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Teaching and Teacher Education 23 (2007) 418–431

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Collaborative action research and project work: Promisingpractices for developing collaborative inquiry among early

childhood preservice teachers

Mary Jane Moran�

Department of Child and Family Studies, University of Tennessee, 1215 W. Cumberland Ave., Knoxville, TN 37996-1912, USA

Abstract

Excerpts from case studies of two preservice teaching teams exemplify a new approach for merging research and practice

within an introductory early childhood methods course. Through participation in cycles of collaborative action research

focused on the joint task of implementing long-term projects, preservice teachers evidenced change in the ways they

participated in and developed an inquiry-oriented teaching stance. In particular, changes included (1) an increased

awareness of the value and need to share responsibility with teammates for making curriculum decisions, (2) early attempts

to self-regulate teaching behaviors through reflection-in-action, and (3) an appreciation for and use of documentation in

making visible and public the relationship between teacher thinking, practice, and children’s learning. While changes in

level of reflectivity and practice are noted and valued, the ways in which preservice teachers’ participation begins to change

may be as valuable an indicator of preservice teacher development as the possession of new knowledge and skills.

r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Collaborative inquiry; Action research; Reflective practice; Social constructivist teacher education

1. Introduction

Current school reform efforts in the US includenot only the challenge of bringing teachers up to parin light of dominant theories of development buttransforming the role of teachers away from adirective and prescriptive stance toward one ofinquiry (Holmes Group, 1992, 1996). The creationof teaching and research partnerships amongpreservice teachers is a promising practice forensuring that questions and needs related to practiceguide and inform their learning. In this qualitativestudy, a context for learning was created that used

ee front matter r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

te.2006.12.008

5 974 8354.

ess: [email protected].

project work as the framework—the professionaltool—for requiring and supporting preservice tea-chers to learn to teach, reflect, and make decisionstogether related to children’s needs, abilities, andinterests.

This study was conceptualized as praxis-orientedin which the aim is a ‘‘union of theory and practicewithin reflective action’’ (Schubert, 1991, p. 214).The study was grounded in the notions that (a)knowledge is personally constructed and sociallymediated, (b) research is another form of knowl-edge, and (c) attitudes and skills associated withinquiry can be learned by preservice teachers whenthey are placed in relation—that is, when they teach,reflect, and plan as members of teaching andresearch partnerships.

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dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2006.12.008

mailto:[email protected]

ARTICLE IN PRESSM.J. Moran / Teaching and Teacher Education 23 (2007) 418–431 419

Teaching and research partnerships were estab-lished and mediated by myself, the teacher educator,aimed at encouraging novice teachers to applytheory to practice with a goal of moving away fromprescribed notions of teaching toward one char-acterized by cycles of inquiry. The purpose of thisarticle is to describe initial attempts by members oftwo preservice teaching teams to engage in colla-borative inquiry characterized by their abilities to‘‘mediate ideas, and construct meaning and knowl-edge and act upon them’’ (Richardson, 1994, p. 6).

Teacher education is under scrutiny and revisionwithin the field of early childhood education, due, inpart, to the discontent with the outcomes ofschooling in the United States. How one learns toteach, what constitutes knowledge, and who definesknowledge continue to be debated (Grossman,1990; Connelly, Clandinin, & He, 1997). Whileearly childhood preservice teacher education hasbeen predominately influenced by developmentaltheory that emphasizes children’s learning, teachersthemselves nevertheless continue to learn to teachfrom a transmission orientation, with perspectivesprovided by experts rather than from a position ofinquiry.

As the incongruency between best practices forteacher education and the education of youngchildren continues to challenge the field, a similarresearch incongruency has emerged. Studies focusedon how teachers develop inquiry-oriented teachingoften look from the ‘‘outside-in,’’ (Cochran-Smith& Lytle, 1993; LaBoskey, 1994) rather than viewingteachers as active participants in research abouttheir own teaching (Cole & Knowles, 1993; Clark &Moss, 1996; Rodgers, 1999; Zeichner & Noffke,2001). This stance runs counter to the notion thatteacher inquiry develops from the reciprocal in-forming of teacher practice and teacher research onpractice. Consequently, teacher researchers arepositioned to move into the roles of theory buildersand knowledge producers, influencing the field fromthe inside-out.

The first section of this article includes a briefreview of contributions from theory and practiceand a description of my role as the teacher educator.In the second section, five vignettes are portrayedand analyzed using excerpts from preservice tea-chers’ writings, classroom teaching, and transcrip-tions from team meetings and teacher interviews.The article concludes with implications for theinclusion of research partnerships in preserviceteacher education programs.

2. Contributions from theory, research, and practice

2.1. Social constructivism

The theoretical premises of social constructivisttheory draw attention to the critical importance oflearning opportunities characterized by joint activ-ities in which collaboration and the generation ofshared meaning is socially constructed, communi-cated, and mediated through the use of tools andsign. Rogoff (1995, 1993) describes how the processof social interaction advances thinking for indivi-dual participants in which change in knowledge andskill is representative of their adjustments to andunderstandings of the sociocultural activity. Rogoff(1995) further identifies this process as ‘‘participa-tory appropriation’’ to refer to the way individualstransform their understandings and responsibilitieswithin an activity as a result of their own participa-tion; and that through participation, individuals‘‘become prepared to engage in subsequent similaractivities’’ (p. 150). From this perspective, this studyis focused on describing how preservice teachersbegin to think and act differently as a result ofparticipation in teaching and research teams andhow they begin to evidence change in similarsubsequent activities toward an inquiry orientationto teaching.

