Navigating by Questions

1. Navigating by Questions Rose Asera, Ph.D Rethinking Pre-college Math Summer Institute Aug 22, 2012

2. Why inquiry? Move into a situation with questions: starting with questions will take you places that starting with answers won’t. Formal inquiry: an organized form of professional development that involves forming questions, gathering and analyzing data, and acting on and sharing results Informal inquiry: nurturing your intellectual curiosity and asking questions. Inquiry becomes a habit of mind.

3. How would you describe the culture of: • Your college ? • Your department ? • Your classroom ? What do you pay attention to in order to describe these cultures ?

4. Culture: • Culture is the connective tissue between formal changes (policy, structure, content) and individual experiences • Can someone ‘change’ culture? (Can someone ‘culture’ change?) • What are the levers of culture change? • How are the characteristics of the culture a resource to you? an obstacle to you? • What is the relationship of culture change to changing policy/ structure/ individuals? • What are the characteristics of a culture of inquiry?

5. culture of your Department • What have you done that has shifted the culture in your department? • How is the departmental culture communicated to new people or part-time faculty? to students? • What do you do to establish the culture in your classroom? • Has changing instruction changed the way you see students and learning?

6. Questions about students and student learning • What works /for whom /under what conditions ? • What do you know about your students’ lives, aspirations, & challenges? What strengths do students bring to the classroom? • How does knowing your students affect your teaching? • What does learning look like? • How do students view mathematics? • What is the relationship between the data patterns and your observations in the classroom?

7. Mapping your department & campus Besides colleagues in your department, whose work is affected by changes you are making in developmental math? • Who are your allies? Do you have connections across campus boundaries and silos? Why is this important? • Who needs to be involved in the changes? Who needs to be aware and informed?

8. Resources beginning with ‘C’ • Community & colleagues • Collaboration & conversation • Students as Co-inquirers

9. Inquiring Minds • WHAT ARE YOUR NEXT QUESTIONS?

10. What’s Faculty inquiry? • Taking your teaching sensibility-- • Intuition • Hunches • Observations • Puzzles • Dilemmas • Questions Seriously and systematically pursuing evidence to gain more insight into student learning & Sharing it

11. What does inquiry look like? Who are my students? • Katie Hern’s students at Chabot College http://www.cfkeep.org/html/stitch.php?s=19612639508781

12. What does this look like: mathematics What are we teaching? • Jay Cho & Friends at Pasadena City College http://www.cfkeep.org/html/stitch.php?s=13143081975303&id=87553800444634

13. What does it look like? • How do we know they are learning? • Laura Graff and friends at College of the Desert http://www.cfkeep.org/html/stitch.php?s=14832740290866&id=34947815104339

14. The cycle of inquiry The cycle of inquiry: An outcome of inquiry is more inquiry ….

15. Shaping the Question • What is? • What’s the problem? • What works? How? • What’s possible? • Why?

16. Gathering Data & Evidence • Campus data– trends, patterns, big pictures • Classroom observations • Examples of student work • Results of a common assessment • Think-alouds • Student surveys, interviews and focus groups • Looking outward as well as inward: evidence from other educational settings (research literature, cases, etc)

17. Analyzing data • Finding patterns • Quantitative analysis- when are statistics useful? • Qualitative analysis – beyond anecdotes - what are the patterns of response? • Finding outliers: when are outliers worthy of attention?

18. Action in the Classroom • How does what you have learned affect the situation? • What actions do your data indicate? • Are there changes that can be made? • How is inquiry part of implementation? Of ongoing improvement?

19. Why make your work public? • To reflect and reconstruct the process • To critically reexamine data • To tell the story • To make public and invite conversation • To share ongoing questions • For others to build on

20. Why Collaborative Inquiry? • To gain different perspectives on the problem • In isolation (classroom/office/campus) you can’t see the dimensions or magnitude of the problem • You understand more about your context by seeing other contexts • The problems we are addressing are bigger than any one person “I never think it’s my problem alone”

21. Students as co-inquirers Students • bring a new perspective to data gathering and analysis • have access to informal aspects of other students’ lives • can translate across cultures • may have tech savvy

22. Outcomes of Inquiry • Increased local knowledge of teaching and learning & common language • Greater understanding of students and their learning process • Shared responsibility for student learning • Integration of professional learning in work responsibilities • Analysis to action • More inquiry • Inquiry becomes a habit or mindset

23. A cautionary note • It doesn’t all work • Finding things that don’t work is part of inquiry • Sharing mistakes is part of learning and is very valuable (and not always easy)

24. Faculty Inquiry is Part of the Inquiry Family • Teacher as Researcher • Faculty Learning Communities • Reflective Inquiry • Scholarship of Teaching and Learning • Faculty Inquiry Groups • Formative Evaluation

25. FIG resources SPECC http://carnegiefoundation.org/previous-work/undergraduate-education http://www.cfkeep.org/html/stitch.php?s=2814408673732&id=94404660812025 Faculty Inquiry Network http://facultyinquiry.net/ Contact: roseasera@gmail.com