Practitioner Enquiry

Professional Development with Impact for Teachers, Schools and Systems

George Gilchrist

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351867566
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Practitioner Enquiry: Professional Development with Impact for Teachers, Schools and Systems offers an accessible, step-by-step guide to practitioner enquiry, describing what practitioner enquiry is, what its adoption in schools entails, and what research and experience says about its benefits and possible pitfalls. Written by an experienced Headteacher who has worked with many schools to support their own engagement with practitioner enquiry, and who has been using the approach himself for over eight years, the chapters examine all aspects of its theory, practice and engagement.

The book includes a variety of case studies to explore the effect of practitioner enquiry across a range of settings, and to show how you can bring about deep, sustainable and embedded change that has positive impacts for all learners. Chapters cover:

• how you can create the conditions for succeeding with practitioner enquiry
• the process of enquiring into your practice
• the role of school leaders and teachers in successful enquiry processes
• the benefits you may expect from such enquiry
• case studies from a number of different contexts, showing enquiry in action
• examples of research posters produced by teachers involved in enquiry.

Practitioner Enquiry serves as a much-needed injection of up-to-date research into the field, combining theory and practice in an engaging and comprehensive style. It will be key reading for teachers and school leaders in both primary and secondary sectors.

1
Why practitioner enquiry?

Introduction

The first message I would like to give is that we should view practitioner enquiry as a verb, rather than a noun. It is not another of the many ‘things’ we are asked, or choose, to do in school. In its purest form, it is a way of being, a disposition, a way of thinking, reflected in a series of actions that are embedded as an approach in our professional practice and identity. This is not a fad or a trend, based on little or no evidence or research, but is an approach grounded in reputable research and evidence as to its efficacy and impact.

Education has been rife with ‘things’, fads, trends, the search for panaceas, ‘silver bullets’, and overall busyness for many a year. Practitioner enquiry is none of these and if that is what you are looking for, you probably should stop reading now. This is no quick or easy fix. But, it is an approach that can have benefits for all in the system, and especially our learners. It is an approach that, when done well, embeds change in pedagogy and thinking for teachers and leads to individual and school changes that are sustainable, embedded and relentless in nature. In my view, it also goes a long way to re-professionalising teachers and to help us move away from models that view them as mere deliverers, and teaching as a technical activity.

As a school leader, I want, and systems need, professional teachers who have high levels of adaptive expertise and agency, and who see themselves as active participants in school and system leadership. Continuing to do what we have always done won’t deliver this, but I believe that practitioner enquiry can offer us practice, and a mindset, that promotes continuous growth and development for both individuals and systems.

Whilst my direct experience in using and seeing such an approach in action is centred very much within the Scottish system, this is most definitely an approach that easily crosses international and system boundaries. How could it not when it is grounded in learning and teaching practices, and teacher dispositions? This is not about systems and structures, this is concerned with pedagogy and ways of being a professional educator in the twenty-first century.

We will explore not only the origins of practitioner enquiry but also its use and advocacy across different systems. There are individual teachers and schools across the globe who have been using this approach for many years now, but perhaps it is in Scotland that we see the first attempt to embed the practice within a whole education system, where all educators are expected and encouraged, by professional standards and national policy, to be ‘enquiring professionals’ in their daily practice. There is still a long way to go with this, however, and it is my hope that this book will help move this process on a little, both in Scotland and elsewhere. But, we are where we are, and the first principle in the adoption of this approach is that you have to start from where you are, not where someone else thinks you are, or where they think you should be. This reflects a personal and professional view of mine, that we need to get real in education, and keep things real, if we are ever going to change in a meaningful way, rather than just being busy but producing very little, or very slow, improvement for all our learners.

The General Teaching Council Scotland (GTCS), which is the body with responsibility for teacher registration and standards in Scotland, is a strong defender of, and advocate for, the adoption of practitioner enquiry approaches to professional development. On their website, the Council defines practitioner enquiry thus:

Practitioner enquiry, as defined by Menter et al (2011), is a ‘finding out’ or an investigation with a rationale and approach that can be explained or defended. The findings can then be shared so it becomes more than reflection or personal enquiry.¹

It adds that ‘For the experienced teacher, regular engagement in practitioner enquiry supports professional growth by challenging or “disrupting thinking” and “ingrained habits of mind”.’ It then goes on to situate the developing of enquiry dispositions within all its professional standards, so that wherever you are in your particular professional journey, there is an expectation that you will continue to enquire into your practice and your impact on learning.

