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Funding for this study of the impact of case inquiry on teachers' theories, beliefs, and classroom practices was provided by the Spencer and MacArthur Foundations' Professional Development Research and Documentation Program. Support for the ongoing professional development community of the Strategic Literacy Network was provided by The Stuart Foundations, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation, and the Gabilan Foundation.

In 1997, SLI began a three-year study of teacher learning and related changes in classroom practice and of the impact on student achievement. Teachers in this study – cross-disciplinary teams of middle school and high school teachers – were involved in a professional development network for approximately forty hours each year in the first two years of the study. SLI researchers studied changes in teachers' conceptions and classroom practice related to reading in their content areas and studied the impact on these teachers' students' reading achievement. Key findings of this study are summarized below.

Key Findings

Teacher Changes:
Through participating in case inquiry in professional development networks over two years, secondary subject-area teachers:

• developed more complex understandings about reading, reading processes, and texts, developing a situated knowledge base to inform interactions around reading in the classroom;
• expanded their thinking about student reading and the varied sources of reading strengths and difficulties students may have; and
• gained knowledge about and experience with a repertoire of teaching strategies for making the invisible processes and practices of reading visible to student readers.

Classroom Changes:
These changes in teachers' knowledge, beliefs and skills generated changes in the classroom, where teachers:

• shifted their pedagogical orientation from either a solely content-focused or motivation-focused pedagogy toward combining these elements into a pedagogy of empowerment in disciplinary reading;
• transformed their roles in the classroom and their relationships to students, creating a student-centered learning environment and giving students more challenging work;
• were able to continually generate a variety of ways of embedding comprehension-focused, reading process instruction into content teaching "on the fly"; and
• positively impacted student reading achievement and engagement

The Strategic Literacy Initiative has continued to develop inquiry-based professional development routines and practices based on this research into teacher learning. These routines and practices form the core of professional learning communities in ongoing Bay Area Networks as well as training for professional developers in National Institutes for Reading Apprenticeship. These professional development methods are described in "Building Capacity for the Responsive Teaching of Reading in the Academic Disciplines: Strategic Inquiry Designs for Middle and High School Teachers' Professional Development."¹

Student Learning in Classrooms of Strategic Literacy Network Teachers
Each year of the study, participating teachers tested one of their classes, using the Degrees of Reading Power standardized test of reading comprehension. Like the students in the Academic Literacy class study at Thurgood Marshall High School, the students of Strategic Literacy Network teachers gained normal curve scores from fall to spring, narrowing the achievement gap between their performance and that of their grade-level peers. A year's normal progress in reading would be represented by zero gain in normal curve ranking. Any growth in normal curve score indicates an acceleration of student proficiency.

1 "Building Capacity for the Responsive Teaching of Reading in the Academic Disciplines: Strategic Inquiry Designs for Middle and High School Teachers' Professional Development" is a chapter by Greenleaf and Schoenbach in the book Improving Reading Achievement through Professional Development, edited by Dorothy Strickland and Michael Kamil, Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc., 2004.

Read the full study (PDF)