Teachers' perceptions and practices of inquiry-based instruction: A case study of fifth grade 'Investigations' curriculum in an urban school.

摘要

An important yet little understood question is how teachers negotiate between practice demands of a new curriculum and their perceptions of its significance. This study explores the perceptions and practices of implementing the Investigations in Number, Data and Space [Investigations ] (1998) mathematics curriculum by fifth-grade teachers in an urban school district.;Practicing fifth-grade teachers are often at the heart of numerous reform requirements albeit with little professional development or support. Teachers are wrestling with shedding their old pedagogical beliefs, weighing the inquiry-based teaching strategies, mathematics content, and learning how to use Investigations (Putnam, 2003). The discrepancy between the implementers' prior experiences, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) standards and principles, and Investigations' objectives presented an important problem for study.;A qualitative case study research design was used to explore the teachers' emerging practice models of implementing Investigations' mathematics in urban fifth grade classrooms. Data were collected through open-ended interviews, classroom artifacts, audiotape and videotape of lessons, group meetings, lesson plans, lesson observations, and post-lesson conferences. This study views the instruction of mathematics as the negotiation of practices of school mathematics with the teacher as initiator. Negotiation in this study involves reasoning, interpreting, and making sense of mathematical meanings. Accordingly, the study employs negotiation of meanings in its theoretical considerations and employs analytic induction in its data analysis (Bogdan & Biklen, 2003).;To effectively implement the Investigations curriculum in schools that have adopted it, this study found that teachers must collaborate with each other and establish new classroom instructional approaches. Again, a successful inquiry-based instruction requires a highly structured learning environment. Several issues of significance to the classroom should be considered that includes lesson debriefing, lesson plan, activity sequence, questioning, classroom management, one-to-one student-teacher interaction, discussion, small group work, reflection, journaling, modeling, respect, and humor.;This study recommends that teachers must have locally-based working models of this negotiation if the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCTM Research Advisory Committee, 2003), together with the NCTM's visions of having all students achieve high standards in mathematics education, are to be realized. It documents teachers' actions and thoughts, their execution of planned lessons, and their instructional discourse in implementing Investigations.