User:Vtaylor/Faculty inquiry groups

Faculty Inquiry Groups (FIGs) - professional development

• teaching - a set of practices that have and need a social and organizational context

"faculty inquiry," pointing toward a process that begins with the questions that good, thoughtful teachers have, and need to understand more fully, about their own students' learning. In this spirit, SPECC campuses have created Faculty Inquiry Groups (FIGs) that illustrate powerful professional growth and learning

• opportunities for teachers to grow and develop must be sustained over time

• collaboration - purposeful, constructive occasions for sharing what they know and do

• focus on evidence about student learning

Strengthening Pre-collegiate Education in Community Colleges (SPECC), a joint initiative of Carnegie and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to address basic skills education in 11 California community colleges. This work involves campuses in sustained, reflective, evidence-based ways to improve the teaching and learning of underprepared students. A number of the SPECC reports, essays, tools, and products from this three-year project are available at: http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/programs/specc/