2.2. Reflective practice

Contemporary reflective practice is essential toprofessionalizing the field (Han, 1995) and rooted inthe seminal work of Schon (1983) in which hedescribed two major levels of reflective practice,reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action. Tea-chers are encouraged to move through these levelsand increasingly automatize their ability to think ontheir feet. Reflective practice is a fundamentalbuilding block of an inquiry orientation to teaching(Dana & Yendol-Silva, 2003; Roth, 1989; Tom,1985), and as such, is viewed by many as an essentialfeature of contemporary teacher education anddevelopment (Conway & Clark, 2003; Harvard &Hodkinson, 1994; Sparks-Langer, Colton, Simmons,& Starko, 1991; Zeichner, 1996). One of the waysthat teachers learn to teach and reflect is as membersof dyads or teams where ‘‘individual reflection isenhanced by group and paired collaboration’’(Francis, 1995, p. 240). As teachers extend theirprivate reflections within a public forum, not only dothey reveal their individual actualized development,

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(i.e., zone of proximal development), but alsogenerate ‘‘collective interrelated zones of proximaldevelopment’’ (Moll & Whitmore, 1993, p. 21). Fromthis perspective, reflective practice when shared andmade public through the analysis of classroomrecords and teaching partnerships, enables intelli-gences to be ‘‘distributed—across minds, persons,and the symbolic and physical environments y’’(Pea, 1993, p. 47). As a result, the collective maybuoy or scaffold the individual, such that theindividual begins to assume a level of competencygenerated by and situated in the collective. In thiscontext, individuals may attempt more complex tasksbecause the individual shares the knowledge, thedecision to act, and the responsibility to proceed withthe collective.

2.3. Collaborative action research

Interest in teacher research has developed con-currently with the interest in developing reflectivepractitioners. Teacher research within schools andteacher education programs is represented byteacher as researcher projects (Black & Huss,1995), partnership research (Cole & Knowles,1993; Castle, 1995), and collaborative action re-search (Crawford, 1995; Hubbard & Power, 2003;Oja & Smulyan, 1989; Zellermayer, 1990). The actof forming partnerships for action research beginsto address the need for collaboration both amongpreservice teachers and teacher educators (Castle,1995) who conduct classroom research. Thesepartnerships transform the traditional teacher edu-cator’s orientation as transmitter of knowledgetoward one of collaborator and co-constructor ofknowledge with preservice teachers. According toOja and Smulyan (1989) participation in the sharedexperience of collaborative action research ischaracterized by four elements: ‘‘(a) its collaborativenature, (b) its focus on practical problems, (c) itsemphasis on professional development, and (d) itsneed for a project structure which provides partici-pants with time and support for open communica-tion’’ (p. 12) within recursive cycles of planning,acting, reflecting and revising (p. 17).

2.4. Project work

One of the earliest mentions of a curriculumapproach referred to as ‘‘project work’’ can be tracedback to the Progressive Education era at the turn ofthe 20th century. More recent interpretations of

project work include the ‘‘in-depth study of aparticular topic that one or more children under-take’’ (Katz & Chard, 1989, p. 2). Yet in the infant-toddler and preprimary schools of Reggio Emilia,Italy, ‘‘projects provide the backbone of the chil-dren’s and [italics added] teachers’ learning experi-ences’’ (Gandini, 1996, p. 22). Teachers scaffold andprovoke children’s inquiry by posing questions,generating hypotheses, offering suggestions, anddiverse media, while documenting the process. Cyclesof inquiry do not begin and end with children, butextend to teaching partners, as teachers observe,question, and record one another’s practice.

As such, children’s project work embodies aframework for teaching and learning that isreciprocal, spiraling, and shared—a framework ofpartnerships among protagonists who use docu-mentation as they collaboratively engage in thecreation of learning experiences that support therights and needs of children to communicate andlearn with others. This aspect of Reggio Emiliaeducators’ work expands upon current understand-ings of teacher research and development andembodies key principles and practices associatedwith social constructivist theory, reflective practice,and collaborative action research.

3. Methodology

3.1. Participants

The data reported here are drawn from a study ofthe emergence of collaborative inquiry among 24preservice teachers enrolled in an introductory earlychildhood teaching methods course at a NewEngland university. Preservice teachers were ran-domly assigned to three- or four-member teachingteams. Each team implemented a 6-week projectwith a small group of preschool-aged children.

The sub-sample of six preservice teachers wasselected in two stages. The first stage included arequest of participants in the sample to participatein retrospective interviews at the end of the course.Full representation by members of teaching teamswas required. Of the 24 preservice teachers, 10(comprising three teams) agreed to be interviewed.The second stage was aimed at minimizing varia-bility across the teams. The criteria for selectionincluded teams that (1) were comprised of the samenumber of preservice teachers, (2) taught the sameage children, and (3) taught the same number ofpracticum days across the semester. Two teams met


these criteria. Participants included six preserviceteachers, named for the project implemented duringthe semester—the leaf team and the water team.Each preservice team taught a small group of 3-year-old children. Five of the six preservice teacherswere undergraduate students, with only one havingany previous classroom teaching experience. Allparticipants were female, Euro-American, andresided in the New England area.

