Creating a National Platform for Teacher Inquiry and Teacher Research: Voices of Practitioners’ Origins and Key People
Twenty-five years ago, we( the authors) were both early-career faculty members at San Francisco State University, deeply engaged in narrative inquiry and teacher research within our early childhood education teacher preparation and graduate-level courses. We were inspired by work others were doing to support and disseminate teacher research, and we saw a gap— teacher research for and by early childhood educators. Given its mission and reach, NAEYC seemed like the home for such an idea. The following timeline highlights key events and people involved with this publication.
From the beginning, key figures in NAEYC and in the broader field helped us envision and bring to life Voices of Practitioners. In addition to those named above, they included
› Past NAEYC presidents and Governing Board members like Barbara Taylor Bowman, Lilian Katz, Maurice Sykes, and Carolyn Pope Edwards
› Other influential leaders in teacher education, including Amos Hatch, Frances Rust, Mary Jane Moran, Rebecca New, Lawrence Schweinhart, Debra Murphy, Amanda Branscombe, Sherry Cleary, Vivian Gussin Paley, and Lella Gandini
Each, in different ways, had shaped the intellectual and pedagogical landscape of early childhood education. Their collective example inspired the vision for Voices: A meeting place where research, reflection, and practice could speak to one another through the voices of educators with authenticity and respect.
November 2001 Barbara Henderson and Daniel Meier meet with Derry Koralek, editor of Young Children, at the NAEYC Annual Conference in Los Angeles. They explore whether NAEYC might support a regular contribution that would center teachers’ inquiries and reflections as a vital form of professional knowledge.
2002 Derry Koralek helps Barbara Henderson and Daniel Meier connect with Gail Perry, the New Books column editor for Young Children. Perry goes on to cofound and become editor of Voices of Practitioners.
March 2004 An article previewing Voices content appears in Young Children( Henderson et al. 2004). The article introduces readers to the idea of teacher research. It includes excerpts from a classroom inquiry by Isauro Escamilla, a public preschool teacher in San Francisco whose work exemplifies the kind of reflective, practice-based investigation that editors hoped to highlight. It signals the beginning of a new space for teachers’ voices within NAEYC.
June 2004 Barbara Henderson and Andrew Stremmel meet at NAEYC’ s professional development conference in Baltimore. Along with Perry, they present strategies for integrating teacher research into early childhood teacher preparation and professional development. They define what teacher research could look like in early childhood education.
2005 – 2007 Voices publishes one to three pieces annually, as editors often work over many months with each author on reflection and revisions. Early contributors are teachers and teacher leaders who write about their settings and learn to craft their experiences into publishable teacher research.
2012 NAEYC publishes Our Inquiry, Our Practice( Perry et al. 2012). The book includes early teacher-research exemplars from Voices, as well as essays by the editors that offer reflections on the work and a reaffirmation of its central purpose.
2012 – present Voices is published online twice a year until 2015. After that, the compilation is published online once per year. In addition, select Voices articles begin appearing in Young Children. In 2020, Voices editors invite contributions of narrative inquiries. These narratives are published in yearly compilations alongside full-length teacher research articles.
Spring 2026 Young Children 93