BRAD

Brad's Ideas

What is Collaborative Inquiry?

What's the Idea? In collaborative inquiry, teachers work together to identify common challenges, analyze relevant data, and test out instructional approaches. The idea behind this approach is that such systematic, collaborative work will increase student learning. What's the Reality? Teacher collaboration does not occur naturally; it runs against prevailing norms of teacher isolation and individualistic approaches to teaching. Without specific training, teachers often lack the necessary collaboration skills as well as skills in collecting data, making sense of the information, and figuring out its implications for action. With little time and competing agendas, schools often hold unreasonable expectations for what teachers can accomplish. Another common mistake is to make raising test scores the primary goal, displacing the more important goal of gathering rich data that suggest what adjustments are likely to increase student understanding. What's the Research? A growing body of evidence suggests that when teachers collaborate to pose and answer questions informed by data from their own students, their knowledge grows and their practice changes. Borko (2004) describes teachers who met regularly to review student work in response to a common assignment. From their joint study of students' strategies, the teachers gained greater understanding of their students' reasoning and adapted their classroom practices to this new knowledge.