Generative collaboration in teacher inquiry groups through the lens of theater arts practice

The focus for this study was collaboration in teacher inquiry groups that supported the creation of resources for the participants' instruction and the groups' inquiry. The research focused on three questions: When is generative collaboration occurring within teacher inquiry group meetings? What are the contributors in groups' interactions to generative collaboration? and How are these contributors related in facilitating generative collaboration?;The study was conducted as a retrospective case study examining data from a completed project that supported teacher inquiry groups. Data came from two separate inquiry groups from one urban elementary school over the course of each group's first year of involvement in the project; the primary corpus of data was transcripts of audiotapes of the groups' meetings.;The conceptual framework for the study drew on theater arts practices that promote collaborative development of new work, especially the work of director Anne Bogart. Data analysis was guided by the definition of generative collaboration as social/linguistic interaction involving the use of tools and artifacts in the production of conceptual resources that support individual and group learning. Conceptual resources were identified as instructional strategies, inquiry questions, and analytical categories.;Two forms of generative collaboration were identified and described. Cumulative generative collaboration occurs when a group integrates experiences from across its history and across the interests of its participants in ways that lead to the production of new resources for teachers' instruction and the group's inquiry. In-the-moment generative collaboration occurs when activity within a meeting models a sequence of interaction that culminates in the production of a new resource for the group. Both forms were present in one of the inquiry groups studied, while only limited forms of in-the-moment generative collaboration were present in the second. The study identified features of the groups' work that contributed to or constrained forms of generative collaboration.;The study furthers an understanding of how activity within inquiry groups models the goals of professional learning communities, especially teacher learning about instruction and student learning. It identified implications for teacher professional development and directions for further research and dialogue between the arts and education.