3.2. The role of the teacher educator

My role as the teacher educator in this study wasinformed by the belief that knowledge is sociallyconstructed and distributed within a dialecticbetween persons-acting and the settings in whichtheir activity is ‘‘situationally specific’’ (Lave, 1989,p. 171). To this end, my goal was to createenvironments in which preservice teachers actedand consequently constructed their own under-standings, or ‘‘local knowledge’’ (Cochran-Smith& Lytle, 1993) about teaching and learning. I stroveto create ‘‘contexts of need’’ in which my studentsperceived a need to know, to question, and todiscern seminal information for systematic anddeliberate study that provoked and lead to inquiry(Tegano & Moran, 2005).

Preservice teachers’ inquiry was dependent uponencouraging them to act with purpose by continu-ally and intentionally studying their teaching. Yetthis was often a difficult task for these youngpreservice teachers for two reasons. First, they hadrarely taught and therefore had little experiencefrom which to draw. Second, their own prioreducational experiences were dominated by teacherswho transmitted knowledge, and as a result theyviewed teachers as the holders of knowledge. Thusthey often looked to me for ‘‘the answers’’ and itwas one of my responsibilities to instill in them abelief that they were the ones with ‘‘the answers.’’

Early in the semester I was at times directive,typically providing procedural, practical knowledge(e.g., how to begin a lesson, how to prepare materials,or what to say to children to begin an activity). Fromthe outside, this position may seem counter to my roleas a social constructivist teacher educator. And yet,from the inside my view was that students havelimited opportunities to engage in a cycle of inquiry inwhich they ‘‘think critically, intentionally, andsystematically about their actions and the context ofthose actions’’ (Samaras & Gismondi, 1998, p. 718).Arguably, when to provide direction was a subjective

call. The appropriateness of my actions weredependent, in part, upon getting to know my studentsearly and well, by participating in many of theircollaborations in order to judge when giving directionwould promote efficacy rather than paralysis. In theseinstances my aim was not to withhold knowledgewhen providing it might ‘‘ensure a sense of their ownpossibilitiesyby getting themyto collaborate in anenabling community’’ (Bruner, 1996, p. 76). My over-arching goals, then, were to keep them acting and inrelation to one another and their practice, so that theycould engage in inquiry wholly, experiencing both thevacillating cadence as well as the gestalt of learning toinquire, rather than learning to inquire in a linear andpiecemeal way.

As a result, my students began to develop a needto know more, to make public their practice, andrevise activities as they returned to the children’sclassrooms informed by their new, collective under-standings. Consequently, they became ‘‘potentialgenerators of new knowledge about teaching’’(Zeichner, 1996, p. 226), appropriating the positionof holders of knowledge, resituating the authority ofknowledge away from me to within themselves andtheir own experiences.

3.3. Course description

The course included a four-hour practicum andweekly lectures and was divided into three phasesover a 15-week semester: (1) orientation, (2) im-plementation, and (3) interpretation. During theorientation phase (first 5–6 weeks) preservice teacherskept reflective journals, completed child observa-tions, audio taped and transcribed children’s con-versations, critiqued video tapes of master andnovice teachers, and created topic and ‘‘conceptwebs’’ (Jones & Vesilind, 1996) in preparation forchoosing a relevant project topic. During the next 6weeks, teaching teams (of 3–4) implemented colla-borative projects. The focus of class lectures duringthis middle phase was on utilizing preservice teacherclassroom documentation to guide and inform theircycle of inquiry (Fig. 1). During the final interpreta-tion phase, teaching teams scrutinized their projectsin preparation for final oral and written analyses.

3.4. Design and procedures

The design of the study utilized many of theanalytical tools, strategies, and instruments devel-oped for the course. These included reflective

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Fig. 1. Cycle of inquiry (p. 11).

M.J. Moran / Teaching and Teacher Education 23 (2007) 418–431422

journals, videotapes of teaching, transcriptions ofaudiotapes of team meetings and children’s con-versations, selected lecture classroom discussions,and retrospective interviews.

Retrospective interviews were semi-structured andconducted following the completion of the course.These interviews included video-stimulated recall,inviting preservice teachers to recall and commenton teaching and decisions to teach while viewingselected video clips from their semester of teaching.Audio tapes of team meetings, lecture classroomexchanges, and retrospective interviews were tran-scribed verbatim and analyzed for evidence of theemergence of themes or patterns of behavior overtime. Themes were defined as recurrent and sharedideas, perspectives, or beliefs about a topic. Journalentries were read and reread with notations made inmargins and memos generated that categorizedemerging trends and themes. Videotapes werereviewed for evidence of change in teaching behaviorreflective of an inquiry-oriented stance and socialconstructivist perspective. For example, changes inuse of higher order questioning, frequency of posingproblems and dilemmas to pairs and groups ofchildren, the use of wait time (i.e., a term that simplymeans waiting long enough following a question togive a child time to formulate and express aresponse), and the provision of diverse materials,media, and experiences to encourage children torevisit and re-represent their earlier hypotheses andideas were coded.

To triangulate the data and create ‘‘a thickdescription’’ (Geertz, 1973) of how inquiry emergedwithin these partnerships, data were compared andorganized on data displays and through the use ofconceptual memos (Grossman, 1990; Miles &Huberman, 1994). Entries and transcriptions (jour-nal entries, video tapes of teaching, audio tapetranscriptions of team meetings, lecture classroomdiscussions, and retrospective interviews) werecross-tabulated and recorded on matrices and chartsusing constant comparative methods across time toorganize behaviors for individual preservice tea-chers as well as for teams. Consequently, theanalysis of data occurred on two levels—theindividual level and team level. A second level ofanalysis also involved a comparison between thetwo teams.

