May 21, 2001
University Park, Pa. – Imagine a program that helps veteran school teachers hone their craft, gives teachers-to-be a year-long classroom experience complete with a classroom-based research project, and gives higher education professors insight into reforming teacher training programs.

Penn State’s elementary professional development schools (PDS’s) do exactly that.  Three years ago, in keeping with national movements in education, Penn State University and the State College Area School District (SCASD) created four elementary PDS’s to embark on a threefold mission: 1) to enhance the educational experiences of all children, 2) to ensure the high quality induction of new teachers into the teaching profession, and 3) to engage in continuing professional growth for veteran teachers and teacher educators.

Coordinated by College of Education associate professors of curriculum and supervision Nancy Dana and James Nolan, with support from several Professional Development Associates (PDA’s) in the College of Education, elementary school principals, and others, the PDS and teacher inquiry have become vehicles for transforming the teaching profession.

Teacher inquiry is officially defined as “teachers’ problematizing their practice, systematically studying that practice, and taking action based on such study,”  said Dr. Dana. In other words, she explained, teacher inquiry is a method of learning about and reforming one’s teaching practices by focusing on some aspect of the classroom that a teacher is passionate and curious about – be it curriculum, teaching practice, particular children, or educational theory.  By developing questions, i.e. “inquiring,” about a particular topic, and studying that topic over time, veteran teachers and future teachers improve their own teaching methods.  The knowledge acquired and lessons learned can be passed on to other teachers for their benefit as well.

“PDS is a national movement,” said Dr. Nolan.  “Teacher inquiry is something that is advocated within that movement but not highly practiced.

“We are trying to engage teachers to ask questions about what they do,” he explained, noting that inquiries can be about a wide variety of topics.  “They can be about curriculum, about focusing on needs of a particular child or group of children, about teaching practices, or even about one’s beliefs about teaching.”

“Over the last decade there has been a resurgence in teacher inquiry, with many scholars advocating for it,” added Dr. Dana.  “We have been able to take the concept of teacher inquiry and incorporate it into the fabric of our PDS.  Consequently, Penn State is now one of the key schools doing this.”

For its focus on making inquiry a central feature of the PDS, Penn State PDS faculty and SCASD teachers were selected to give a “showcase presentation” at the Holmes Partnership’s national meeting held in January in Albuquerque, N.M.

“The PDS is a vehicle for continuing education for practicing teachers,” Dana continued.  “It fosters the simultaneous renewal of public school education and higher education.  Teacher inquiry is about formulating a question that emerges from daily teaching experiences.  It is something that is living with you in the classroom.

“Inquiry is not only a way of being inducted into the teaching profession.  It is a way that teachers grow as professionals.  It is a very encouraging, energizing way to take charge of your own professional growth as a teacher.”

Funded in part by by a K-16 partnership grant from the Lucent Technologies Foundation, the Penn State/SCASD elementary school PDS is made up of some 36 veteran teachers (active teachers in one of four SCASD elementary schools), seven professional development associates (PDA’s) from Penn State’s College of Education, and, this year, 32 undergraduate interns who are placed in mentor teachers’ classrooms for the duration of the school year to both learn teaching practices and to conduct a teacher inquiry project.

On Saturday, April 28, 2001, at the Ferguson Township Elementary School, mentors and interns presented the results of their inquiry projects to each other and to an assembled audience of future interns, PDAs, parents, friends, Penn State faculty members, classroom teachers and others. Lucent Technologies sent a representative as well.  The third annual Teacher Inquiry Conference participants heard presentations with titles such as “Introducing Technology in the Kindergarten Classroom,” “How Children Make Decisions,” “Let’s Talk About Science,” How Do Quiet Learners Really Learn,” and “Writers’ Workshops in the Primary Classroom.”

The presentations, it is important to point out, were not all given by Penn State undergraduate interns. Some inquiry reports were presented by both mentor teachers and interns who together studied their inquiry topic.  Veteran teachers who had conducted inquiry projects alone or with other veteran teachers also presented their findings.  The PDS benefits educators at all levels of the profession.

According to Dana, the beauty of teacher inquiry is that “we [veteran teachers, future teachers, and teacher educators] all continue to grow.”  Interns, she said, are able to go into the teaching profession so well prepared through the experience that in their first job “they are often perceived as having already completed a year of teaching.”

In the final session of the third annual Teacher Inquiry Conference, Dana summed up the purpose of teacher inquiry. “We continue to actualize our goals,” she said, “and I want to challenge all of you to bring the spirit of inquiry wherever you go.  It is through our questioning attitudes that we will ultimately transform the teaching profession itself.”

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Contact: Susan Burlingame, College of Education, (814) 863-2216 or sjb17@psu.edu.