Common Principles for Uncommon Schools

Horace Volume 15 | 1999 | Issue 4

The Cycle of Inquiry and Action: Essential Learning Communities: Explores how a continual dynamic of asking good questions and finding evidence can guide a school's actions. Inquiry and a culture of evidence are powerful tools in the growth of an Essential school community.  

Key to Teacher Inquiry: Framing the Question, Planning the Research

Teacher inquiry groups that take a hypothesis-testing approach to action research often have difficulty framing a good research question. John Newlin, who coaches the IITIC groups connected with Maine’s regional CES Center, the Southern Maine Partnership, worked with Kate Graham and Kathy Simon in CES’s national office to come up with this framework to organize such work: What would you

Horace: Volume 15 | 1999 | Issue 4 Published: October 11, 1999 By: Kathleen Cushman Topics: Cycle of Inquiry, Data Collection & Analysis

Readings & Resources

Allen, David, ed. Assessing Student Learning. New York: Teachers College Press, 1998. Cochran-Smith, Marilyn and Susan L. Lytle. Inside/Outside: Teacher Research and Knowledge. New York: Teachers College Press, 1992. Duckworth, Eleanor, “Teaching As Research” chapter in The Having of Wonderful Ideas. New York: Teachers College Press, 1987. Evans, Claryce, “Support for Teachers Studying Their Own Work.” Educational Leadership, March 1991.

Horace: Volume 15 | 1999 | Issue 4 Published: October 11, 1999 By: Kathleen Cushman Topics: Cycle of Inquiry, Data Collection & Analysis

The Cycle of Inquiry and Action: Essential Learning Communities

In a true learning community, inquiry becomes everybody’s work. Teaching, learning, community involvement, leadership, organizational management and change, professional growth–all take place in a continual dynamic of asking good questions and finding evidence that can guide a school’s actions. The kids who skip school, the kids who cut class, and the kids kicked out of class all end up, at

Horace: Volume 15 | 1999 | Issue 4 Published: October 11, 1999 By: Kathleen Cushman Topics: Cycle of Inquiry, Data Collection & Analysis

Three Ways of Looking at a Colleague: Protocols for Peer Observation

Simon Hole, a long-time Essential School teacher who teaches fourth grade in Narragansett, R.I., has developed guidelines for six ways for teachers to conduct peer observations in the classroom. Three of them follow in slightly condensed form: Protocol # 1: Observer as Video Camera This protocol aims to develop observational reliability between the observer and the observed. No two people

Horace: Volume 15 | 1999 | Issue 4 Published: October 11, 1999 By: Kathleen Cushman Topics: Cycle of Inquiry, Data Collection & Analysis

What Counts as Data

When teachers set out to observe the “data” in their own practice, they can call on a wide range of evidence, both quantitative and qualitative. (See Horace, Volume 12, Number 3, January 1996 for a more complete discussion of “common” and “uncommon” measures.) Among the possibilities: Student work (as exemplars and points along a continuum of standards) in written, videotaped,

Horace: Volume 15 | 1999 | Issue 4 Published: October 11, 1999 By: Kathleen Cushman Topics: Cycle of Inquiry, Data Collection & Analysis
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