Connecting Inquiry and Professional Learning in Education

How might inquiry enhance the professional practice of student and practising teachers, teacher educators and other practitioners? What effect might this have on the learning of young people in and outside of the classroom?

Based on the findings of an international colloquium and drawing upon a range of practices from the UK, USA, Canada, Europe and Australia, this book is designed to make explicit the connections between Practitioner Inquiry and Teacher Professional Learning in Initial Teacher Education and Ongoing Teacher Professional Development.

Considering issues such as

• the relationship between practitioner inquiry and pedagogical content knowledge
• whether it is possible to scale up from small local and intensive innovations to more broadly-based inquiry
• inquiry’s role in professional identity, both individual and communal
• prevailing socio-political contexts and consequences for social policy formation.

It brings together writers who work in designing teacher education courses, and those who are practice-based researchers and policy makers. Crucially, many of these writers inhabit both spheres, and their accounts of how they successfully combine their multiple roles will prove vital reading for all those involved in examining and improving practice leading to enhanced teacher professional learning.

Anne Campbell is Professor of Professional Learning in the Carnegie Faculty of Sport and Education at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK.

Susan Groundwater-Smith is an Honorary Professor of Education in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney, Australia, and leads the Coalition of Knowledge Building School.