It is not alone in this view either. If we look to the AITSL professional standards for teachers in Australia² we find the following. Highly accomplished teachers should ‘engage with colleagues to evaluate the effectiveness of teacher professional learning activities to address student learning needs’. They go on to say that leaders in Australian schools should ensure that they ‘advocate, participate in and lead strategies to support high-quality professional learning opportunities for colleagues that focus on improved student learning’. Whilst not mentioning practitioner enquiry directly, what they describe throughout embraces the principles and practices of enquiry. The standards produced in Australia are heavily influenced by the work of Helen Timperley and so it is no surprise that they would advocate such an approach to professional learning for their teachers and school leaders.

In England, the Department for Education published a set of Teachers’ Standards in 2011,³ which laid out the professional expectations for all their teachers and in Standard 8 (TS8) they ask that teachers: ‘take responsibility for improving teaching through appropriate professional development, responding to advice and feedback from colleagues’. Whilst not talking about enquiry directly, they are expecting teachers to engage in high-level professional development in order to improve their teaching and outcomes for learners. Looking at all the standards, I can see how the adoption of practitioner enquiry can help teachers in England deliver on aspects of all of these. It will become more apparent of how this would be achieved when we get into the detail of what is entailed in using practitioner enquiry for professional development.

The UK government, through the Department for Education, has also established national standards of excellence for headteachers, published in 2015.⁴ These standards for school leaders identify four ‘Domains’ for ‘Excellence as Standard’ expected of school leaders, and again I could argue that school leaders in England would be addressing all of these domains should they adopt a practitioner enquiry approach. However, it is Domain Four, which deals with the self-improving school system, and system leadership roles, that I think practitioner enquiry would really come to the fore. The two aspects I would particularly pick out are numbers 3 and 4:

• 3 Challenge educational orthodoxies in the best interests of achieving excellence, harnessing the findings of well evidenced research to frame self-regulating and self-improving schools.
• 4 Shape the current and future quality of the teaching profession through high quality training and sustained professional development for all staff.⁵

As we progress into this investigation of practitioner enquiry, I am sure it will become obvious how this approach would enable school leaders in English schools meet, and exceed, the standards expected of them by their government and inspection regimes. In Scotland, by the way, we talk much more about ‘education’ for teachers rather than ‘training’, which I think is important if we are to move from the view of teaching as a technical one, rather than a professional one.

In Canada ‘inquiry’ (you should note that enquiry and inquiry are interchangeable and mean the same thing in this context) is central to many of their professional standards. In the Province of Ontario, the Ontario College of Teachers have produced a Professional Learning Framework for teachers.⁶ This college fulfils a similar role to the GTCS, overseeing teacher registration and developing standards. Inquiry is one of the key overarching features of their professional standards. They state that for them ‘Communities of practice and inquiry enhance professional learning’ and schools and districts are encouraged to develop such structures. They advocate the adoption of such self-directed professional learning as an ongoing disposition of professional educators. In their framework a whole section is devoted to how teachers can become inquiring professionals and why they should maintain this disposition throughout their careers. Again, as the Ontario education system has been heavily influenced by the work and input of Michael Fullan and Andy Hargreaves, this recommended approach comes as no surprise. The fact that their Professional Learning Framework was published only in June 2016 reflects how current this thinking is.

What enquiry provides is a way for all to work and develop, so as to bring about deep-seated and embedded improvements in our understanding, thinking and practice as part of a continuous and ongoing process, which will provide benefits for all in the system, as well as the system itself. Practitioner enquiry, when embraced and thoroughly understood, provides benefits for our learners, teachers, school leaders, districts and the system as a whole. Having been engaged in using this approach for over eight years now in the two schools I led, I have seen first-hand all of these benefits and that is why I too became such an advocate.

We will explore the nuts and bolts of carrying out an enquiry during later chapters so you will see what it looks like, and understand the possible impacts, as well as the process itself better.

However, I do not just want or expect you to take my word for the power of practitioner enquiry, that after all would provide you with just one case study, in one particular context, and would have pretty low levels of validity. As you can see from the systems mentioned above, others too are convinced about its efficacy, but I think it is important that we consider some of the research and the evidence that exists, and which is being continually produced, that points to such efficacy of using practitioner enquiry as an approach for individual professional development, as well as for school and system development purposes.

The research base

In 1975 Lawrence Stenhouse published An Introduction to Curriculum Research and Development⁷ which introduced us to the ‘Process Model’ of curriculum development and, most importantly, marked the beginning of the ‘Teacher as Researcher’ movement. In this work Stenhouse set out his vision for teachers becoming researchers in their own classrooms, and how he hoped the results of all such individual studies might then be synthesised to help inform policy and practice generally, with benefits for all. He saw how teacher ‘action research’ might lead to improvements at all levels in education systems. There would be benefits for individual teachers, in terms of developing their knowledge, understanding and their practice. This would lead to concordant benefits for schools, and the system as a whole. He cautioned about how such an approach would be ‘generational’ and would take time to inform and produce the benefits he predicted. This was to be no ‘quick fix’.

