NAVIGATING BY QUESTIONS

Rose Asera, Ph.DRethinking Pre-college Math Summer Institute Aug 22, 2012

WHY INQUIRY? Move into a situation with questions: starting

with questions will take you places that starting with answers won’t.

Formal inquiry: an organized form of professional development that involves forming questions, gathering and analyzing data, and acting on and sharing results

Informal inquiry: nurturing your intellectual curiosity and asking questions. Inquiry becomes a habit of mind.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE CULTURE OF: Your college ?

Your department ?

Your classroom ?

What do you pay attention to in order to describe these cultures ?

CULTURE: Culture is the connective tissue between formal

changes (policy, structure, content) and individual experiences

Can someone ‘change’ culture? (Can someone ‘culture’ change?)

What are the levers of culture change? How are the characteristics of the culture a resource

to you? an obstacle to you?

What is the relationship of culture change to changing policy/ structure/ individuals?

What are the characteristics of a culture of inquiry?

CULTURE OF YOUR DEPARTMENT What have you done that has shifted the

culture in your department?

How is the departmental culture communicated to new people or part-time faculty? to students?

What do you do to establish the culture in your classroom?

Has changing instruction changed the way you see students and learning?

QUESTIONS ABOUT STUDENTS AND STUDENT LEARNING What works /for whom /under what conditions ?

What do you know about your students’ lives, aspirations, & challenges? What strengths do students bring to the classroom?

How does knowing your students affect your teaching?

What does learning look like?

How do students view mathematics?

What is the relationship between the data patterns and your observations in the classroom?

MAPPING YOUR DEPARTMENT & CAMPUS

Besides colleagues in your department, whose work is affected by changes you are making in developmental math?

Who are your allies? Do you have connections across campus boundaries and silos? Why is this important?

Who needs to be involved in the changes? Who needs to be aware and informed?

RESOURCES BEGINNING WITH ‘C’

Community & colleagues

Collaboration & conversation

Students as Co-inquirers

INQUIRING MINDS WHAT ARE YOUR NEXT QUESTIONS?

WHAT’S FACULTY INQUIRY?

Taking your teaching sensibility-- Intuition Hunches Observations Puzzles Dilemmas Questions

Seriously and systematically pursuing evidence to gain more insight into student learning

& Sharing it

WHAT DOES INQUIRY LOOK LIKE? Who are my students?

Katie Hern’s students at Chabot College http://www.cfkeep.org/html/stitch.php?s=19612639508781

WHAT DOES THIS LOOK LIKE: MATHEMATICS What are we teaching?

Jay Cho & Friends at Pasadena City College

http://www.cfkeep.org/html/stitch.php?s=13143081975303&id=87553800444634

WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE? How do we know they are learning?

Laura Graff and friends at College of the Desert

http://www.cfkeep.org/html/stitch.php?s=14832740290866&id=34947815104339

THE CYCLE OF INQUIRY The cycle of inquiry:

An outcome of inquiry is more inquiry ….

GATHER DATA

ANALYZE DATA

ACTION

MAKE YOUR WORK PUBLIC

SHAPE QUESTI

ON

SHAPING THE QUESTION

What is?

What’s the problem?

What works? How?

What’s possible?

Why?

GATHERING DATA & EVIDENCE Campus data– trends, patterns, big

pictures Classroom observations Examples of student work Results of a common assessment Think-alouds Student surveys, interviews and focus

groups Looking outward as well as inward:

evidence from other educational settings (research literature, cases, etc)

ANALYZING DATA Finding patterns

Quantitative analysis- when are statistics useful?

Qualitative analysis – beyond anecdotes - what are the patterns of response?

Finding outliers: when are outliers worthy of attention?

ACTION IN THE CLASSROOM

How does what you have learned affect the situation?

What actions do your data indicate?

Are there changes that can be made?

How is inquiry part of implementation? Of ongoing improvement?

WHY MAKE YOUR WORK PUBLIC?

To reflect and reconstruct the process To critically reexamine data To tell the story To make public and invite conversation To share ongoing questions For others to build on

WHY COLLABORATIVE INQUIRY?

To gain different perspectives on the problem

In isolation (classroom/office/campus) you can’t see the dimensions or magnitude of the problem

You understand more about your context by seeing other contexts

The problems we are addressing are bigger than any one person “I never think it’s my problem alone”

STUDENTS AS CO-INQUIRERS

Students bring a new perspective to data

gathering and analysis have access to informal aspects of

other students’ lives can translate across cultures may have tech savvy

OUTCOMES OF INQUIRY Increased local knowledge of teaching

and learning & common language Greater understanding of students and

their learning process Shared responsibility for student

learning Integration of professional learning in

work responsibilities Analysis to action More inquiry Inquiry becomes a habit or mindset

A CAUTIONARY NOTE It doesn’t all work

Finding things that don’t work is part of inquiry

Sharing mistakes is part of learning and is very valuable (and not always easy)

FACULTY INQUIRY IS PART OF THE INQUIRY FAMILY

Teacher as Researcher Faculty Learning Communities Reflective Inquiry Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Faculty Inquiry Groups Formative Evaluation

FIG RESOURCES SPECChttp://carnegiefoundation.org/previous-work/undergraduate-education

http://www.cfkeep.org/html/stitch.php?s=2814408673732&id=94404660812025

Faculty Inquiry Network http://facultyinquiry.net/

Contact: roseasera@gmail.com