Restructuring mathematics teaching | learning: Co-teaching as a designed approach to teachers' collaborative inquiry

<p>This study explores how participation in collaborative inquiry opens space for an expanded set of understandings and practices for mathematics teaching | learning. It examines the affordances of collaborative inquiry to promote, or constrain, teacher learning in the context of teachers’ day to day work. Sociocultural perspectives underpin the study whereby professional learning is presumed to be situated in the social and cultural contexts of teachers’ work. A survey of the literature supports the assumption that persistent underachievement in mathematics for some groups of learners requires shifts in what teachers know and can do and reveals the importance of collaboration and inquiry for teacher learning. The study involved a participatory, design-based approach underpinned by an authentic and appreciative inquiry stance. Design-based research was chosen for its proximity to practice and its focus on connections between the enactment of learning designs and outcomes of interest. The research was iterative and cyclical whereby the researcher worked with a group of four teachers in one New Zealand primary school to design, implement and refine an approach to teachers’ collaborative inquiry. A range of data were gathered during a 6-month collaboration, including from teacher interviews, classroom observations and three-weekly group meetings. The analysis took a pragmatic and multi-theoretical approach to examine what it meant to design and enact teachers’ collaborative inquiry. Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) was employed to capture the complexity of the teachers’ collaborative inquiry activity and to analyse and interpret the contradictions that arose. A key finding was that a co-teaching inquiry approach fostered conditions that afforded teachers’ expanded access to and depth of engagement with new, and often dissonant, practice ideas. Through co-teaching, mathematics teaching | learning was restructured within three interconnected fields of practice: the teachers’ enacted practice, their talk about practice, and their noticing of student thinking within practice. The co-teaching inquiry activity was increasingly directed at a collective purpose; involved an interplay of risk and trust; supported shifts in teachers’ roles and responsibilities; and allowed teachers to constantly renegotiate the goals of their shared activity. The co-teaching arrangement disrupted practice whereby teachers’ actions served as minor interruptions to each other’s practice and thus became a resource for teacher learning. Opportunities to engage deeply with one another’s practice opened space for an expanded set of actions for each of the teachers in their own practice. This thesis adds nuanced understandings of the interrelated roles of collaboration and inquiry in improving teaching. It contributes to the growing body of literature exploring co-teaching arrangements for teacher learning, in this case in the previously under-examined context of teachers’ collaborative inquiry for their ongoing professional learning. It offers insights into how co-teaching might support teachers to enact new and challenging pedagogies aimed at addressing the persistent and considerable challenges posed by an ethical imperative to promote mathematics learning for diverse (all) students. Participating in the co-construction of a design for their collaborative inquiry enabled teachers to restructure their work and expand the possibilities for their individual and collective practice. It allowed teachers to reconstruct their identities from the lone operator whose professional reputation needs protection from exposure of any weaknesses in their mathematics knowledge or practice, to a learner whose naïve questions and gaps in practice served as a resource for all in their learning.</p>

Restructuring mathematics teaching | learning: Co-teaching as a designed approach to teachers' collaborative inquiry

