For some high school students, math doesn't always add up. How can they become more engaged and grow their understanding? That's the dilemma Amanda Barry, OCT, was facing three years ago. For her, collaborative inquiry held the answer.

As a curriculum consultant with the Sudbury Catholic District School Board, Barry gathered all 44 of the high school math teachers for professional development. Leading it was Peter Liljedahl, author of the book Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics.

Liljedahl, a professor at Simon Fraser University's faculty of education, had by then spent 15 years working with teachers in what he called a massive research project. The goal was to identify whether a classroom is a thinking or non-thinking one, and the pedagogies influencing each variable. In Sudbury, Liljedahl and the math teachers discussed his concepts around how tasks are given and groups formed, the ideal workspace, how students work, assessing learning, and more.

The teachers then carried out a followup inquiry, meeting over a semester to share their learnings and strategies. They conducted a baseline test to measure student achievement, implemented various approaches around a thinking classroom framework, and tested the students again. Achievement, thinking and engagement around math had jumped markedly.

For Barry, who now teaches social sciences and English at St. Benedict Catholic Secondary School in Cambridge, Ont., this exemplified the benefits of collaborative inquiry. That's a systematic way for teachers to examine educational practices together — rooted in clear student requirements — and using research techniques. "We can only change what we can measure," says Barry.

How have some Ontario Certified Teachers used collaborative inquiry best?

"Teachers can be involved in a collaborative inquiry without necessarily referring to it by that name, or by labelling all the steps. It can happen organically, but with purpose."

And why is it so important to teacher efficacy and, in turn, student performance?

Teachers can be involved in a collaborative inquiry without necessarily referring to it by that name, or by labelling all the steps. It can happen organically, but with purpose.

"You have to engage in a disciplined approach, identify the dilemma or issue, relate it to a student learning need, investigate promising approaches, and commit to putting in place new practices," says Jenni Donohoo, OCT, author of Collaborative Inquiry for Educators: A Facilitator's Guide to School Improvement and co-author of The Transformative Power of Collaborative Inquiry: Realizing Change in Schools and Classrooms.

This isn't a PhD thesis, nor is it casual brainstorming in the staff room. "I think you need a sweet spot in the middle," says Donohoo, who's now a professional learning facilitator on contract with the Council of Ontario Directors of Education.

Degrees of sophistication in the process can vary, yet they all involve depth of thinking, evidence-gathering and targeted inquiries. In all cases, the intent is improved student learning, explains Mélissa Balthazar, OCT.

Balthazar teaches Grade 8 French, English and social studies at Gloucester, Ont.'s École secondaire publique Louis-Riel. Recently, she took note of how students can struggle to connect subject areas, so she posed the question, "How can students make learning come to life by integrating different subjects?"

To inform the answer, Balthazar talked to colleagues, and also carefully watched her students. In one class, she had them use the whiteboard to portray a social matter, which could only be guessed with visual cues. One student drew a series of cars with huge plumes from the tailpipes. Another drew big houses juxtaposed with people begging. Interesting, she thought, how the expressions came out.

With other teachers, Balthazar discussed the possibilities of testing an interdisciplinary project that could be evaluated in multiple subjects. They arrived at social studies and art. The students were tasked with producing a painting or drawing, using a vanishing point, that depicted a social issue like climate change or poverty.

The outcome? More passion from the students, says Balthazar, and a clearer understanding about the issues. Whether students are more interested in social sciences or art, this assignment engaged all. For instance, Balthazar says that some students with visual and kinesthetic learning abilities became more interested in the social studies concepts when arts were part of the equation.

For collaborative inquiries, the baseline can include observations or hard data. Barry was involved in one that looked at closing the achievement gap in math as students moved from middle school to high school.

Ten teachers from Grades 7–9 examined performance and various approaches to prepare students for the transition. They compiled a shared database of problem-solving questions to scaffold learning. Together, the teachers developed a smoother continuum for math expectations. They'll compare the cohorts before and after, to see if the achievement gap has shrunk. Moreover, this inquiry involved teachers at different levels who typically don't collaborate this way. "It opened the lines of communications between these grades, and created more alignment," says Barry.

Many examples lean toward what one might call collaborative inquiry "light," but the principles remain.

