Faculty+Inquiry+Group

Our Goal/Big Idea:

Toward increased student achievement in the arts: Teacher Collaboration and Documentation
Overarching question for faculty inquiry:

How can we support the process of collaborative inquiry and help teachers transfer their learning to the classroom context?
Potential "seeds" of understanding: (What does __ mean? How does it apply to our project?)
 * Reflective Practice
 * Inquiry
 * Participant-facilitator
 * Organic process
 * Technology as a collaborative tool
 * Mapping the inquiry process
 * Pedagogical documentation
 * Generative Dialogue
 * Professional Relationships
 * Teacher Leadership

By our visioning days on Sept 3/4, please select one topic you would like to investigate. As you find relevant resources, please link them to this page under the appropriate "seed." Then, come prepared to share (in 3-5 minutes) your ideas, your meaning-making, and how it might inform our work. Additionally, please share any other questions that have emerged as a result of your inquiry.

PARTICIPANT FACILITATOR __descriptions from Leslie's reading:__ from "What Makes //Some// Learning Communities So Effective?" by Ellen Ballock in //Teacher Learning in Small Group Settings// edited by C. Craig and L. Deretchin
 * "The coach of the group is trying to balance two important roles. First, she is working on logistics: helping participants to follow the established norms, to stick to the protocols, to discern between clarifying and probing questions, and to distinguish between observations and judgments. Second, she is working to help the group develop a vision for collaborative work. She tries to find texts that will raise questions about teaching and learning to help the group find direction for shred work, and she supports group members in identifying questions within their practice that htey might ring to the group for examination."
 * ..."continually challenges the group members to report back to the group the ways they are learning and growing through their inquiries and in what ways this learning is impacting their students."
 * ..."continually encourages them in monitoring their collaborative work, and as a group they are considering how they might seek further perspective from parents, studnets, and community members. Since they have learned so much, they are also talking as a group about how they can take action at th edistrict level in order to effect change."

__resources:__ [] this is a list of protocols for use in critical friend groups, similar to CIGs.