On Teacher Inquiry

On Teacher Inquiry could be read as an answer to the question, “Teacher research: What’s in it for the students?” This new volume in the NCRLL Collection addresses the relationships among teacher research, teacher practice, and student learning. The authors observe, analyze, raise questions, design methodologies, and build relationships with colleagues to create the conditions and the contexts that advance student learning. This book offers a framework, examples, and practical guidelines for teacher researchers on how to design and conduct individual and collaborative inquiries that build new knowledge and theories about teaching and learning. On Teacher Inquiry offers a narrative history of social networking as productive inquiry and suggests that practitioners at all levels should continue this tradition as they create and participate in open, Internet-based venues for representing pedagogical knowledge.

Chapter topics cover: Fostering Communities of Language Learners, Using Narrative as Teacher Research, The Power of Teacher Inquiry Communities, and Building Resources for Doing Your Own Research.

Dixie Goswami teaches at the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College.

Ceci Lewis teaches English at Cochise Community College. Marty Rutherford is Director of Curriculum and Development at the Center for the Art of Translation in San Francisco. Diane Waff is a Practice Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the Graduate School of Education. She served as Chair of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Secondary Section Steering Committee 2006-2008.

“What a jewel of a book!”
—Ann Lieberman, Senior Scholar at Stanford University

“On Teacher Inquiry is for those who cherish what the editors call ‘the habit of inquiry’ because they understand that teaching is always about learning, both theirs’ and their students’.”
—Sonia Nieto, Professor Emerita, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

“Bringing to life what it means to create a web of meaning for students and collaborative learning communities for teachers, the book portrays how teacher research fosters both reflective teaching and affirmative experiences for diverse students.”
—Ann Lewin-Benham, author of Powerful Children

“Teacher researchers have long endeavored to bring the heartbeats and breathing of living classrooms to the educational community. This volume continues in that great tradition.”
—Bob Fecho, University of Georgia

“On Teacher Inquiry provides richly textured images of Dixie Goswami's lifework—the power of teacher inquiry to inform the conceptual frameworks of teachers and the complexities of everyday practice. The accompanying narratives offer readers very accessible and compelling examples of how local classrooms and communities become sites for deep, collaborative investigation and meaning-making about students’ and teachers’ literacies and learning. Both as a resource for those new to teacher inquiry and for the more experienced, the book makes a very important contribution to this exceptional series.”
—Susan L. Lytle, Founding Director, Philadelphia Writing Project, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania