ERIC Number: ED218244
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1982-Mar
Pages: 24
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Developing Inquiry Skills in Teachers: Some Reflections on Improvement of Practice.
Shultz, Jeffrey; Yinger, Robert J.
The reflections of two social scientists regarding an inservice education program for elementary school teachers were the basis of their approach to inservice programs: Teachers need to have analytical and inquiry skills that will allow them to read research reports and listen to inservice presentations, digest the information, and then apply what seems useful to them in their particular situations. When an elementary school was about to undergo a transition from a traditional, self-contained classroom structure to an open-concept school, where teachers worked in teams, a summer workshop was developed to teach needed analytical and inquiry skills to teachers. The development of certain skills would benefit the teachers: (1) journal keeping; (2) ability to reflect on one's own performance; and (3) an ability to observe the actions of others and gain understanding of those actions from the perspective of the participants. A 2-week workshop was designed and implemented through day-by-day schedules. While the participants at first had difficulty in accepting the concept that development of inquiry skills would be valuable in a team-teaching situation, the master plan of the workshop eventually became apparent to them. Follow-up studies in the fall, however, revealed that, because of the organizational structure of the school and lack of time, teachers had little opportunity to utilize all the skills they had learned. The inservice workshop was successful in changing some teachers' beliefs about teaching. However, it was not successful in that it did not deal with the problems faced by the teacher in implementing these changes, given the constraints imposed by the ways schools are organized. (JD)
Publication Type: Speeches/Meeting Papers; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Note: Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (New York, NY, March 22, 1982).