Engagement in scientific discourse is an essential part of becoming a scientist. In this exploratory study, we aim to examine the scientific discourse (and resulting benefits) between undergraduate biology students and professional scientists. We developed a novel method for engaging in scientific discourse, grounded in the theory of legitimate…

This article reports on a case of cross-role triads (mentor, intern, and supervisor) in a professional development school (PDS) setting engaged in the process of looking at student work in elementary mathematics over time. The study represents a significant effort to understand what inquiry-oriented behavior looks like in this context. By…

Using data in a professional learning community is a promising form of professional development. In this study, we followed a data team of teacher educators, who systematically tried to improve the education of student teachers (by decreasing first year drop-out). By conducting a single case study, we investigated the data team participants'…

Collaborative inquiry groups, such as professional learning communities and lesson study groups, are proliferating in schools across the United States. In whatever form, the potential for impacting student learning through this collaborative work is expanded or limited by the nature of teachers' conversations. Polite, congenial conversations…

In this paper, we examined data collected as part of a 5-year project designed to foster reform-based urban science teaching through teachers' communities of inquiry. Drawing upon a distributed leadership framework, we analyzed teacher "talk" during professional learning community (PLC) meetings. This analysis yielded five elements:…

In this article, we explore findings from a semester-long online mentoring project between graduate students enrolled in a doctoral program and university students observing in local high schools early in their teacher education program. The project's goals were to provide supervised mentoring experiences for doctoral students to better prepare…

This article seeks to inspire humanities and social science faculty to explore ways of utilizing existing scholarly online communities to engage students in the process of academic inquiry. The author discusses her own experience using a discipline-specific listserv, shares successful assignments, examples of student postings and a grading rubric.…

In this article, the authors present a "telling case" of the history of the Santa Barbara Classroom Discourse Group (SBCDG) and describe how policies supported and constrained the work of this sustaining community. As a telling case, this discussion of policy issues that were constructed and faced by members of the SBCDG does not claim…