Ongoing Research Questions
Instruction/Teacher Change. How do the interactions between teachers engaged in a common inquiry in a single school-based PLC contribute to new understandings of teaching and learning mathematics and/or science and content knowledge for teaching? To what degree do these new understandings translate into instructional practice?
Interface With Broader Educational Contexts. What are the ways in which PRiSSM facilitators and school and district administrators, systems, and structures interact to frame and enact the notion of support for teachers engaged in PLC work? How does this help or hinder teachers in developing the structures of their PLC and enacting the subsequent PLC inquiry? In what ways do teacher groups seek to and enact changes to these broader educational contexts?
Learning Outcomes. How does the school-based PLC inquiry impact students’ mathematical and/or scientific achievement and learning?
Major Areas of Research
- PLC development, and associated supports (internal and external)
- PLC progress with inquiry cycle, and associated supports; specifically interested in identification and use of data/evidence
- Nature of discourse inside the PLC;
- Impacts of PLC work on: vision of high quality teaching and learning; subsequent impact on teacher change, beliefs, student learning
- “Ripples” – interactions between teachers/PLCs and external forces
