Sustaining Change Through Inquiry-Based Professional Development

This study was based on a series of professional development workshops held over a two-year period with the entire complement of history and social studies teachers (n = 53) in a large mid-western school district in the United States. The primary purpose of this study was to discover which factors were perceived to be most powerful in contributing to the sustainability of district-wide change. The workshops offered a practical guide to help teachers understand the tenets of constructivism, presented a compelling argument for why an inquiry-based pedagogy is more powerful than are traditional models of social studies instruction, modeled constructivist approaches for the classroom, and guided teachers through the design, development, implementation, and analysis of constructivist teaching practices.