4. Findings

Findings from this study begin to portray some ofthe key processes and outcomes related to change inparticipation of preservice teachers in cycles ofinquiry and their use of strategies aimed at teachingin more authentic and deliberate ways. These areasof change include (1) an increased awareness of thevalue and need to share responsibility with team-mates for making curriculum decisions (and, con-comitantly less reliance on my guidance), (2) earlyattempts to self-regulate teaching behaviors throughreflection-in-action, and (3) a growing appreciation


for the role of documentation in making visible andpublic preservice teachers’ thinking and practice andthe learning of children they taught. The followingfive vignettes are drawn from data generated frompreservice teacher team meetings, the children’sclassroom, and preservice teachers’ written andverbal reflections and interviews. The role and useof documentation to inform preservice teachers’cycle of inquiry is interwoven within examples oftheir early steps toward self-regulation of teachingpractice and shared responsibility.

4.1. Shared responsibility

In university laboratory schools it is especiallychallenging to create a cohesive curriculum forchildren, linking one day’s experience to the nextbecause preservice teachers are not usually presenteach day the children are in school. These settingsare particularly problematic when the goal is todevelop systems of pedagogical and personalrelationships that support the development of in-depth thinking and actions (for both teachers andchildren). In this study, members of each teachingteam were committed to finding ways to extend anddeepen children’s learning and connect their teach-ing days in a meaningful way. Shared responsibilityin this context included both sharing teachingresponsibility with each other and sharing theresponsibility with children on how to proceed bybeing active and responsive teacher partners. AsHannah, a preservice teacher, noted at the close ofthe semester:

My teaching has evolved in many ways. One ofthe most significant changes is that I learned tofocus more on the interests and theories of thechildren. I also felt more comfortable sharing agroup of children with other teachers, relying onthe collaboration to communicate my experienceand gather information from different points ofview.

Initially, preservice teachers judged many of theirearly teaching attempts as failures. However, overtime, as they engaged in collective decision-makingand collaborative teaching, their perceived failuresbegan to be viewed more as opportunities for thegroup to reflect, revise, and return to the classroomswith new ways to extend and provoke children’slearning. To illustrate preservice teachers’ emergingstruggles and collective efforts, I will draw uponexamples of the leaf team, whose members include,

Leah, Nancy and Alice, and the water team,comprised of Kaitlin, Hannah, and Mary throughfive vignettes, drawn from six weeks of projectwork.

Vignette 1. The first activity of what was tobecome the leaf project began with the topic of pets,based on preservice teachers’ observations ofchildren’s play. In this excerpt from their teammeeting with me, prior to their first teaching week,the team is challenged by the topic selection andyoung children’s competencies and ways to developinquiry among the children.

Me: Why don’t you share with me some of thetopic ideas you have and we’ll try to analyzethem together.Leah: Some of the trouble that we’re having is ywe were talking about the age group that we’redealing with; it’s the 3-year-olds. I’m not surehow interactive they’re going to be in what wedo.Alice: Yeah. I know it’s a hard job to get them tobe active participants and we try to get theircuriosity and to peak that y but I guess theproblem we’re having is what kind of topic canwe focus on that is going to help us pull that fromthem?

Following this exchange the team continued todiscuss ways to develop inquiry among theirchildren and considered asking the children to drawpictures of their pets. While the idea was notnecessarily an inappropriate one, I questioned theirdecision to limit children’s representations to draw-ings, referring to our lecture discussions related toproviding children multiple media and symbolsystems for representing what they know:

Don’t focus primarily on graphic representationsbecause children have hundreds of languages torepresent what they know.ywhat are their otherlanguages? What can you do to be their partnerin representing what they know? In order tobegin a project, you have to have an imageyofthe way it can develop, and then, you have togive up a lot of your wishes for it and instead,prepare for the possibilities.

This excerpt reveals a constant challenge faced bymany preservice teachers to plan activities forchildren prior to first engaging them in an explora-tion of a topic. Consequently, the prescribedactivities do not reflect the interests of the children,are teacher directed, and reminiscent of preservice


teachers’ own early childhood experiences. One ofmy challenges as the teacher educator is to knowwhen to allow such activities to evolve and when toredirect them.

On the first day of the project, the children lookedat photographs of animals and quickly moved totheir assigned tasks of drawing. Following theactivity, Leah wrote,

I have just finished my first day of my projectwork and I am overwhelmed. I’m not sure howthe kids reacted.y I find it very hard to keep the3-year-old attention spans. I feel like I am notdoing enough, saying enough. I am never good atimpromptu questions/reactions. I guess I have ahard time thinking that 3-year-olds will under-stand. I am having serious doubts whether I amcut out to be a teachery.

To plan for the second day of the project, theteam reviewed the video tape of Leah’s teaching.Following the review Nancy wrote, ‘‘By the end ofthe video we all knew it was not workingy. We gotvery quiet. I became anxious and thought, ‘Oh no,this is going to be a disaster.’’’ Alice describedsimilar concerns in her journal when she wrote, ‘‘Ohno, what are we going to do now? We feel lost aboutwhat to try next.’’ After much discussion, theydecided to change their topic to leaves, as it was fallin New England and there were diverse resourcesand numerous opportunities for children’s discoveryand investigation. Later in the week, Alice returnedto the children’s classroom with plans generatedwith her team and took the children on an outing togather leaves. The children were engaged, talkative,and made new and shared discoveries about theirschool surroundings (e.g., finding a hidden grapearbor and harvesting grapes). Nancy later wroteabout her team’s decision to change topics notingthat,

The interesting thing to mention is that this typeof learning allows for change in directiony.Rather than struggling through this project [ofpets] we were able to stop—evaluate—andreorganize our approach in order to foster thechildren’s learning and our own.

