reviewed.

Keeping these structural parameters in mind, we drew from ourcoding of interviews, coupled with evidence from field notes andartifacts/documents, to create visual displays of collaborationamong teachers (i.e., as levels of co-regulation). Fig. 3 presentsthree examples. In each, the degree of shading in each “box” (e.g.,for goal setting, for planning) reflects the ways in which twoteachers worked together through recursive inquiry processes. Tosupport development of these figures, we drew on criteria forcoding the depth and scope of teachers’ co-regulation with others(see Appendix B). This analysis was conducted for all collaborativerelationships described by participants, whether or not collabora-tors were formally part of the literacy initiative or participants inthis study (see Table 1).

Overall what we found was that the quality of relationshipsamong community members varied considerably. The strongest,most sustained collaborative relationships could be characterizedas rich engagements in co-regulated inquiry cycles. For example,DN and NE (bottom of Fig. 3) worked as part of a cross-school team(also including RK, AJ, and FH) to co-regulate each other’sengagement in both practice- and teacher-learning level inquiry

(reflecting a 5 overall). They worked collaboratively to set goals,plan lessons, teach in parallel (i.e., enacting similar lessons atdifferent schools), debrief and reflect on outcomes, and regularlyco-constructed new understandings about teaching by stepping outof practice-level cycles to plan for and reflect on what they werelearning. NC and TU (middle of Fig. 3) worked togethermore closelythrough full cycles of practice-level inquiry, bridging in a small wayto collaborative teacher learning-level inquiry (reflecting a 4 over-all). Less developed relationships most typically involved consul-tative, information sharing. For example, EN and OX’s collaboration(top of Fig. 3) reflected some intensity in goal setting, coupled withsome co-planning and co-teaching, but only at the practice-leveland without much monitoring or adapting of practices (reflectinga 2 overall).

To further characterize the network of relationships in ourcommunity of inquiry, we used software tools designed to supportanalysis of social networks. In Fig. 4, the depth of collaboration (i.e.,co-regulation) is reflected in the thickness of lines interconnectingcommunity members (e.g., the line between DN and NE is thickest,reflecting their high level of co-regulated inquiry). This visualrepresentation allowed us to consider how collaboration emergedamong team members within a given school and across the fullcommunity.

A number of notable patterns are evidenced in this collaborationnetwork. First, this community of inquiry was complex anddynamic, with different kinds of relationships forming within andacross schools. For example, while there were clearly some strongrelationships within school level teams (e.g., NC and TU in theschool at the top of the figure), the strength of relationships withinschools varied, and there were many strong relationships forgedacross schools (e.g., between NE and DN). Second, many collabo-rative relationships emerged through membership on grade-levelteams. Some of these remained relatively superficial, whichseemed more common when teachers had not worked togetherpreviously and/or did not know each other well (e.g., OX & BB; BH &TU). But in some cases rich, collaborations developed withinschool-teams (e.g., between NC & TU), especially when teachershad opportunities to develop those relationships over time (seeHorn & Little, 2010; Lasky, 2005; Levine & Marcus, 2010).

Third, we observed that some of the strongest collaborativeinquiry partnerships (e.g., NE, DN, & RK; between the districtconsultant & literacy leaders) spanned school boundaries and weregrounded in long-standing relationships. In some cases, these well-developed relationships superseded and overshadowed supportavailable in school teams. For instance, DN explained:

I am collaborative by nature [but] I have probably done moreplanning with the group outside of [my] school. I think part ofthat is just that I am on a different page. than my colleagues atthe school are in their development in terms of havinga collaborative team that is really kind of wrestling and messingwith this and sharing ideas and strategies. That kind of collab-oration for me is happening outside the school . In thediscussion group, NE and I are more experienced than RK. AJ hasa breadth of knowledge about social studies, but she is not asconfident in all this literacy instruction. It is really a nice sharingof expertise and it is really a safe place to say ‘I don’t get this.’ It ishappening but just not in the school for me. (W292eW313).