<p>This study explores how participation in collaborative inquiry opens space for an expanded set of understandings and practices for mathematics teaching | learning. It examines the affordances of collaborative inquiry to promote, or constrain, teacher learning in the context of teachers’ day to day work. Sociocultural perspectives underpin the study whereby professional learning is presumed to be situated in the social and cultural contexts of teachers’ work. A survey of the literature supports the assumption that persistent underachievement in mathematics for some groups of learners requires shifts in what teachers know and can do and reveals the importance of collaboration and inquiry for teacher learning. The study involved a participatory, design-based approach underpinned by an authentic and appreciative inquiry stance. Design-based research was chosen for its proximity to practice and its focus on connections between the enactment of learning designs and outcomes of interest. The research was iterative and cyclical whereby the researcher worked with a group of four teachers in one New Zealand primary school to design, implement and refine an approach to teachers’ collaborative inquiry. A range of data were gathered during a 6-month collaboration, including from teacher interviews, classroom observations and three-weekly group meetings. The analysis took a pragmatic and multi-theoretical approach to examine what it meant to design and enact teachers’ collaborative inquiry. Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) was employed to capture the complexity of the teachers’ collaborative inquiry activity and to analyse and interpret the contradictions that arose. A key finding was that a co-teaching inquiry approach fostered conditions that afforded teachers’ expanded access to and depth of engagement with new, and often dissonant, practice ideas. Through co-teaching, mathematics teaching | learning was restructured within three interconnected fields of practice: the teachers’ enacted practice, their talk about practice, and their noticing of student thinking within practice. The co-teaching inquiry activity was increasingly directed at a collective purpose; involved an interplay of risk and trust; supported shifts in teachers’ roles and responsibilities; and allowed teachers to constantly renegotiate the goals of their shared activity. The co-teaching arrangement disrupted practice whereby teachers’ actions served as minor interruptions to each other’s practice and thus became a resource for teacher learning. Opportunities to engage deeply with one another’s practice opened space for an expanded set of actions for each of the teachers in their own practice. This thesis adds nuanced understandings of the interrelated roles of collaboration and inquiry in improving teaching. It contributes to the growing body of literature exploring co-teaching arrangements for teacher learning, in this case in the previously under-examined context of teachers’ collaborative inquiry for their ongoing professional learning. It offers insights into how co-teaching might support teachers to enact new and challenging pedagogies aimed at addressing the persistent and considerable challenges posed by an ethical imperative to promote mathematics learning for diverse (all) students. Participating in the co-construction of a design for their collaborative inquiry enabled teachers to restructure their work and expand the possibilities for their individual and collective practice. It allowed teachers to reconstruct their identities from the lone operator whose professional reputation needs protection from exposure of any weaknesses in their mathematics knowledge or practice, to a learner whose naïve questions and gaps in practice served as a resource for all in their learning.</p>

Analysis of Students' Critical Thinking Improvement in Teaching Inquiry with Cognitive Conflict Strategies

This study aimed to analyze the improvement of students' critical thinking skills in teaching inquiry with cognitive conflict strategies. Quasi experiments were conducted in this study. The research sample was twenty students as physics teacher candidates at a private university in West Nusa Tenggara - Indonesia. The critical thinking skills test instrument in the form of essay questions is used to measure students' critical thinking skills. The analysis of increasing of critical thinking skills was analyzed descriptively with the n-gain equation, and the difference in critical thinking skills between the pretest and posttest using a pair t-test which was preceded by homogeneity and normality tests. The results of the n-gain analysis showed that the increase in students' critical thinking scores was in the moderate category. Qualitatively, the increase in scores from pretest to posttest in a row is from not critically to enough critically. The results of this study imply that inquiry teaching with cognitive conflict strategies has the potential to be implemented in classroom teaching for the purpose of improving students' critical thinking skills.

Pengaruh Metode Mengajar Inquiry dan Minat Membaca Terhadap Kemampuan Menulis Cerita Pendek Siswa Kelas XI SMA Negeri Sekota Samarinda

This research aims to find out the difference between teaching inquiry methods and teaching methods of two stay two strays; differences of students who have high and low interest in reading; as well as the interaction between teaching methods and reading interest in the ability to write short stories. The research method is a 2x2 factorial design experiment research, with the research population of all students of Samarinda City State High School. Research data is obtained through tests of writing short stories and reading interest questionnaires. Based on the analysis of data obtained results, there is a difference between students with teaching method inquiry and two stay two stray from the statistical results Fh = 21.57 > Ft = 4.01; there is a difference in ability between students interested in high reading and low reading interest with statistical results Fh = 15.12 > Ft = 4.01; There is an interaction between teaching methods and reading interest in short story writing skills with statistical results Fh = 6.41 > Ft = 4.01. The conclusion of this study is: the method of teaching inquiry is better than two stay two strays; high reading interest is better than low reading interest; there is also an interaction between teaching inquiry methods and reading interest in short story writing skills.

Book Review: Dive into Inquiry

Dive into Inquiry, written by Trevor MacKenzie, introduces the increasingly-popular concept of inquiry-based learning. In addition to defining “inquiry,” the author illustrates best practices of employing this method of teaching by referring to his own narrative in the classroom. The strategies for teaching inquiry-based lessons are categorized into Four Types of Student Inquiry and interactive examples of each type are provided throughout the book. This book is easy to read and allows all teachers – novice and expert, alike – to gain best practices in planning, teaching, and assessing students in authentic and engaging learning experiences.