This research has taken place at a time when governments in Australia, like governments throughout the Western world, have given higher priority to funding teachers’ professional learning. This support for teachers’ learning tends to be informed by standards-based ‘reforms’ of schooling, underpinned by narrowly individualistic paradigms of teacher knowledge and enacted in managerial models of professional development. The effectiveness of this ‘PD’ for individual teachers tends to be measured in rigid accountability regimes. My study is a conceptual, grounded and reflexive inquiry into teachers’ professional learning in Victoria, Australia. Central to the study is a multi-levelled account of a small group of English-literature teachers at Eastern Girls’ College, in Melbourne, Australia, learning about literary theory over a period of fourteen months. These teachers operate within an institutional setting in which they are certainly expected to be accountable in managerial terms, and yet they can be seen negotiating a very different paradigm of professional learning. In my account of their learning in this study, I develop a model of inquiry-based professional learning that offers a richly dialogic alternative to narrowly individualistic paradigms of professional knowledge and professional development.

abstract: The purpose of this practitioner inquiry was to explore the use of Guided Critical Reflection (GCR) in preparing preservice teachers for English learners (ELs). As a teacher researcher, I documented, analyzed, and discussed the ways in which students in my course used the process of GCR to transform their passively held understandings about ELs. Specifically, the research questions were: 1) What are preservice teachers' common sense about teaching and learning related to ELs? 2) How does GCR transform preservice teachers' common sense about ELs? 3) What is my role as an educator in creating opportunities for GCR? I utilized methods for data collection that fit my teaching practices. Data sources included three types of observations (self-reflective field notes, audio recordings of each class, and notes documented by an outside observer), student-work artifacts, and my audio reflection journal. I analyzed data inductively and deductively using a modified analytic induction approach. Building on previous research concerning the use of reflection in teacher preparation, I define GCR as the process in which I guided preservice teachers to acknowledge and examine their common sense about ELs, reframe what they know in light of course learning, and transform their understandings. Five major findings emerged from this study. First, preservice teachers entered the course with common sense notions about ELs rooted in their educational and life experiences. Students felt comfortable sharing what they knew about ELs, but needed to be scaffolded to examine how their life experiences shaped their common sense. Within the course, preservice teachers framed and reframed their common sense in different ways. Through the process of GCR, students evidenced a renewed sense about ELs. Finally, my role as a teacher involved establishing a comfortable learning environment, valuing my students' common sense as the catalyst for course learning, and guiding students through their reflective work. Ultimately, I was able to create opportunities for GCR because I too was reflecting on my practices, just as I was asking my students to reflect on their common sense about ELs. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Curriculum and Instruction 2011

As demographics change, our school populations are ever changing. Preservice teachers (PSTs) need to be aware of how to meet the needs of all of their future students. Teacher education programs have been charged with the duty of preparing these PSTs for the diverse school population they will encounter. This qualitative multiple case study focused on the influence of specific work with PSTs in the inquiry process within a learning community to make sense of critical literacy. The following research questions guided this study: (1) How do elementary PSTs engaged in practitioner inquiry make meaning of critical literacy instruction within a facilitated learning community? (2) How do PSTs enact critical literacy instruction in the field experience elementary classroom while engaged in practitioner inquiry in a facilitated learning community? (a) What facilitates PSTs as they enact critical literacy instruction in the elementary field experience classroom? (b) What inhibits PSTs as they enact critical literacy instruction in the elementary field experience classroom? Participants included six PSTs from a cohort in a two-day a week field experience. A sample of three cases was selected to analyze in more detail and for a cross-case analysis. Data sources included transcriptions of learning community meetings, PST written reflections at the end of each learning community meeting, two interviews with each participant, a researcher’s journal, video-recorded literacy lesson and lesson plan, critical literacy concept maps, literacy belief platforms, and plans for learning community sessions. The findings for each case are detailed in chapters four, five, and six. These findings were analyzed to develop assertions in a cross-case analysis. These assertions included: (1) The three preservice teachers’ sensemaking and/or enactment of critical literacy was impacted as they “saw” examples of critical literacy, (2) Making meaning of critical literacy and critical literacy enactment are an interwoven process that inform each other, (3) As these PSTs engaged in the PLC, their sensemaking and enactment of critical literacy evolved, (4) All PSTs faced similar inhibitors to critical literacy enactment, however, Jodi and Tira were able to negotiate many of these inhibitors to enact critical literacy.

