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This study was conducted to explore characteristics of productive and unproductive inquiry in professional learning communities (PLCs). Based on a situated and sociocultural perspective on learning, I examined how two high school science PLCs (L PLC, W PLC) engaged in social interactions to improve teaching. Each PLC participated in 5 full-day professional development sessions (“Studios”) for 6-8 months. In Studios, all science teachers in a school collaborated with researchers and coaches to plan, implement, and debrief lessons. I qualitatively examined the PLCs' discourse in the Studios. Based on the analysis, I found that L PLC mostly showed productive inquiry, while W PLC showed unproductive inquiry. The two PLCs' inquiry showed three contrasting features. First, L PLC actively used classroom data in the inquiry to improve instructional practices, while W PLC did not. Second, L PLC focused on developing and testing instructional practices that could be used across multiple contexts, while W PLC focused on separate strategies that were specific to certain lessons. Finally, L PLC gathered, analyzed, and used multiple kinds of classroom data, while W PLC only used some observational data. This study can inform educational researchers and practitioners about how to study and support teachers' collaborative inquiry in PLCs.
