On Teacher Inquiry: Approaches to Language and Literacy Research

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.