Book Review: Wells, Gordon. (Ed.). (2001). Action, talk, and text: learning and teaching through inquiry. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University.

Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research

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Book Review: Wells, Gordon. (Ed.). (2001). Action, talk, and text: Book Review: Wells, Gordon. (Ed.). (2001). Action, talk, and text:

learning and teaching through inquiry. New York: Teachers learning and teaching through inquiry. New York: Teachers

College, Columbia University. College, Columbia University.

Mary Hookey

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Book Review

by Mary Hookey

Mary Hookey teaches as part time professor in the Master of Education program at Nipissing

University, Ontario, Canada, and is an independent researcher and writer.

Wells, Gordon. (Ed.). (2001). Action, talk, and text: learning and teaching through inquiry.

New York: Teachers College, Columbia University. 231 pages. ISBN 0-8077-4014-4 (paper)

In 1990, Marilyn Cochrane-Smith and Susan Lytle argued that "What is missing from the

knowledge base for teaching are the voices of the teachers themselves, the questions teachers

ask, the ways teachers use writing and intentional talk in their work lives, and the interpretive

frames teachers use to understand and improve their own classroom practices." The ultimate goal

for teachers is the enhanced learning of their students.

Action, talk, and text: learning and teaching through inquiry lets us hear the questions teachers

ask, hear their concerns and reflections, and discover how they attend to the details of dialogue

and discussion in their classrooms. The authors in this book are all members of the Developing

Inquiring Communities in Education Project (DICEP). This group emerged from a research

project on "Learning through Talk" funded by the Spencer Foundation in 1991. The goal of the

Developing Inquiring Communities in Education Project is to create opportunities that help

students learn to "act, think, and feel in ways that contribute to the common good and enrich

their own individual lives" (p.1). In their initial work, the researchers were "certain that the

essence of teaching and learning was to be found in the interaction among students and teachers"

(p.3). They concluded that "the most valuable talk occurs in the context of exploration of events

and ideas in which alternative accounts and explanations are considered and evaluated" (p. 3).

Therefore, they wanted to understand what enhances student learning by investigating "the

conditions that make such talk possible" (p.3). The book outlines the framework that they

developed collaboratively for interpreting, imagining and explaining how learning occurred in

the classroom. .

In the opening chapter, Gordon Wells provides a brief introduction to the DICEP group and

explains how the focus on inquiry emerged. This narrative of the group's uneven journey toward

their current understanding of the necessity for inquiry should be instructive to any university-

school or university_teacher research collaborative. They concluded that "the force that drives

the enacted curriculum must be a pervasive spirit of inquiry, and the dominant purpose of all

activities must be an increase in understanding" (p. 7) As a result, they adopted an action

research stance to their work. Wells describes how a question from the program officer of the

funding agency prompted extensive thinking about how the individual research studies in the

funding proposal were linked. The result is a conceptual model which they overlay on the more

procedural action research cycle of plan, act, observe, interpret. In their model, Vision is

juxtaposed to Plan, Practice to Act, Data to Observe, and Theory to Interpret. Wells provides a

detailed explanation of this conception of educational action research. As a brief example, the

element of vision places a strong emphasis on community, collaboration, outreach and

intellectual achievement. The conceptual model captures the sense of being in research as

Hookey: Book Review: Wells, Gordon. (Ed.). (2001). Action, talk, and text

Published by New Prairie Press, 2017

opposed to doing research, much like the authentic feeling of moving from "Talking Together" to

"Being Together in Talk" described by Judith Lindfors (1988).

Eight of the eleven chapters are written by teachers about their classroom research. The authors

are linked by a commitment to answering two main questions:

 How can teachers create and sustain communities of inquiry in their classrooms?

 What kinds of discourse promote and extend inquiry and enable participants to

transform their individual and collective understandings? (p. 21)

There are four sets of chapters in the book. One set focuses on research in the elementary grades.