A further, systematic analysis of teachers’ descriptions ofsupports and benefits to collaboration suggested factors associatedwith the development of strong relationships. First, teachersdescribed how structural supports (e.g., attending workshops asteams; school-based teams) created opportunities for them to learnfrom one another (see Hilden & Pressley, 2007; Sailors, 2009;Timperley & Phillips, 2003). For example, ET explained that,

Fig. 3. Engagement in collaborative inquiry cycles: three examples.


“meeting with the other teachers in the district was huge for me. Ihad the benefit of not actually teaching it until the second semester,so I was able to learn from everybody as they were going throughit” (S213eS217). Similarly, CU explained how valuable it was for herto work with a cohesive, school-based team led by an experiencedand knowledgeable literacy leader (NE):

It helps me gauge myself. Just talking with colleagues. I ama fairly new teacher, so it helps me know where I should begoing. And sharing strategies has been amazing within thisgroup since we have been so cohesive this year.. It has allowedme to be more creative. Working in a pair or larger group, youget more ideas. (S177eS187)

However, not all teachers felt they had sufficient opportunity tocollaborate with others. For example, EN felt excluded when thenumber of attendees to district-level workshops was limited.Further, teachers experienced practical barriers to collaborationsuch as time pressures, scheduling conflicts, and unpredictableaccess to substitute teachers to cover classes during teammeetings.As EN explained, “ensuring that teachers can share takes time. It

takes time for people get used to the idea and it literally takesphysical time” (W394eW398).

A second factor associated with the depth of collaboration waswhether or not potential collaborators were equally committed tocommon values and goals (see also Hopkins, 2000). For example,OX (literacy leader, school 1) felt constrained in developing inquirypartnerships as some colleagues resisted focusing on LTR processeswithin subject area courses. Similarly, BH (literacy leader, school 3)explained how:

Some people talk the talk and say, ‘Oh it would be great [for you]to come intomyclassroom, Iwould love that.’ Thenyou approachthem and it’s not the right time and all sorts of other excuses aregiven. You end up feeling like a door-to-door salesman some-times, trying to get teachers to buy in. (S240eS247)

Teachers who developed the richest inquiry relationshipsdescribed themselves as having the opportunity to work withothers who shared compatible or complementary interests,working styles, philosophies, expertise and/or backgrounds (seeDurrant, 2009; Lasky, 2005). For example, NE described how the

Fig. 4. Collaborative relationships within a community of inquiry.


individuals within her study group (DN, RK, & AJ) came together toshare their complementary strengths and expertise:

I can really see clearly what I am not doing right or not able toget right now in my practice because I can see how other peopleare doing it. Working with someone like [DN] is really goodbecause she breaks everything down into minute little details.Working with someone like [RK] is really good because she cansequence things really well. [AJ] always points to the rich parts[of course content], which I do too. (S566eS576)

These findings reveal that development of collaborative rela-tionships within a networked structure is definitely not automatic.Teachers required time, space, and opportunities to work withcolleagues and leaders within and across schools. Also importantwas the opportunity to seek out colleagues with similar levels ofcommitment and/or complementary knowledge.

6.3. How was engagement in inquiry related to meaningful shifts inteachers’ practice and learning?

Our third research question focused on how teachers’ engage-ment in inquiry may have been associated with shifts in their ownlearning and practice with potential to achieve valued outcomes forstudents. To address this question, we built from interview data tocatalog for each teacher: (1) described gains, and (2) what theywere learning. We cross-checked these reports against other data,

such as records from situated assessments and artifacts fromclassrooms. In Table 4 we reproduce a display we created to relatethe depth and scope of teachers’ self-regulated inquiry (see column1) to the achievements and learning they described in relation tostudents, practice, or themselves as learners (columns 2e7).

