Committed to the cause [electronic resource] : a relational analysis of collaborative inquiry in schools
Keywords: Education.

Education reforms across the country rely on school teams to bring innovative practices to life. In the last decade, these efforts have evolved against a data-rich backdrop, where data fuel decisions about achievement, instruction, and assessment. Many schools focus reform initiatives on data inquiry cycles that expect teacher and administrator teams to examine student work and design, implement, and assess interventions to improve achievement. As collaborative inquiry ascends in prominence as a school "reform engine, " so does the ongoing concern over identifying factors that can support teams' development of networked communities of practice and spread of evidence-based practices and beliefs. This work is extremely challenging and typically requires expert assistance. One crucial and under-explored influence for collaborative inquiry is the strategic role that trained outside facilitators can play in helping teams to grow evidence-based work at their sites. The dissertation explores what links exist between inquiry teams' professional relationships, with one another, trainers, and administrators, and their depth of inquiry implementation. In order to understand changes in teams' structure, practices, beliefs, and inquiry spread, data were collected in middle and high schools over three years, as part of a larger study in a large urban district in the northeastern United States. The schools were participating in a Data and Leadership Program (DLP), as part of a district-wide collaborative inquiry initiative. Data include repeated focus groups, observations, and semi-structured interviews from 12 representative focal schools, and annual teacher surveys from 77 schools, gathered between 2008 and 2010 from teachers, administrators, and DLP support staff. The study focuses on three large case study high schools within the sample, as previous research suggests that comprehensive high schools provide the most challenging and fertile settings to explore the relative success or failure of inquiry reform. Findings suggest that a strategic facilitator-principal collaboration around inquiry goals, outcomes, and vision is a key driver of inquiry teams' success. Teacher teams are more likely to adopt inquiry practices and beliefs, and develop a network of practice around these, when: 1) teams are heterogeneous with respect to subjects taught and experience, rotate responsibilities among members, and have common planning time dedicated to inquiry; 2) an expert outside inquiry facilitator spends at least two days a week on site and pushes teams to be granular with learning targets and target student groups; 3) the principal distributes leadership and actively supports, legitimizes, and prioritizes inquiry as a vehicle for school change with staff; and 4) assigned individuals or cross-functional data teams support data analysis and dissemination of findings to school staff. With a growing number of districts relying on inquiry-based decision making and instruction, and teams as the projected vehicle to enact this work, this research can help decision makers at different levels guide school improvement efforts.