A question of authority: Adventures in collaborative inquiry.

摘要

The purpose of this study was to explore the researcher's experiences as a teacher collaborating with students to plan inquiry in science classes, and how efforts to collaborate with students to plan inquiry fit with established classroom etiquettes, school cultures, and historic contexts. Working in qualitative narrative fashion from his notes and personal journals as a teacher, the researcher created twenty-six short stories recounting these experiences, each followed by a "Reflective Memo".;Chapter IV includes stories about the researcher as an inexperienced teacher working in two public middle schools where his collaborative efforts seemed at odds with expectations of school administrative staff. Chapter V includes stories about experiences in two private schools. At "Art College" students explore science in unorthodox ways. At "Private Prep" the results of an experiment conducted by fifth graders conflict with the results held by other science teachers in their school. Chapter VI includes stories about the researcher's experiences in two public high schools, contrasting the administrative assumption that self-instigated scientific inquiry "is not right for certain populations" to the diverse successes of these same students' collaborative inquiries. Throughout, the researcher became increasingly aware of the intellectual restrictions of standardized testing.;The results of thematic analysis produced the following themes: "All questions are good", "Doing with is not the same as doing to", "Writing words make them matter", and "Collaboration works". The theme about school cultures was "Suppressing questions enforces authority and upholds the status quo". These themes suggest two meta-themes. "Ominous Ethos" highlights the antagonism between authority and questioning. "Who Reaps What Is Sown?" explores both why and to whom it is important that many schools enforce respectful obedience to authority. The discussion includes focus on test and test prep publishers, distributions of wealth nation-wide, and conservative political forces throughout the history of U.S. education. These findings suggest some institutional issues as they became exposed, exacerbated, and overcome when the researcher collaborated with students to plan inquiry in science class.