First, in terms of gains, data converged to suggest that 89% ofteachers perceived themselves as having made important revisionsto practice by participating in the initiative. For example, someteachers described their practices as becomingmore integrated andgoal-directed. Here SS describes how her teaching had changeddramatically to become more planful:

Again, just becoming more intentional. It has absolutely shiftedmy practice. It has changed how I think about the year. Ratherthan going unit by unit and having all these individual greatunits, I think about the whole year and howwhat they do in oneunit builds into another and another. It has given me a greatunderstanding of skill building versus skill doing. (S315eS320)

Significantly, 89% of teachers described specific gains forstudents they associated specifically with practices they wereenacting. For example, in her Spring interview, CU explained:

We often used those active reading sheets. We would set goalsso that they could figure out what was important before theystarted. So for instance, in theMiddle Ageswewould decide thatheroism was important. So we would focus on that while doingreading . I started putting together organizers for them and

Table 4Participants’ self-regulated inquiry in relation to gains and learning.

Teacher SRI Students Practice Own learning

Gains Learning Gains Learning Gains Learning

OX (LL, RT) 4.75 - - - - - -

NE (LL) 4.75 - - - - -

DN (RT) 4.75 - - - - - -

MX 4.75 - - - - -

ET (RT) 4.25 - - - -

NC 4.00 - - - -

FH 3.75 - - - - -

SS 3.25 - - - - - -

CU 3.25 - - -

EN (PD) 2.75 - - - - -

TU 2.75 - - - -

ED 2.50 - - - -

XQ 2.25 - - -

BH (LL) 2.00 - - - -

HG 2.00 - - -

NW 1.75 - - - - -

TD 1.75 - -

BB 1.00 - - -

# 16 17 16 15 7 6% 89% 94% 89% 83% 39% 33%

Note. Teachers are listed in order based on depth and scope of self-regulated inquiry(SRI). Shading indicates teachers in leadership roles. Squares represent the focus ofteachers’ comments on students, practice, or their own learning. LL ¼ literacyleader; RT ¼ resource teacher; PD ¼ professional development chair.


then they had to do it on their own. So I could see what theywere picking up. The PBA helped a lot. It was actually reallysurprising to see the huge leap in the areas that I worked on.(S125eS138)

Although continued research on this point is clearly needed (e.g.,see Butler, Schnellert, & Cartier, 2012), we interpret from these find-ings that engaging teachers in collaborative inquiry communities haspotential to impact classroompractices inways that benefit students.

Second, in relation to what teachers were learning, findingswere 83% of teachers articulated new insights or understandingsabout practice. An example is SS, quoted above, who developeda better understanding of “skill building versus skill doing.” Otherteachers described revising assumptions about the appropriatebalance between content coverage and supporting learningprocesses in subject-area classrooms. For example, MX reported:

I am just not as concerned about content as I used to be. I amwaymore concerned with how kids learn, waymore then I ever was. Ialways knew that was a piece of the puzzle. If you do all thesethings, ‘Oh I got to give them a test, I got to check their vocab-ulary.’ I am just so not there as a teacher anymore (S376eS380).

Similarly, HG noted:

It has opened my eyes to the point that I know that reading forinformation has got to be the focus of where these kids are at. Ifnot, when they come acrosswords that they don’t understand orcan’t pronounce, they will just skim it over or bother to stop.They just plow through. . So just going through and modelinga way to read through those tough words. I think out loud, and Imodel what process I go through to solve that problem of anunknown word. To be able to go through and model how youwould read a science text for information and work through,that is a big piece. I mean you don’t do that one time and thenthat is it. I mean I am doing that all year. (S118eS142)

Most consistently, teachers (94%) described learningmore abouttheir students. For example, many teachers described how, whenbuilding from literacy assessments, they developed richer, more

focused understandings about their students’ literacy needs. DNnoted:

I guesswhat Ihave learned is thatkidsneed repeatedexposureandpractice at some of the particular skills that we think are fairlysimple. They are actually quite complexwhenyou start to unpack.If we are not seeing huge gains, then this is just part of a process oflearning and what we have learned and built on this year, hope-fully they will build on and deepen next year. (S77eS84).

