Enacting an inquiry stance: Examining the long-term impact of learning to teach in a professional development school that fosters teacher inquiry

The purpose of this study was to examine the beliefs and practices of former interns prepared in a particular professional development school setting that attempts to promote teacher inquiry. Seven former interns that were experiencing their beginning years of teaching participated in this study. The participants in this study were all classroom teachers who had learned to teach in the context of an elementary professional development school partnership. Each had participated in a year-long internship experience.;The seven participants were purposefully selected from a larger pool of former interns who had responded to a survey that attempted to uncover the degree to which former interns espoused an inquiry stance towards teaching. The participants were purposefully drawn because they were teaching in different contexts and appeared, from their survey responses, to have differing degrees of an inquiry orientation.;The findings of this study lead to the development of a formal definition of an inquiry stance toward teaching. The data show us that this particular PDS program does seem to prepare teachers to have and maintain an inquiry stance throughout their teaching careers. The data revealed that an inquiry stance may not look exactly the same for everyone but it does not mean that it is not there. We know that different factors in a teacher's work setting can influence the extent to which his or her inquiry stance is visible. By examining the long-term impact of PDS preparation, we now have a better understanding of what an inquiry-oriented stance is and how to prepare preservice teachers with an inquiry-oriented stance toward teaching.