Teacher-researcher dialogue and expansive transformation of pedagogical practices

The purpose of the present article is to examine the expansive transformation of pedagogical practices prevailing at elementary-level education. Toward that end, it addresses the dynamic interface that emerges in collaborative relations between teacher-practitioners and academic researchers. Pursuit of pedagogical innovations in the context of computer-supported learning requires interaction across the disciplinary borders that often separate practitioners and researchers in education. The article introduces the pedagogical model of progressive inquiry and describes an elementaryschool students’ study project in which the model was applied by the teacher participant. Dialogues between a teacher and a researcher are used to illustrate cognitive, social and emotional challenges involved in teacher-researcher interaction, in using PI in education and in the overall pedagogical transformation that is entailed. The experiences of the project indicated that the network-based learning environment should not necessarily be considered as the space for sharing knowledge and collaborative knowledge-building. Rather, at least in the present PI project, the network-based environment functioned as a space for gathering knowledge and documenting the process of knowledge-building while the actual sharing of knowledge took place in face-to-face discussions in the classroom, i.e. in the physical space. keywords collaborative technology • knowledge building • progressive inquiry • teacher’s voice