Similarly, in her Spring interview, MX explained: “I had twodifferent classes that I had to teach the course to. Atfirst I didn’t realizehow different they were until I looked at the results of the fallassessment. Then I could teach to it” (S38eS48). Overall, we inter-preted thesefindings as suggesting that, bydrawingon resources (i.e.,assessments; peers; materials) to inform their engagement in cyclesof practice-level inquiry, participants were learning about andenacting practices responsive to the needs of their students.

But patterns apparent in Table 4 again suggest that teacherswere less deliberately attentive to directing or monitoring theirown learning processes. While the vast majority of teachersdescribed new insights or understandings about practice andstudents, only roughly 1/3 explicitly described achieving goals theyhad set for themselves as learners. For example, ED had set a goal inthe Fall to bring herself up-to-date on research and practice relatedto adolescent reading. In the Spring, she reflected not only on herown progress as a learner, but also on how her own learning wasconnected to gains for students:

I am learning and I love that. Change is goodand it is really neat. If Iamabetter teacher then thekids learnmore. I felt that thisyear theamount of reading andwhat they producedwas so good and theylearned so much more onwhat we did do. (S246eS251)

Interestingly, it appeared to be the teachers who were bridgingacross teacher-learning and practice-level inquiry who made therichest and widest gains. Note here that rows in Table 4 are orderedbased on the depth and scope of teachers’ engagement in inquirycycles (see Appendix A), and that shading is used to identifycommunity members in roles dedicated to supporting other teammembers. Inspection of patterns across cells suggests that thewidest range of and richest gains/learning tended to be describedby individuals who were engaged in iterative, sustained cycles ofinquiry and/or whowere positioned in designated support roles (ascollaborators; as mentors). We interpret that, while the majority ofteachers were clearly learning a great deal from reflection on and inengagement in practice-level inquiry (a la Schön,1983,1987), richergains may be experienced if teachers deliberately embed engage-ment in self- and co-regulated practice within cycles of teacher-learning level inquiry.

7. Conclusions

In this article we report findings from an in-depth case study ofa complex community of inquiry in action. To address our threeresearch questions, we describe the nature of participants’engagement in inquiry, the development and quality of collabora-tive relationships, and how engagement in inquiry might have beenassociated with shifts in teachers’ practice and learning. In theseconcluding remarks, we highlight important directions suggestedby our findings.

First, it was encouraging that our participants were highlymotivated to revise practices when they observed lower-than-desired student performance related to valued goals, and that thevast majority set goals and shifted practices responsively to achievebetter student outcomes. But troubling was the great variability in

Criteria for judging the depth and quality of teacher’s inquiry.

Level Label Criteria Teacher

0 No inquiry � No goals identified or noreference to toward workingtoward goals.

1 Littleinquiry

� Set goals, but no referenceto working toward goalsthat had been set.

� No evidence of planning,reflecting, monitoring ormaking alterations.

BB

2 Limited,typicallyshort-terminquiry

� Mention of goals, butlimited examples ofworking toward goals.

� Limited evidence of planning,reflecting or monitoring.Short-term example ofalteration of practice relatedto goals and plans.

XQNWEDTDBHHG

3 Somesustainedpractice-levelinquiry

� Mention of goals withseveral segmentedexamples of lessonsworking toward goals.

� Evidence of some ongoingplanning, and some evidenceof reflecting and monitoring.Example of alteration ofpractice due to knowledgeemerging from inquiry.

CUTUENSS

4 Iterative,recursiveinquiry intopractice

� Clear defined goals withmultiple elaborationsincluding several examplesof lessons and other effortsto work toward goals.Indications of continuousprogramming toward goals.

� Evidence of purposefulplanning in either lessons orprogram goals.

