Aida A. Nevarez-Latorre / Aida A. Nevrez-Latorre / Aida ANevarez-Latorre / Aida ANevrez-Latorre
A volume in Adult Education Special Topics: Theory, Research,and Practice in Lifelong LearningSeries Editor: Kathleen P. King, Fordham UniversityThe power of teacher inquiry is revealed when educators examinetheir practices and the factors that influence them with the purpose ofmaking necessary changes to improve the learning opportunities of theirstudents, and working conditions in schools. As such, in this book theauthor proposes that reflection and inquiry done by teachers in multilingualclassrooms and schools may assist them to construct effective learningcommunities. In this book, Dr. Nevárez-La Torre examines differentways to reflect and conduct teacher inquiry in instructional settings wherestudents speak more than one language.Her exploration focuses on a teacher-oriented question: What happens when practitioners whowork in multilingual schools inquire about their own practice, their students’ learning, and their school’sability to create a community of learners and thinkers? The main purpose of the book is to delineate amodel for conducting classroom inquiry that teachers may follow to pursue important questions abouttheir practice and multilingual students’ learning process.Some special features of the volume include: a case study of amultilingual teacher inquiry group; description of the steps to followin designing and implementing inquiry projects; and a bibliography ofkey resources (i.e., books, websites, and journals) for conductingteacher inquiry as a professional development tool and for learningabout linguistically diverse classrooms and schools.There are eight chapters in this book divided into three sections.Although the sections are thematically connected, the readermay use them independently of each other. The first section introducesthe idea for the book, the author as a practitioner-researcher, and themain practical and conceptual issues discussed in the book. In addition,there is a chapter that introduces a model for using teacherinquiry as a tool for professional development. The second sectionincludes the analyses of the trajectory followed by three teachers intousing teacher inquiry to grow as professionals in ESL and bilingualclassrooms. The third section of the book situates professional development using teacher inquiry within abroader theoretical framework supported by other research done by academicians in various educationalfields. It also examines some key implications of this work for the education of in-service and pre-serviceteachers.
