End Note: Four defining features of teaching as inquiry
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has been a catalyst for teaching as inquiry. Two Carnegie leaders, Mary Taylor Huber and Pat Hutchings, have written a key book about this approach, The Advancement of Learning: Building the Teaching Commons. In it, they propose “a definition that reflects an evolving set of ideas and practices that can and should shape the work of faculty as they bring their habits, methods, and commitments as scholars to their work as teachers—and to their students’ learning” (18).
Huber and Hutchings identify four defining features:
1. Questioning. In a survey of scholars from the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL), the authors found that the most powerful motivator for becoming involved with teaching as inquiry was questions about student learning that the scholars wanted to explore. Huber and Hutchings note that questions about “what works” frequently lead to open-ended questions about “what happens.” “Serious work on teaching begins, that is, where all scholarship begins, with curiosity and an urge to understand more clearly what is happening and why” (21).
2. Gathering and exploring evidence. Teaching as inquiry “entails systematic, disciplined inquiry, and requires hard thinking about how to gather and analyze evidence” (24). The authors list an array of options for evidence, including course portfolios, student work, videotapes, ethnographic interviews, classroom observations, questionnaires, and longitudinal tracking. This is as it should be, according to Huber and Hutchings: “Teaching and learning are complex processes, and no single source or type of evidence can provide a sufficient window into the difficult questions raised by student learning. … As in any research, the challenge is to employ the right set of methods and the best sources of evidence to explore the question in ways that will be credible and significant” (24).
3. Trying out and refining new insights. Huber and Hutchings indicate that “those who become involved in systematic investigation of their classrooms almost universally report that the work leads to important changes” (26). Among CASTL scholars, 81 percent stated that the quality of their students’ learning has been improved by their work as scholars of teaching and learning. Sixty-nine percent believed that more of their students achieved high standards. Many also indicated that questions about student learning caused them to develop more demanding modes of student assessment. Thus, the authors suggest, the results of teaching as inquiry will be tried out and used for improvement.
4. Going public. “The scholarship of teaching and learning is about more than individual improvement and development—it is about producing knowledge that is available for others to use and build on” (27). Work on teaching, Huber and Hutchings believe, “is not really finished until it has been captured in ways that others can see and examine” (27). Going public may mean one of any number of forms of representation and exchange, forms that can create new angles on the process and the significance of the work.
Finally, the authors note that, like other complex intellectual work, the four features are not often linear. “… the fact that its four elements occur in all kinds of permutations and rhythms makes it an easier fit with the variable rhythms of faculty life itself” (29).
Huber, M. T., & Hutchings, P. (2005). The Advancement of Learning: Building the Teaching Commons. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
