Inquiry Teams for Module 3 PME 826 by Neil Westcott

I think that my school could use inquiry teams to support the development of a culture of

using data to support improving Mathematics teaching. While the school pays for and takes

time to administer and generally review data from a Large Scale Assessment, called the

International Schools Assessment, at present, my school does not use any of the data to drive

decisions that are made about what is taught and when.

I think we could use inquiry teams in a couple of different ways. One way would be to meet

as two groups one for lower elementary, and one for upper elementary, which would mean

teams of 4-6 teachers each. Analyzing the results from all of the curriculum strands in

Mathematics may illuminate aspects of the curriculum that students have particular difficulty,

for example, solving word problems. That information might then be used to adjust the

Mathematics curriculum so that those skills could be taught at the beginning of the year, extra

might be spent on teaching those skills, or those skills could be revisited and retaught at a

later point in the school year.

In addition, that same information derived from the data could be used to promote a better

focus in teacher education and professional development. When teachers know that students

are struggling to learn concepts, one option available to them is to identify various

instructional methods and use multiple teaching methods to hopefully reach all students. This

particular area is one in which inquiry teams are excellent for targeting.