The challenge to make a decision together was afirst step toward developing relationships with oneanother in which preservice teachers relied on eachother’s judgment and trusted in the competencies ofthe children they taught. Even though Leah was theteacher who first struggled, they all experienced

degrees of discouragement, frustration, and concernand thus shared in the responsibility of changingtheir project topic. It could not be just one teacher’sdecision because the collaborative nature of theprojects required that preservice teachers cometogether to make joint decisions. Such sharedexperiences kept teachers in relation and provided‘‘participatory, proactive, communal, collaborative[experiences], given over to constructing meaningsrather than receiving themy. (Bruner, 1996, p. 84).The data suggest that preservice teachers began toanticipate (van Manen, 1991) the need to makechanges in plans and reconstructed plans throughreflection-on-action (Schon, 1983). In the followingvignette, the water team also struggled to orienttheir focus in a way that engaged children inrelevant experiences and promoted both teachers’and children’s abilities to engage in inquiry.

Vignette 2. The water team was challenged tomake changes in the focus of their project at theclose of their first week of teaching. Their activitiesthat week had included a variety of traditional ‘‘sinkand float’’ experiments. The team’s intention was toprovide the children with familiar experiences andwait to see what the children would say or do. Atthe close of their first teaching week Mary wrote:

I was hoping that by introducing water withmaterials that didn’t really represent anything y

that perhaps the children would come up withideas on their own. I guess we were expecting toomuch in terms of what we hoped they wouldcome up with on their own.

The water team was up against one of the mostcommon dilemmas faced by preservice teachers whoattempt to move away from a transmission orienta-tion toward one of inquiry. The challenge is how tomove into children’s learning spaces in order toanticipate, partner, and plan with them, withouteither taking over or on the other hand remainingtoo removed from the action.

As they met with me to reflect on their first week,we critiqued their video tapes and soon discovered aconversation (between Mary and the children)about a local flood that had been overlooked bythe team:

Mary: What happened when we had all that rainat the beginning of the week?

Susie: Big puddle.

Eric: I saw a big, big, big, big, really high puddle.It’s too much. Houses flooded.


Bobby: Me and mom were driving down the roadto school and we saw a tree floating on to theroad!

The recording of this exchange provided the teaman opportunity to revisit and reflect upon aconversation that might have gone unnoticed hadit not been taped. Surprisingly, the water team hadnever considered implementing activities aimed atprovoking children’s conversations about the flood,but instead stayed focused on their original sink-and-float activities. Now, they determined that thechildren’s interest, astonishment, and wonder re-corded in the conversation were important topursue. They further decided that the topic of waterflow as it related to flooding was a relevant andmeaningful direction for supporting children’sinquiry. This shared experience, mediated by class-room documentation and discourse, ‘‘re-generated’’(Gandini, 1996) and re-directed the team’s focus asthey shared ways to pursue a new direction in theirproject.

Vignette 3. One strategy used by both teams toensure the continuity of experience over time andprovide support to each other in the classroom wasthe decision to co-teach and co-document. Thisstrategy was first used when teams believed childrenmight be especially challenged by a task.

Hannah volunteered to co-teach with Kaitlinbecause the water team anticipated that drawingtheir theories of the cycle of rain would bechallenging for the children. On the day of theactivity, Kaitlin repeatedly tried to coax children todraw; the children remained confused and uninter-ested. Hannah then took the lead and suggested thechildren instead explore the classroom sinks, drains,and pipes. Children opened and closed drains,listened intently for the sound of water passingthrough pipes, and hypothesized about where thewater was going. Later, after the team reviewed thevideotape, Mary noted,

y it was clear that our approach was tooabstract. This caused frustration for both theteachers and the children. The frustration mighthave ended the project day, but instead theteachers encouraged [children’s] continued inter-est by shifting the focus to active engagement byexploring sinks.

In this instance, even though Hannah had madethe change on her own, the team determined it wasmade in concert with Kaitlin. In fact, later in her

journal writing, Kaitlin wrote, ‘‘One thing I havelearned from working as a team of teachers is thatwe have to be like one [italics added].’’ This changetoward considering individual practice as inextric-ably linked to the practice of the collective was notuncommon in this context and contributed to asense of ‘‘shared agency’’ (Wertsch, Tulviste, &Hagstrom, 1993). From this position, agency was nolonger situated with the individual but also thegroup, from which emerging expectations byindividual teachers that they were capable ofteaching in-the-moment, shored up by the collec-tive’s competencies. In this study, preservice tea-chers’ cycle of inquiry was informed and supportedby teaching partners and the children they taught.As a result, changes began to appear in preserviceteachers’ abilities to think on their feet—to self-regulate behaviors through reflection-in-action.