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine how I can facilitate experiences with art that promote "productive ambiguity," or the ability to transform tensions that disrupt our current understandings into opportunities for personal growth. Ambiguity becomes productive when our encounters with difference stimulate curiosity, imagination, and consideration of new possibilities and perspectives. While employing a multi-methods practitioner inquiry that combined elements of action research, autoethnography and arts based research, I addressed the following questions with a voluntary group of fifth grade research participants: How can I facilitate experiences with art that promote productive ambiguity? How do my students interact with the various visual content and instructional strategies that I develop and implement? How might these interactions inform my future teaching practice, and how does my own reflective visual journaling process inform my research? In addition to employing reflective sketching to document and analyze data, I also presented research findings in the form of a visual research narrative. My analysis of research findings produced the following teaching strategies for facilitating meaningful experiences with art that promote productive ambiguity: (a) Use an inquiry approach to instruction as much as possible in order to position students to actively navigate the space between the known and unknown while seeking fresh understandings rather than passively accepting new information. (b) Explore how new concepts or themes relate to students' lives in order to situate unknowns in relation to their present knowns. (c) Aim to balance structure, flexibility and accountability while developing and implementing curricula. This promotes productive ambiguity as both teachers and students negotiate their pre-conceived ideas or plans and push themselves to respond to challenges encountered within their immediate environment. (d) In order to avoid unnecessary confusion, explicitly state that students should takes risks while generating new ideas rather than identifying a pre-existing solution. (e) Finally, ask students to identify why skills and knowledge generated during these activities are valuable in order to promote meta-cognition of how this ambiguous space can become more productive. In addition to these practical findings, research participants agreed that sharing their interpretations of visual phenomena with one another enabled them to understand each other better. I also discovered the ways in which productive ambiguity emerged in the spaces in between my teacher/researcher/artist roles when I perceived challenges as prospects for personal transformation. As a whole, this dissertation exhibited how relational aesthetics and arts based research theories translated into my elementary art classroom practice while simultaneously integrating these concepts into the research study design and presentation.

abstract: A teacher's belief in what he or she can do is often a predictor for how well students may do in their classroom. Working together in a collaborative setting while looking at student work, determining next steps, and setting goals for student achievement can provide the impetus for teachers to change practices, implement different strategies and find success in the classroom. Collaborative practitioner inquiry focused in a single content such as written expression can bring about positive change for student achievement and teacher efficacy. In this study, a collaborative practitioner inquiry process was used to enhance teacher efficacy and increase student achievement in writing. This process was implemented school wide as an integral part of the school's instructional program. Teachers met once each month in Data Writing Team groups to look at student writing in their own classrooms and across their grade level. Based on the writing samples, teachers created SMART goals, determined levels of proficiency, and identified instructional strategies to implement. Data were collected through the administration of a teacher efficacy survey, focus group and individual interviews, student achievement data from pre- and post- writing samples, and observations and interpretations in a research journal. Findings concluded that collaborative practitioner inquiry contributed measurably to most Lake Shore Elementary School teachers' efficacy as teachers of writing especially by enhancing their convictions that they could teach writing and solve instructional roadblocks individually and collectively. In addition, collaborative practitioner inquiry contributed to substantial improvement in Lake Shore students' writing achievement. Teachers' accountability and purposes for instruction were enhanced through opportunities to work collaboratively together. Finally, collaborative practitioner inquiry contributed to students' writing achievement by adding to teachers' understanding of writing instruction and fostering continuously improved teaching practices. As a result of conducting this study, I learned that teachers who have the time to meet, talk, and think together form a greater focus as a grade level and, in turn, a purpose for what they do in the classroom. When teachers find success in their instruction their efficacy increases and as found during this study student achievement increases. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ed.D. Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2011

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