Inquiry-based staff development alters the way participants conceive of their roles as teachers and colleagues. Collegial communities can sustain significant changes in issues participants identify as important and support leadership efforts beyond the local context. (SK)

Teacher-written texts are used to demonstrate that the knowledge base for teaching should include the perspective of the teacher researcher, whose questions and methods are embedded in classroom practice and who should be a primary source of knowledge about teaching. (SK)

Inquiry-centered staff development requires that adult literacy practitioners (adult educators, tutors, and administrators) function simultaneously as learners, researchers, and reformers performing the following actions: forming research communities within program or across program sites; using literature and their own experiences to investigate…

Poor preparation of adult literacy educators is often blamed for the failure of adult literacy students. Four critical issues related to developing the adult literacy professional work force are as follows: how literacy is learned in adulthood; how practitioners learn and improve their practice; how new knowledge is generated in and for the field;…

Inquiry-based staff development is a promising direction for rethinking practice and research and for generating knowledge from a field-based perspective for adult literacy. Rethinking staff development entails investigating a number of current assumptions: the nature and function of literacy learning in adulthood; adult literacy practitioners as…