4.2. Emergence of self-regulation during teaching

The aim of self-regulation is control over one’slearning (McCombs, 1989) and teaching practiceand includes at least three actions: goal setting,selection of appropriate strategies, and performanceevaluation (Kremor-Hayon & Tillema, 1999). Theprovision of stable social and pedagogical condi-tions and the participation in recurring cycles ofteaching and research supported preservice teachers’development toward self-regulation, enabling themto begin to reflect-in-action. For example, they oftentaught in the same classroom space, created routinesand rituals for how to begin and end activities,taught the same group of children, co-taught anddocumented, and analyzed documentation recordstogether after each teaching day.

Vignette 4. Mid-way through the leaf project,Leah began to exhibit more purposeful andthoughtful practice when she changed from provid-ing global directions and generalized assistanceearlier in the project toward differentiated instruc-tion. Her emerging ability to improvise practice wasinformed by her ongoing study of daily video tapes,photographs, and children’s drawings with herteam. Unlike her earlier attempts, she was now ableto sustain and adapt her instruction for both theindividual and group tasks of the children. Leahwrote,

y the leaf drawing that Megan drew—sheunderstood my directions, my cues. I actuallyscaffolded her learning which made such a


difference not only to her, but also to myself asan educator. Allen asked for help and withouteven really thinking, I had scaffolded his mean-ing-making.

Leah’s ability to tailor her guidance across thegroup of children was informed by making visibleher practice and sharing perspectives with herteaching partners. During a team meeting sherecalled the value of both her own reflections andthat of her teaching partners when she said,

At first I thought that video taping was notnecessary. I didn’t feel like I could really relaxwith the children being watched constantlyy.My view has changed about videotaping becauseI find it very useful as an educator to watchmyself on video. You pick up different thingsthat you could have done, good points to re-visitand conversations that we had. I usually watchthe video alone and take notes on my goodpoints and what goals I want to work on nexttimeyand share with my team.

Through continued analyses of documentationwith her team, Leah had come to know the childrenand begun to recognize how their earlier attempts tostudy and then draw leaves had changed. Forexample on this day, Leah noticed that Megan’sability to complete her drawing was guided byobserving the interactions and questions posed byJason and Allen coupled with Leah’s responses. Forexample, as Leah framed the stem with her handson a real leaf for Jason, Megan looked closely andthen proceeded to draw her stem. Leah latercompared this experience with her earlier projectteaching,

Earlier in the semester I wasn’t sure how to dothis—planning, but staying loose. I think that ifyou have ideas and goals in mind for the childrento accomplish and go in with materials, but letthe children lead you in what direction to go, youhave planned but stayed loose. Staying loose isscary. You really have to trust yourself beforeentering that classroom to work with so manyeager minds ready to ask you questions andchallenge you—as much as you challenge them.

In this scene actions associated with symbolicallyrepresenting knowledge were mediational, resultingin a ‘‘process of active individual constructionand a process of enculturation’’ (Cobb, 1991, p.13). For example, when the children represented

their understandings with others through symbols(e.g., drawings and language), they made public themeanings associated with those representations, asthose meanings continued to be negotiated andsocially constructed within the group.

The same was true, of course, for the preserviceteachers. As projects evolved, teams began tocombine strategies and materials to create routinesthat supported their ability to support children’scontinuity of experience and to also systematize andground their teaching. Using a practice that wasultimately labeled backstitching (see Fig. 2) eachpreservice teacher on a team began her teaching dayby looking back—beginning with the tools and mostrecent representations of children’s learning whichhad ended the previous day’s inquiry—as a spring-board for the current day’s experiences. Thepractice of backstitching helped frame their abilityto prepare for the possibilities, and exemplifiedteaching as praxis because they acted with a purposeand took responsibility for their own actions in alimited time and space (Ponte, Ax, Beijaard, &Wubbels, 2004, p. 573). In the final vignette,Hannah used this strategy (with an audio tape ofa child’s theory about rain) to act purposefully inplanning and teaching.

Vignette 5. It is nearing the end of the waterproject as Michael shares his theory with histeacher, Hannah, about how rain cycles from theground into the sky,

Hannah: Where did all that water go (referring tothe recent flood)?

Michael: I don’t know what the people did to it.Probably it does run into a drain and went down.

Hannah: Well, what drain did it go down?

Michael: It probably went to a big drain that wasup in the sky, so up, up, up, up?

Hannah: Way up in the sky, there’s a drain?

Michael: No. It just goes up and then it, and thenwhen it rains, that water comes down.

Hannah later wrote in her journal that as shetaped her conversation with Michael, she was awareof her questioning and the need to generate a richconversation that might be used later by herteaching team. In this example, Hannah’s act ofdocumenting, with tool in hand, mediated her focusand sustained her attention on Michael’s theory-making. On the next day, she shared the recordingin a team meeting, provoking much discussion,deliberation, and planning.

ARTICLE IN PRESS

Fig. 2. Backstitching (p. 22).

M.J. Moran / Teaching and Teacher Education 23 (2007) 418–431 427

On the day of the meeting, members of theteam moved quickly into chairs in my office, excitedabout their review of the taped conversation.Mary described her earlier reaction when she firstheard the recording, exclaiming, ‘‘Here I amlistening to the tape—I was squealing—it wasincredibley.’’ What was incredible to Mary wasthat Hannah had remembered to record Michael’sdescription of his theory and now it could beanalyzed and used by the team. Hannah’s purpose-ful action to document, even as she was compelledto engage in a thoughtful conversation withMichael, not only focused her attention on his ideasbut also on the potential for a subsequent teamanalysis.

