Teacher Education @ PennGSE :: Inquire :: Taking an Inquiry Stance

Inquiry and Core Themes

While in our teacher education programs, students benefit from developing an inquiry stance into their teaching practice.

Students learn to view inquiry and teacher research as critical components of thoughtful work. Inquiry questions guide much of coursework, assignments, site meetings, and the shape of the final portfolio which is the capstone project that takes the place of a master’s comprehensive exam.

The master’s portfolio is, at its simplest, a representation of the student’s developing understandings that lead to a grounded teaching philosophy. The culminating analytic essay anchors the artifacts chosen from journal entries, reflective papers, lesson plans, curricula, feedback from mentors and faculty and students, photos, maps, drawings, to demonstrate the insights about the design of powerful learning environments gleaned over the 10-month course-and-field work experiences. Students maintain an online year-long reflective journal with their Penn Mentors in which they acknowledge and articulate their observations, thoughts, and, in particular, observed discontinuities between their experiences in schools and their understandings from their classes, readings and discussions with faculty and peers. The portfolio should be a highly personal and deeply professional marker of inquiry and learning.

Undergraduate urban education minor students also complete a capstone project – a problem-based or theory-based research project, typically taken in the final semester of coursework -- that is completed in the context of an Academically Based Community Service course, a senior thesis course, or an independent study.

Core Themes

Our teacher education programs are organized around core themes that support students’ exploration and understanding of the deep inter-connections between schools, communities, parents and young people’s engagement in learning. There is a deliberate sequence-structure to these themes as they guide student teacher learning from the broad questions of communities and contexts to the integration of theory and practice.These themes are as follows:

Schools and Communities

Families and communities are sources of knowledge, support, and understanding. Our program emphasizes getting to know the communities in which students live. Understanding the history, resources, and life of the community is important in connecting with the students themselves, their family members, and other members of their communities. Student teachers build on these understandings to inquire into the relevance of schools, programs, structures, and policies, as well as to plan curriculum.

Key questions student teachers may reflect on related to this theme are:
How can I communicate effectively with parents?
How can I build better relationships with students’ family members and communities?
How can I structure the curriculum to build on what my students know and experience, in order to help them develop greater understanding?

Learners and Learning

Teacher education students engage in readings, activities, reflections, observations, and discussion on child and adolescent development, both inside and out of the classroom. Student teachers explore the synergies and conflicts between and among students and teachers, and reflect on appropriate learning environments that support diverse modes of student engagement, as well as student demonstration of knowledge.

Questions that student teachers often consider:

What do students bring to their learning environments?
How can I design opportunities to listen to and learn from my students?
How do I support the learning of a variety of students with different strengths and interests?
How can I handle issues of management and authority?

Pedagogy and Practice

Student teachers focus on the multiple dimensions of “learning to teach.” Across all three semesters, students consider how to plan and facilitate experiences that engage diverse learners in inquiry and meaning-making. They consider how intentional decisions are made that fosters the development of a classroom learning community. Taking on this gradually-increasing responsibility provides student teachers with both short- and long-range planning from the vantage points of individual variation and growth of the group. Throughout, students expand their ability to develop measures of understanding about what it means to “know.”

Questions that student teachers ask themselves include:

How can I know when students understand?
How do I know if I am teaching well? Or not?
How do I address/evaluate those with special needs and special talents?
How do classroom management and design of the learning environment interact with one another?

Curriculum

Student teachers identify and explore a range of materials and experiences as sources for learning, even while considering and questioning the theoretical frameworks underlying the objectives and organization of that material, in light of the “big ideas” important for students to negotiate. Both the classroom mentor and the Penn mentor encourages student teachers to think through what is of value as learning outcomes, and the scaffolded experiences that need to be incorporated in order for children to reach those outcomes.

Typical questions students raise in relationship to this theme are:

What are the most important things that a student of this age should learn from being in my class?
How do I plan a curriculum that incorporates the characteristics of relevance, authentic experience, and expected outcomes?
How do I balance the need for eliciting prior knowledge with confident practice and the need for stretching and disequilibrium?

Click here learn more from two students about how the process of creating their portfolios was an extension of developing inquiry as essential to teaching practice.