Zooms: Promoting Schoolwide Inquiry and Improving Practice

Resource Summary

Abstract: A group of teachers and the program director describe a powerful collaborative and interactive teacher research process they developed at their school. The process engages teachers in generating new insights about teaching and learning. This article provides a road map for creating Zooms—documentation panels that are snapshots of classroom life—as unique, concrete models of teacher research. The authors illustrate how constructing Zooms helps teachers focus on children’s learning when so much is going on in a lively classroom. Ben and his colleagues show how they created a professional learning community—a culture of inquiry in their early childhood school that also enhanced staff collegiality. The teachers evolved from individual, reflective practitioners to collaborative, schoolwide teacher researchers. A real strength of the project is its emphasis on the teachers as knowledge creators. The Zooms process builds collaboration in concrete and structured ways and makes schoolwide inquiry key in teachers’ professional development. —Barbara Henderson