� Evidence of reflection onprogress toward goals eitherduring and/or after process.Multiple examples ofalteration of practice dueto knowledge derivedthrough inquiry.

FHNCET

(continued on next page)


the depth and scope of participants’ engagement in inquiry andthat the least frequently engaged inquiry process was “adapting,”which is so central to sustained cycles of responsive practice revi-sion. Thus, further research is needed into how initiative structurescan support teachers’ on-going engagement in fuller inquiry cycles.For example, in subsequent work we have been exploring howhaving opportunities to collaborate both outside of and withinpractice (e.g., through co-teaching)might be implicated in fosteringricher forms of inquiry (see Schnellert, 2011).

Second, in this study we drew on our theoretical framework andpast empirical findings to conceptualize collaborative inquiry asforms of co-regulation at practice- and/or teacher-learning levels.In this study, applying a model of co-regulation to describecollaborative inquiry allowed for constructing nuanced portraits ofwhen and how teachers were pursuing inquiry together. Throughthis analysis, we opened the “black box” in research on collabora-tive teacher professional development (Little, 2003, p. 949) bytracing how teachers were working together. Future researchmightelaborate these findings by further examining relationshipsbetween collaboration as co-regulation and associated shifts inteachers’ practice and learning.

Third, consistent with other research cited earlier (e.g., Hilden &Pressley, 2007; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2006; Morrell, 2004), ourfindings uncover the complexities of teachers’ relationship devel-opment and suggest some of the ways in which initiatives mightencourage collaboration. These include providing time, resources,and structured opportunities for collaboration. However, additionalresearch might further explore how having multiple, collaborationoptions, as was the case in this complex, multi-site professionalnetwork, might enable teachers to find “like-minded” colleagueswith common goals or values with whom to engage in collaborativework.

Fourth, building from our multi-layered inquiry model (seeFig. 1), we have suggested that making resources available toteachers while they are immersed in goal-directed cycles of inquiryis key to forging research-practice connections (Butler & Schnellert,2008; see also Bromme & Tillema, 1995; Cochran-Smith & Lytle,2004; Simmons et al., 2000). Consonant with this perspective, inthis study we found that teachers were drawing on resources (e.g.,assessment frameworks and tools; research-informed materials;colleagues andmentors) to inform practice revisions. But, given thestrong push internationally for teachers to build evidence-basedpractices into classrooms in ways that achieve measurableoutcomes, it will be crucial for future research to continue studyinghow inquiry approaches to professional development are able tosupport systems-level change in ways that both draw on andgenerate knowledge about education so as to achieve valuedoutcomes for students (Hargreaves, 1999).

Finally, as an international press toward accountabilityincreases, the temptation to impose top-down initiatives toimprove student outcomes becomes correspondingly moreintense. As an alternative to top-down reform efforts, our workover time has provided both a theoretical account and a detailed,empirical analysis of how multiple stakeholders might be pulledtogether in loosely coordinated, goal-directed inquiry cyclesfocused on improving outcomes for students (see also Hopkins,2000). We have been fortunate that, in the western Canadianprovince where this study was located, government, district, andschool-level processes have at times been coordinated todistribute leadership, and agency, across the system (see Butler,Schnellert, & MacNeil, 2012 for a fuller description). But furtherresearch is sorely needed into how multi-level change initiativescan provide space for teachers, formal and informal leaders,policy-makers and other stakeholders to feel and be invested ineducational change.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a Standard Research Grant to thefirst author from the Social Sciences and Humanities ResearchCouncil of Canada. Portions of this article were presented at annualmeetings of the American Educational Research Association. Wewould like to thank Stephanie Higginson and Jennifer Scott for theirsupport in data collection and analysis for this project, TrevorCorneil for his technical assistance, as well as Vicki Rothstein,Norma Jamieson, Kathleen Champion, Kathyrn D’Angelo and BruceBeairsto for their support of this work.