Such collective reflections consistently placepreservice teachers in the position of collaborativedecision-makers as they plan and implement in-creasingly relevant and complex experiences forchildren. Through a recursive cycle of observing andplanning, acting, reflecting and revising they beginto think critically and take action, informed by theircollaborative inquiry. Their ability to self-regulatepractice is guided by both their individual andcollective reflections-on-action that soon evolve intoreflecting and altering their practice, in the moment.It is such contexts of need—the need to know, theneed to study one’s own practice and that of othertrusted teaching partners, that guides and enablespreservice teachers’ move toward ‘‘more complextasks than their current knowledge and skills alonewould allow’’ (Pea, 1993, p. 61).

Later in the meeting we considered ways toprovide children with experiences for simulating arain puddle in the classroom in order to investigatethe flow of water away from a drain spout:

Me: Why not have them construct the under-ground piping of the drainyyou construct it outof tubingythen you construct a road that goesover the drain.Kaitlin: I think that conceptually it might makesense if we made the road on the bottom of thewater table. Use the plug as the drain and justput screen on top y then, have the pipingunderneath the table.Mary: And they could see that it was underneaththe road.Hannah: Well, to introduce it we’ll look at drainsunderneath the sink [in the children’s classroom].Me: So, you take them all over to the sink andturn on the water and say, ‘Where is that watercoming from?’y [because] your goal is to helpthem understand where the water goes and theconnection between drains, pipes, and rain.

In this excerpt, my role became directive becausemy aim was to enable them to move toward action.The team had talked at length about the manypossible directions they could go, settling on re-creating a rain puddle and drain, complete withplastic tubing to represent underground pipes. Theiridea was complex, far from planning simple sink andfloat activities and they were unsure how to introducethe activity to the children. Upon initial review, my


practice may not appear typical of a social con-structivist teacher educator. Yet often during earlyattempts by preservice teachers to think critically andpurposefully, they generate so many possibilities thatthe dissonance can result in paralysis and confusion.This example illustrates one aspect of the non-linearnature of these preservice teachers’ inquiry. That is, asthey develop agency and a belief that they are now theholders of knowledge as a result of their own research,they begin to create increasingly complex curriculumplans that in turn, take them back to earlier dayswhen they felt uncertain, confused and overwhelmed.

It is at these junctures of inquiry, that there istension between what Shor and Freire (1987)describe as the two moments of learning, (a) theproduction of new knowledge and (b) the momentin which one recognizes what one knows (p. 7 and8). It is at these points in time that I return to myaim of maintaining the dialectic between supportingpreservice teachers’ abilities to act in settings inwhich they develop experiences that contribute totheir emerging inquiry. It is in these moments thatthey sometimes perceive that their simplest decisionsare too difficult to solve, even as they evidenceabilities to think critically about more complexissues and prepare for the possibilities.

In this context, preparing for the possibilities is aphrase used by preservice teachers and encouragedby me throughout the implementation of projects.Mary described her understanding of this strategy inone of her final journal entries,

If a teacher goes exactly by the plan, he/she maybe missing out on teachable moments and limitingthe children’s capacity to learn. This can alsohappen if a teacher jumps into the alternativeplans. In other words, teachers must be able toread the behavior of the children and make ‘‘onthe spot’’ judgment callsy. [However], it ispossible to plan for other possibilities and notalways carry out those [italics added] plans. Itdepends on the feedback the children are giving.

This perspective is reminiscent of ‘‘anticipatoryreflection’’ (Van Manen, 1991) from which teachersenter the classroom mindful of the possibilities andthus poised to guide future thinking and practice.Hannah later related preparing for the possibilitieswith her ability to remain flexible in the classroomwhen she wrote,

Preparation for the possibilities allows you to beopen to children’s ideas rather than needing to be

rigid and unchanging y to find balance so thatyou are able to scaffold children’s learningwithout completely directing it y and by havingmaterials and previously thought out ideas ready.

In this study, the emergence of preserviceteachers’ early attempts to self-regulate practiceand teach in relation to children included theirability to project, to anticipate, to reflect-in-action,and to prepare for the possibilities.

5. Discussion

I do not claim that the experiences of these sixpreservice teachers are typical of preservice teachersin similar teaching and learning contexts. However,this study, although limited in its generalizability,raises important considerations for reconceptualizingpreservice teacher education programs and reconsi-dering strategies for capitalizing on the competenciesand capacities of young, inexperienced preserviceteachers. Moreover, strategies that help operationa-lize the research and teaching cycle in an on-going,unfolding way contribute to the creation of contextsof need that are more representative of the realities ofteaching in the field. One of the outcomes of thisstudy is the emerging view of collaborative inquiry asrepresentative of both good teaching and teacherresearch. Implications include considerations for theteaching and learning environment, the establishmentof interpersonal relationships among participants,and a pedagogical approach that provides someassurances for the creation of shared experiences andmeaning among preservice teachers.

5.1. The teaching– learning environment

Although there have been studies describing theinfluence of environments informed by social con-structivist theory on the development of teachers,none have used project work coupled with colla-borative action research to contribute to such asetting. Findings from this study suggest that theuse of collaborative projects can help to create whatFosnot (1996) refers to as a ‘‘community ofdiscourse’’ in which higher mental functions of bothchildren and teachers can be purposefully shaped bytheir collective learning and research. Such acommunity is dependent upon experiences that arecontextually embedded, with time, space, andopportunity to practice, reflect, and use ‘‘languageand other tools to guide or mediate cognitive


activity’’ (Rogoff, 1990, p. 5). The numerousopportunities for children and teachers to interactin this study contributed to the development ofpreservice teachers’ ability to begin to reflect-in-action and self-regulate practice in situ.

