Teacher inquiry showcase offers a view from the front lines of education

How can a school suspend unruly students without putting them even further behind academically? How do you explain the real-world use of foreign language or geometry to students who just don’t get it? What does it take to make gifted students do more than coast through the FCAT?

Hundreds of classroom teachers will discuss these and dozens of other major issues in education in the University of Florida’s Teaching, Inquiry and Innovation Showcase, to be held April 21 at the Performing Arts Center at P.K Yonge Developmental Research School.

Now in its third year, the showcase offers a view of education from the front lines. Classroom teachers and administrators from 15 school districts around North Central Florida will explain findings from their own classroom-based research on the real-world problems they encounter every day.

“Teachers are in the best position to identify these problems, and find workable solutions,” said Nancy Dana, a professor at UF’s College of Education. “Rather than having people from outside come to schools and tell them how to fix their problems, we’re encouraging schools to take ownership of their own professional development.”

Dana is director of the college’s Center for School Improvement, which is recognized nationwide as a leader in the growing field of teacher inquiry. Each year, the center holds showcases around the state to encourage educators to share what they learned about improving student learning from the standpoint of classroom-based researchers.

The teacher inquiry approach, Dana said, is much more effective than the traditional model of professional development in education – in which teachers would gather to hear the results of the latest university research or learn how to implement new routines based on top-down changes in policy.

Since teachers are the ones with first-hand knowledge of the classroom, Dana said, it is vital that they identify problems specific to their own classrooms, do their own inquiry, and share their solutions with colleagues.

The center supports showcases in locations such as Jacksonville and Immokalee, but the annual meeting in Gainesville, co-sponsored by the Northeast Florida Education Consortium, or NEFEC, is the largest. This year, organizers expect to draw about 400 teachers, three times the number who showed up for the first showcase in 2005.

The event will be held from 8 a.m. to noon April 21 in the P.K Yonge Performing Arts Center. For information on the more than 150 topics to be covered at the event, go to https://education.ufl.edu/web/?pid=904 and click on “2007.”