Stenhouse envisaged that, for this to succeed, teachers’ conceptualisation of themselves as professionals, and their approaches to their classrooms and practice would have to change first and foremost. He spoke of teachers having to recognise that no longer could they view their classrooms ‘as an island’, with them in sole control and charge, largely isolated from everyone else. Collaboration with their colleagues and the development of a common language was essential. They needed to view their classrooms more scientifically than previously. In this way, he postulated, they would be able to share the results of their ‘action researches’ and then professional researchers could look to identify common trends and themes, through the accumulation of case studies from a range of different contexts.

I am sure that Stenhouse’s full original vision remains still to be fulfilled. Action research has been embraced by many as an approach, and one can see how this links into and informs the development of practitioner enquiry approaches. However, many thousands of individual pieces of classroom research projects have taken place, but there has been, and still remains, little attempt to bring these all together and synthesise their results for the improvement of all. What has happened is that thousands of teachers have enquired into aspects of the curriculum and learning in their classrooms, and have moved their practice on as a result. If that has happened, it also means that hundreds of thousands of learners have benefitted from improved learning experiences, and hopefully experienced improved learning outcomes, as a consequence. It is noteworthy that Stenhouse has had, and continues to have, such positive impacts on teachers and schools, but his work, and that of action research teachers, can remain difficult to detect across our education systems and the development of policy and practice within them. I don’t believe this is a fault of Stenhouse or his research, nor of all the teachers who followed his lead. No, this is more to do with the systems and structures in which we operate, and the hierarchies and conservatism that still persist in many, if not most, education systems. Another factor is that there were questions about the validity and reliability of a lot of the ‘research’ undertaken. These questions were particularly asked by full-time professional researchers. As with many good theories, they often mutate into something else by the time they percolate through various filters before they reach classrooms. This is also an issue for practitioner enquiry as we will discuss later.

What we can certainly credit Stenhouse, and others who were to follow his lead, with is the promotion of teacher agency, individualism and professionalism, combined with a more scientific approach to professional development. His work celebrated and encouraged teachers to become more professional and to become thinkers and researchers into their own practice and their impacts on learners. No longer were teachers to be accepting of ‘top-down’ practices, where they were waiting to be told what to do from above. Now they were to be encouraged, and expected, to question and to look closely and scientifically at their own practice and impact on learning. They were to be encouraged to collaborate with colleagues to research elements of their practice, then to share their insights and findings with colleagues, so that all could benefit.

It should be noted that Stenhouse’s call to teachers to become researchers of their own practice was not without controversy. He faced some opposition from academic researchers, who believed that he was undermining their work and its complexity. He also faced opposition from traditionalists within the teaching professions and schools who tended to think academic research was too divorced from the day-to-day work of school and teachers, who needed to concentrate on teaching the curriculum as decided by others. A view that is still prevalent amongst many teachers to this day. A common complaint was, and perhaps still is, that teachers and schools were too busy to undertake any meaningful research and that this was the role of others, who would then tell teachers what to do. However, following Stenhouse, other researchers and academics began to look closely at teacher professional development, leadership development and school development through a different lens than had, perhaps, been common before, with his influence still being detected across many systems to the present day.

It was the work of Stenhouse that provided the basis for the development of teaching as an enquiring profession and for teachers to re-engage with research as part of their ongoing professional development. Much of what he advocated and identified as high-quality professional practice is reflected in many of the principles of practitioner enquiry. We can see and hear echoes of his work in much of the later work of Michael Fullan, Andy Hargreaves, Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Alma Harris, Helen Timperley, Dylan Wiliam, John Hattie and others. All of these have spoken for many years now of the power of tea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Why practitioner enquiry?
• 2 Creating the conditions for practitioner enquiry to be successfully adopted
• 3 Carrying out an enquiry: the process
• 4 The role of school leaders/principals in practitioner enquiry
• 5 The role of the teacher in practitioner enquiry
• 6 What are the benefits from the adoption of practitioner enquiry?
• 7 Case study of a whole-school approach to practitioner enquiry
• 8 Practitioner enquiry across contexts: case studies furthering professional and school development
• 9 Pedagogical changes
• 10 Some final thoughts and considerations
• Appendix: research posters
• Index