Tasks and routines were joined by expectationsthat preservice teachers would revisit earlier teachingtogether, guided by collective reflection, and in-formed by documentation. As a result of thisconvergence of required and expected activities, bothpractice and planning began to change. No longerdid preservice teachers consider activities becausethey were simply related to a project topic. Rather,the preparation of activities was based on therelationship to children’s previous experiences, tothe topic of inquiry, and to each other’s increasinglycomplex understandings of how to extend children’slearning through provoking their inquiry. In short,findings suggest that the need for both adult andchild learners to socially construct knowledge withinshared experiences can be similarly met throughteaching and learning contexts characterized by theimplementation of collaborative projects.

5.2. A system of relationships

The development of relationships among preser-vice teachers appears to contribute to their ability toengage in repeated cycles of teaching and researchas they begin to take pedagogical risks that alonemight be too burdensome. Within each teachingteam, collective zones of proximal developmentwere created from which the generation of ideas, thesharing of responsibility to teach and document andthe effort to sustain and pursue inquiry emerged. Asthe communal process evolved, preservice teacherstended to rely far less on my support and more oneach other. By the closing weeks of the projects, itwas far more common to witness teams consultingone another and members of other teaching teams,sharing their documentation and analyses, andcreating new teaching strategies. As such, theirteaching was ‘‘transformed in numerous ways: theybecome theorists, articulating their intentions, test-ing their assumptions and finding connections withpractice’’ (Goswami & Stillman, 1987, preface).

5.3. A pedagogy of collaborative inquiry

A collaborative inquiry orientation toward learn-ing to teach such as the one described here meantthat teachers were expected and helped to think

critically and continuously about their practice astheir participation in teaching and research partner-ships changed over time. In this study, preserviceteachers’ competencies at engaging in collectivereflection developed throughout the semester asthey questioned, negotiated, analyzed, and docu-mented with each other through cycles of inquiry. Inshort, preservice teachers learned together aboutchildren’s development as well as an advancedunderstanding of developmentally appropriatepractice, represented by early attempts at inquiry-oriented teaching practice.

This reciprocal relationship between learningabout teaching and child development (throughlearning with one another) was brought to life aspreservice teachers collectively pursued, documen-ted, and shared experiences. Participation in part-nerships began to change and contribute to thestandards for defining good teaching for eachteacher. As a result of this experience, most of thepreservice teachers learned that to become a goodteacher required a commitment to learning to teachand participate in a cycle of inquiry with others.Hannah’s final journal entry reveals the impact ofher change in participation in these partnerships onher development as a teacher:

My teaching practice has evolved in manydifferent ways y throughout the semester inour project work. One of the most significantevolutions is that I learned to focus more on theinterests and theories of the children y to followup on the information I was given by them. I alsofelt more comfortable sharing a group of childrenwith other teachers, relying on collaboration tocommunicate my experience and gather informa-tion from different points of view.

6. Implications for research partnerships in teacher

education

This study has begun to contribute to under-standings regarding promising practices that pro-mote preservice teacher education and reveals someimplications for the study of teacher development.First, findings suggest that the implementation ofcollaborative projects provides many of the criticalcomponents (e.g., genuine problems, shared experi-ences, documentation, multiple perspectives, andteaching and research cycles) necessary for generat-ing collaborative inquiry. Second, the value ofpartnerships in which teaching and research about


teaching are embedded inform and support theability of young, inexperienced preservice teachersto develop inquiry and to take deliberate action.Third, the incorporation of documentation withincycles of collaborative action research is an im-portant contribution to the diversity and quantity ofdata traditionally used to contribute to and informteacher reflection and practice.

The emergence of collaborative inquiry amongyoung teachers in this study began to illuminate theways in which membership in teaching and learningcollectives contributed to a disposition representa-tive of ‘‘yinquiry as stance y [that] is a richerconception of teacher learning across the profes-sional life span y.’’ (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2001,p. 53). To this end, future research on thedevelopment of inquiry among preservice teachersshould include a focus on the change in participa-tion in sociocultural activities (Rogoff, Radziszews-ka, & Masiello, 1995), as well as teachers’appropriation of discreet skills and knowledge.The context for the practica in this study includednumerous resources and was in many ways a‘‘protected’’ placement. Therefore, further studiesin diverse settings and over longer periods of timewill make an important contribution to our under-standing of the ways in which such contextscontribute to preservice teachers’ development ofcollaborative inquiry. Finally, it is possible todevelop a disposition to inquire, reflect, collaborate,and participate in teaching and research in mostpracticum and internship settings. Such classroomexperiences need to begin early and be explicitlylinked to content and exchanges in the lectureclassroom. These experiences require that teachereducators participate regularly and fully to validateand utilize preservice teachers’ attempts at approx-imating competency toward deliberate, thoughtful,and systematic inquiry.

It is this habit of mind characterized by inquiry-oriented practice and propelled through participa-tion within teaching and research collectives thatcan contribute to moving preservice teachers awayfrom prescriptive teaching stances toward colla-borative inquiry. Studies of such collectives andcontexts, beginning with initial practica settings, willcontribute to our understanding of what it means tomore effectively educate and support the develop-ment of teachers in the 21st Century who are facedwith responding to the increasingly diverse needs,interests, and abilities of children who also learnand live in relation to others.

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