Appendix A

(continued )

Level Label Criteria Teacher

5 Iterativeinquiryinto practice,teaching &learning

� Clearly defined goals withmultiple deep elaborationsincluding several examples oflessons working toward goals.Clear indication of continuousenacting of goal-related plans.

� Evidence of purposeful planningin lessons and unit/program goals.Evidence of ongoing examinationof progress toward goals bothduring and after process. Multipleexamples of alteration of practicederived from new knowledge;gives least one example ofhow new knowledge andknowledgeof practice has developed.

NEDNOXMX

(continued)

Level Label Criteria Pairs

3 Intermittentshared inquiryinto practice

� Set shared goals, usuallyin group scoring situation

� Some co-planning, typicallyrefers to goals when planning

� Sharing of resources orideas, some sense of addressingshared goals over time

� If co-teaching, there areshared goals in mind, senseof working together todevelop practice

� May check in regardingimplementation, sharingof examples (i.e., sharingimplementation storiesor examples), but little tosustained shared attentionto progress regardinggoals over time

DN:MXBH:NCNW:NEOX:HGHG:OXNC:BHTD :CONOX:MXMX:OXNE:CONMX:DN

4 Iterativesharedinquiryintopractice

� Set shared goals for students,usually in group scoringsituation

� Co-planning with goals in

CU:NETU:NCNC:TUET:BHDN:AJ


Appendix B

Criteria for judging the depth and quality of collaborative relationships.

Level Label Criteria Pairs

0 Nocollaboration

� No collaboration: explicitlystated that there was nocollaboration

OX:WPOX: CS

1 Littlecollaboration(collaboratorsoftendisconnected)

� Co-assessed; set groupscoring situation; may nothave set shared goals

� Little to no co-planning,rarely refer to goalsin interactions

� If co-teaching, collaboratorsare not in agreement on goalsor relationship of activitiesto goals

� No co-monitoring (i.e., debriefing,feedback) conversations

� May state that collaborator doesnot have sharedunderstandings/intent

CN:BBOX:AMBB:MXMX:XQOX:TSXQ:EN

2 Consultativeinformationsharing

� Set shared goals, usuallyin group scoring situation

� Sharing resources and ideasin relation to goal

� Sharing resources or ideas,but no integrativeco-planning (surfacelevel collaborative planning)

� If co-teaching, most likelymodeling (often lackof co-planning)

� No co-monitoring (littleto no sustained conversationabout goals and relatedactions over time)

DN:CONXQ:MXNW: ODNW:SSDN:OXOX:DNXQ:OJSS:NETD:EDED:CONBH:TUNC: ADNC:ETET:NCBB:OXFH:NAEN:OXTD:NENE:LAEN:XQBB:DNEN:CON

mind, sustained conversationabout goals as related topractices

� If co-teaching, shared goals inmind, sense of working togetherto develop and implement practices

� Debriefing regarding implementationof strategies/approaches

� Some co-reflection andproblem-solving

� Collaborative, longitudinal workwithin a practice-based inquiry cycle

FH:NENE:FHNE:AJBH:ET

5 Iterativesharedinquiryinto practiceand teacherlearning

� Set shared goals for students,usually in group scoring situation

� Set and shares own goals forprofessional learning

� Ongoing co-planning with sustainedconversation about goals as relatedto practices

� Collaborative development ofstrategies and approaches

� If co-teaching, there is a sense ofworking together to implement,adapt and refine practicesrelated to goals

� Sharing and critiquing of oneanother’s classroom examples

� Ongoing co-reflection and problem-solving and adaptation of approacheswith own and student-learning goalsin mind

� Longitudinal collaborative workwithin an inquiry cycle

� Collaborators/group have sharedinquiry stance to practice andown learning goals

� Collaborators relatepractice and learninggoals to inquiry cycle

NE:DNDN:NEDN:RKNE:RKMX:CONOX:CONFH:AJ


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Collaborative inquiry in teacher professional development