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The Inquiry Learning Forum: Fostering and Sustaining
Knowledge Networking to Support a Community of Science and Mathematics
Teachers
When Dr. Sasha
Barab asked K-12 teachers of inquiry-based learning to name the best kind of
professional development they could imagine, their answer was: to visit another
teacher's classroom. So Dr. Barab and a team of colleagues from Indiana
University established the Inquiry Learning Forum to allow teachers to do just
that.
The Inquiry Learning Forum (ILF), initially supported by a
grant from the National Science Foundation KDI initiative, is an online
community of K-12 math and science teachers who work together to create,
improve, and share classrooms centered on the learner. The ILF promotes
inquiry-based learning, which encourages students to ask questions, to be
curious about the world around them, to make discoveries, and to test those
discoveries rigorously in a quest for new understanding. This process is guided
by teachers.
The project was a
collaboration of Principal Investigator Dr. Barab and former PI Dr. Thomas
Duffy, as well as co-PIs Dr. Catherine Brown, Dr. Donald Cunningham, Dr. Susan
Herring, Dr. William Harwood, and Dr. Rob Kling. During their involvement with
the project, the PIs and co-PIs were all associated either with the School of
Education or the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana
University. Developing the ILF also involved the participation of postdocs and
graduate students in these disciplines, preschool and elementary school
teachers, and science and math educators.
The project grew from a need to support a learner-centered
approach to math and science in K-12 schools. "At this level," said Dr. Rebecca
Scheckler, a postdoc on the project, "science usually goes by the wayside
unless a teacher is motivated. So one of the things we did was bring axolotls
(aquatic salamanders from Mexico) to teachers. The teachers like them and the
kids are fascinated by them. We used to them to motivate all kinds of
instruction, from life cycles, to counting, sorting exercises, even Mendelian
genetics."
This support was then extended
from the real classroom to the online classroom. The Inquiry Learning Forum
provides a collaborative environment for discussing inquiry-based teaching
practices and advancing community and individual understanding. It works both
to foster inquiry in students and to help teachers examine and reflect on their
own teaching practice.
"Teachers are normally very isolated from one another," says
Dr. Scheckler. "They were craving contact with other teachers. So with that in
mind, we imagined this Web site with streaming video of teachers doing inquiry
in their classrooms."
According to co-PI Dr. Herring, "The idea was that teachers could go
online at their own convenience and observe other teachers teaching in their
classrooms." That idea has been transformed into a reality. At the Inquiry
Learning Forum, teachers and pre-service teachers can virtually "visit" other
teachers' classrooms. They can also take part in discussions with other
teachers, scientists, and educators about the challenges and successes of
inquiry-based learning. In addition, the ILF provides a forum for teachers to
share lesson plans and resources, and to make connections to national and state
standards. The Web site also helps teachers tailor a professional development
plan to their own circumstances. And by using the Web site, teachers also hone
their Internet skills.
An unexpected benefit that researchers found came from the
fact that teachers who were subjects of the videos were asked to write
reflections on their teaching to be posted on the Web site. According to Dr.
Scheckler, teachers reported that was the part of the study that was most
valuable to them. "I have done case studies on some of these teachers, and I
totally concur that their involvement with us really had a big effect on their
teaching. That's why we started to say, we have to look at inquiry not only as
a teaching pedagogy, but also as inquiry into one's practice, because that's
what teachers need to do to change."
Today the Inquiry Learning Forum is a vibrant online
community for math and science teachers of inquiry learning. Teachers visit
from all over the U.S. and abroad. The site is an especially valuable resource
to pre-service teachers.
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