Laura Lee Matthie, OCT, who teaches music at Orillia Secondary School, frequently taps into peers for new approaches to help her learners. For instance, she has used the Facebook group of the Ontario Music Educators' Association (OMEA Pot Luck Resource Group) to gather proven techniques for everything from teaching virtually to performance rubrics.

Matthie has also worked with colleagues to integrate technology into music education and find better ways to assess her students. The first led to three new meaningful lessons, and the second to the use of daily performance and learning skills tracking tools. With inquiries, Matthie feels it's important to cast a wide net, not just within your school but also across other schools and boards. "This is a great way to gather more ideas for your bag of tricks."

Marium Chowdhury, OCT, has also used less formal collaborative inquiries to accelerate solutions. She supports ESL and ELL learners at Thornwood Public School in Mississauga, Ont. Learning a new language (and adjusting to a new country) can be tough at the best of times. The pandemic stresses and frequently shifting learning environments didn't help.

At Thornwood, support teachers and other educators aimed to explore how students could best acquire English vocabulary learning remotely. Chowdhury and her colleagues probed not just achievement but also whether students were focused online, and how they were faring emotionally. The team talked to students and (through translators if needed) parents too.

One strategy for struggling students was to get back to basics: a lot of repetition, set routines with fewer interruptions, smaller groups and modified lessons.

Ideally, Chowdhury says, collaborative inquiry should be "disruptive" — finding new ways of teacher understanding to fuel student understanding.Sometimes it's also a matter of applying existing thinking to a new situation, says teacher candidate Matthew Aslett. That was his experience during a pair of placements in 2021 in the Halton Catholic District School Board.

Aslett, who's pursuing his bachelor of education at Niagara University, noticed that his Grade 7–8 students were becoming disengaged. The pandemic was taking a toll. He wondered how students could become more excited about learning when their world is in flux.

There's little to draw on about learning during a pandemic, so Aslett hoped to find other tried-and-true strategies that could apply here.

He collaborated with a curriculum consultant, teachers, the administration team, and professors and other students in the Niagara program. Out of a portfolio of ideas, one nugget emerged: in a time of uncertainty, give students more autonomy.

For a math lesson about fractions, Aslett let students use any real-world example that appealed to them, from sports to investing.

For another lesson, where students had to spend an imaginary $500 (calculating discounts and taxes), he provided a big catalogue of items. That gave each student endless combinations to choose from. And for a literacy project, students could pick any poem at all that connected with their heritage or the ideas of inclusivity and equity.

There's nothing new about promoting student autonomy. What Aslett noted was the context. When students are feeling a loss of control in life, giving them even more control over their learning made a huge difference. He saw it in both improved marks and the greater joy it brought to learning. "There was more enthusiasm and energy for tasks," he says.

Even brief encounters can contain elements of collaborative inquiry, says Terri Sinasac, OCT, a literacy and numeracy support teacher with the St. Clair Catholic District School Board.

She describes one effort involving a group of early primary educators. They recognized that students became restless if formal instruction went on too long. So they wanted to see how more play-based learning could improve math knowledge.

With a group of teachers watching, one teacher led a planned lesson about addition. It took 25 minutes, and by the end some students couldn't even recall the problem they were trying to solve. Then they took a break, and the teachers devised another strategy.

This time, they divided the 25 students into groups of five each. Each group repeated the lesson, but in just five minutes. So the same 25 minutes was spent, but in a more focused way. Before or after students took their turns, they played.

The teachers had primed the area with "provocations" — clocks, counters, blocks and other items that could be used for math. What would happen?

The students ended up counting, combining numbers, comparing the size of their block towers and doing other math manipulations. "It was incredible to see the learning that was transferring between students," says Sinasac.

The teachers identified a student need, zeroed in on possible approaches, and measured the before and after states.

When she was a classroom teacher, Donohoo found the experience of undertaking collaborative inquiries, apart from the results, to be invaluable. She says the process of discovery itself can be motivating because you "own" the outcomes.

That's true for teachers and students alike. Practising what you preach is another advantage to participating in such inquiries.

After all, teachers routinely expect students to identify a topic of interest, ask probing questions, research, analyze, draw conclusions, and apply and share results. That leads to new learning. That's collaborative inquiry. Ontario Certified Teachers should be encouraged to do the same.

"The greatest gift we could give our students," says Sinasac, "is to understand that we're learners too."