The researchers ask questions about the nature and meaning of a community of inquirers

including: the values and expectations that make a difference when classroom communities are

formed (Donoahue); the value placed on the use and timing of student questions in classroom

inquiry (Van Tassell); and, the comparative importance of two types of student-led discussion

and the concept of negotiation for building a community of inquiry (Davis). Wells revisits a

familiar piece of his videotaped interaction with two elementary-age learners to discover

something new about the importance of "nonverbal dimensions of conversational meaning-

making" (p. 94). The result of his analysis and work is a new analytic tool that extends

conversational analysis to these nonverbal dimensions.

Another set of chapters focuses on research in grades seven and upwards. Questions about

inquiry-based learning are explored in the context of science (Hume) and social studies (Kowal)

classes, and a leadership lab (McGlynn-Stewart). Hume develops a "knowledge wall" as the

place for making dialogue visible; as students post questions in the form of notes on the "wall,"

they both display and stimulate their on-going reflection through dialogic writing. Kowal

analyzes the impact of the dialogue in a simulation of a Supreme Court Hearing. McGlynn

Stewart explores adolescent resistance to instructional change in the direction of inquiry. In the

fourth chapter in this section Hume expands the nature of her classroom investigation reported in

Chapter 6. She involves a small group of students who doubted the value of classroom discussion

for their learning as co-researchers on the worth of this practice. As one student reports, "Andrew

says its worthwhile and we're learning a lot of things about talk we would never have even

noticed" (166).

The authors provide us with a number of examples of classroom talk and self-talk as they engage

in the teaching/learning activities. For example, we hear students discuss their understanding of

the value of dialogue and class discussion (Hume, Chapter 9), or work through their ideas about

gas and liquids while trying to understand if this work was really answering their own questions

(Van Tassell, Chapter 3). Each teacher-researcher's chapter develops explanations and theory for

what has happened, and what might happen next, thus supporting the case Wells presents in

Chapter 10, "The case for dialogic inquiry." This chapter provides an overview of the writings of

action researchers and social constructivists who have influenced the group's "ways of thinking

about knowing and coming to know and the roles of discourse in these processes" (p. 15). The

subtitles in the chapter -- Changing views of knowledge and coming to know, Constructing

knowledge in collaboration with others, Knowing in action and reflection, and Discourse and

knowing -- give a sense of the intellectual breadth of this chapter.

Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research, Vol. 6 [2003], Iss. 1, Art. 9

https://newprairiepress.org/networks/vol6/iss1/9

DOI: 10.4148/2470-6353.1177

Final words go to the teachers. Monica Glynn-Stewart uses the eye of both participant and

critical friend to review the teachers' comments on learning through participation in DICEP.

With the emphasis on moving their practice closer to their vision, and using data to refine and

develop theory, they realize that they have become part of an international collection of teacher-

researchers focused on a deeper understanding of teaching and learning. Readers will find the

additional reference list of publications by members of the DICEP Group useful.

At the beginning of the book, Gordon Wells noted the difficulties of working for improved

teaching and learning when political decisions actually restrict opportunities to reach these goals.

However, if we assume that the concept of vision itself (no matter what its content) can inspire

our actions, we might also assume that this book has the potential to inspire new images of more

powerful teaching and learning for educators and politicians -- images of schools and classrooms

that provide opportunities to transform students' and teachers' "capacities to act, think, and feel in

ways that contribute to the common good and enrich their own individual lives" (p. 1).

References

1. Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. (1990). Research on teaching and teacher research: The

issues that divide. Educational Researcher, 19(2), 2-10. ERIC Document Reproduction

Service EJ411275

2. Lindfors, J. (1988). From "Talking Together" to "Being Together in Talk." Language

Arts, 65 (2). 135-141. ERIC Document Reproduction Service EJ367218.

Hookey: Book Review: Wells, Gordon. (Ed.). (2001). Action, talk, and text

Published by New Prairie Press, 2017