Strategic Inquiry (The Raw & the Cooked, June 2014)

Last week I was looking all over the house for a book called Strategic Inquiry: Starting Small for Big Results in Education by Nell Scharff Panero and Joan E. Talbert. I’ve been a fan of their work for quite a long time, and Nell gave me a call a few weeks ago to catch up and talk about where they might take that work next.  Their book is based on what they call a Scaffolded Apprenticeship Model (you can read more about the SAM model here).  I was delighted to read her new book and so much of the thinking resonated with the investments we have been making.

Their theory of action: “When a teacher team systematically studies the school through the lens of struggling students, it comes to see and then be able to remove obstacles to the students’ success.” (p.13) They focus on “teams, targets and tasks” to move students, colleagues and the whole.

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