Hammer, D. and Schifter, D. (2001).  Practices of inquiry in teaching and research. Cognition and Instruction., 19 (4), 441-478.

Abstract

We have three central purposes in this paper.  The first is to explore the nature of teacher inquiry, narrowing our focus to inquiry into student learning; the second is to explore what teachers’ inquiries and researchers’ inquiries offer one another; and the third is to consider the similarities and differences between teacher inquiry and research on learning.  Although teacher inquiry has much in common with research on learning, and it is essential to recognize the overlap in practice and agenda, teacher inquiry differs from research in ways it would be counter-productive to ignore or to mask.  We pursue these objectives by examining the teacher inquiry in two contexts: (1)  a conversation among a group of physics teachers about a discussion that took place in one of their classes, and (2) essays by two elementary school teachers about their first- and second-grade students' early reasoning about triangles.