Four years of collaboration in a professional learning community: Shifting toward supporting students' epistemic practices

Few studies have examined how professional learning communities (PLCs) engage in collaborative inquiry over multiple years. This longitudinal study explored how a team of high school science teachers collaborated with researchers and district-based coaches in a PLC over 4 years. We examined (1) how the PLC, which was situated in a culturally and linguistically diverse school that experienced high teacher and administrator turnover, shifted their collective inquiry and instruction from focusing on students' reproduction of knowledge to supporting students' epistemic practices and (2) how researchers and coaches facilitated the shift. The participants' collective inquiry took place on 12 job-embedded professional development (PD) days where they collaborated to plan, implement, and reflect on lessons over 4 years. The PLC drew on Ambitious Science Teaching principles, practices, and tools. We collected and qualitatively analyzed video recordings of the participants' meetings and classroom teaching on the 12 PD days (96 h) and artifacts. We also conducted interviews with teachers and coaches. Data suggest that early in the project, the teachers focused on identifying and fixing students' misconceptions, but over time they came to focus on supporting students' epistemic practices—collaborative construction of evidence-based models and explanations. Facilitators—researchers and coaches—played two major sets of roles—challenging teachers' view of students as reproducers of knowledge and engaging in co-inquiry with teachers to identify and address problems of practice—that functioned complementary over the years and supported shifts in inquiry and instruction. This study provides implications about sustaining productive inquiry and partnership in PLCs.