Changing Teacher’s Conceptions of Teaching and Learning through Cooperative Action Inquiry Group Process Teachers are the key to a successful curriculum reform. The newly reformed curriculum guidelines in Taiwan emphasizes integration and alternative evaluation, encourages team teaching and collaborative learning, and advocates the practice of school-based curriculum development. Its aims are oriented toward more “personal relevance” and “social relevance” instead of pursuing “academic rationalism.” Such a curriculum reform plan, of course, has challenged the traditional taken-for-granted pedagogical practice in many ways. In order to promote fruitful pedagogical transformation of the newly reformed curriculum, it is necessary to start with changing teachers’ conceptions of teaching and learning. With the attempt to investigate how teachers’ conceptions of teaching and learning can possibly be renewed through a cooperative action inquiry group process, the main purposes of this study were (1) to understand participant teachers' attitude and coping strategies toward the newly restructured curriculum framework; (2) to understand participant teachers' pedagogical transformation of the new curriculum as well as their conceptions of teaching and learning; (3) to examine, in the process of implementing the new curriculum, how teachers’ conceptions of teaching and learning can be renewed with alternative perspectives; and (4) to provide suggestions for instructional enhancement in implementing new curriculum. Many research reports point out that teachers’ teaching practices are influenced and directed by their beliefs and their perceptions (Clandinin, 1986; Clark & Peterson, 1986). It is important for teachers to expand and vary their perspectives through which they look on their own pedagogical practice because the more rational teachers become, the more teachers would “know.” As Greene (1973) points out, the subject matters a teacher studies and experiences a teacher have would all supplement the teacher’s commonsense discoveries, perceptual awareness and personal knowledge. Therefore, there is always a need for teachers to view their role from a different vantage point, and to examine critically about their taken-for-granted notions of teaching practice. In other words, there is always a need for them to examine their beliefs about knowing, teaching, and learning and to reflect on their teaching practice in order to change their “culturally constructed ideological systems.” By so doing there might be possibilities for teachers to raise their pedagogical awareness and awake their curriculum consciousness. When teachers are being aware of their professional knowledge, the external environment, and the inner self (Shulman, 1987; Elbas, 1991), they will be more able to build a multi-faceted stock of knowledge for grasping a progressively more meaningful pedagogical life (Chen, 2003). It is believed that only if teachers are willing to share their experience and knowledge with others through cooperative action inquiry process, can they break with fixed, customary modes of seeing their own teaching, and only then can they take responsibility for the pursuit of meanings of their pedagogical transformation of curriculum.

To achieve the reach goals, this study conducted a questionnaire survey (by using self-developed "Teachers' Beliefs of Teaching and Learning Questionnaire") to understand teachers’ and their beliefs of teaching and learning. Then, for tracing the changes of participant teachers’ attitude toward new curriculum and conceptions of teaching and learning, this study applied a cooperative action inquiry approach along with monthly group meetings to encourage teacher professional development as well as to trace the change and the growth of teachers’ perceptions.

The results show that though most teachers tend to favor the pursuits embedded in the new curriculum, they still hold back from implementing new approaches in their teaching due to various practical concerns and contextual constraints. Many teachers, in their teaching practice, still need external assistance to help with building alternative pedagogical content knowledge. However, that the cooperative action inquiry group process was an effective way to raise teachers’ curricular consciousness and pedagogical awareness in their teaching practice and it was a productive approach to challenge and to enhance teachers’ conceptions of teaching and learning. In this paper, the results of the questionnaire survey will be briefly addressed, but the processes of applying a cooperative action inquiry group process to encourage alternative perspectives of teaching and its effects on changing teachers’ conceptions of teaching and learning will be discussed in more detail. Suggestions for promoting teacher development as well as for further exploration in related issues will also be provided. Hopefully, the research experience of this study will present an insightful case to educators who are interested to promote quality education through the cooperative action inquiry approach.