Kate Wall
@katewall.bsky.social
Professor of Education
Strathclyde Institute of Education
Professional learning, primary/EY, democratic ed, voice, visual methods & pedagogies for thinking. #StrathSTL #StrathEdD #StrathEduPGR
Education
58%
Psychology
18%
Encourage opportunities to share, model it, and show how connections can build across age, stage and subject area. Act as match maker for potential collaborations. The enquiry process can be glue that allows conversation across difference and from there comes useful learning/9
Finally, value the collaboration arising from share aspect of practitioner enquiry. How shared capacity building about pedagogy and research helps build a school narrative. Enquiry knowledge supports us in talking confidently about what we do and why for the benefit of learners/8
Value cummulative learning from successive enquiry cycles. One cycle will bring a piece of the jigsaw, but there's always plenty more worthy of exploration. Use language that encourages this continuous process of prof learning as we strive to improve practice. It doesn't stop/7
Value also comes from setting aside time for people to focus on their enquiries in staff meetings or inservice days. I know this is a hard one. But to make time one year and then just stop, sends a message that it is no longer a priority and that you think it can drop /6
Value also comes from championing and supporting others' practitioner enquiries. Using outcomes from colleagues' enquiries, e.g. in school dev plans or in staff meetings to share good practice and build knowledge and understanding is a good start. This says enquiry is useful/5
First and foremost, I think its about leaders showing value in practitioner enquiry. By continuing to do their own enquiries, modelling that they don't let it drop off their list of things to do, that its useful and part of their stance in their role. Prioritising the learning/4
It is very easy to think to think practitioner enquiry is a box to be ticked, 'we have done that', and then letting it slide off the agenda. but if we truly believe that it is fundemental to good teaching then it can't be a one off and needs to be incorporated into practice /3
All teachers in Scotland need to be doing practitioner enquiry. Its in the standards and part of prof update process, but making a system change within a school to ensure it is foregrounded enough while also keeping it manageable is a difficult balance when it is so fast paced/2
Practitioner Enquiry Tip of the Week: sustaining an enquiry community. A really useful question from @MrsKRGray (Twitter/X) Its difficult to start a community, but harder to keep it going, what can help that continuous process and make it a part of 'normal'? /1🧵
#PractitionerEnquiryTotW
#PractitionerEnquiryTotW
Inevitably it'll not be smooth sailing and you'll make some mistakes, but showing that is also important. Our ultimate jobs as leaders of practitioner enquiry communities is to role model the process, balance and learning. So start an enquiry community by doing exactly that/8
By making the enquiry cycle links explicit, this is what you said in response to cycle 1 and so this is what I am going to do as a result (cycle 2), and so on, then you are not only modelling practitioner enquiry, but you are showing that your are listening and learning /7
And fourthly, as you get some insight then you'll show how one enquiry moves into the next. Your first cycle was finding out what colleagues think about enquiry, the next will be acting on some of those ideas and maybe involving one or two colleagues in the process /6
Thirdly, an important one, you might just find out something useful from the conversations that arise. By talking about your enquiry with different people then, I'm fairly confident, you'll find out what the levers and barriers are for enacting enquiry in your setting /5
Secondly, you are showing that you think enquiry is important and useful enough to include in your busy schedule alongside all the other stuff. There will probably be occasions where that is difficult and problematic, but talking about it makes it feel more doable to staff/4
Firstly, you are raising the profile of enquiry. You think it is important and you are going to use the language and engage with the process explicitly in a public way. You are also showing that practitioner enquiry is not just for classroom teachers, but should be career long/3
An intentionally flippant answer is, through doing an enquiry! This is a really good enquiry question that you obviously don't know the answer to right now, although you probably have some hunches. Expressing this to staff as an enquiry means you will achieve multiple aims/2
Practitioner Enquiry Tip of the Week: How to start a practitioner enquiry community. A good question from the Strath IntoHeadship alumni group. What do you do if practitioner enquiry is not foregrounded in your setting, how do you get started? /1🧵
#PractitionerEnquiryTotW
#PractitionerEnquiryTotW
Enquiry is a powerful leadership stance whereby we recognise ourselves as learners alongside colleagues and students. Sometimes that learning goes smoothly, sometimes not so much, that is OK. By signing up to enquiry we are committing to try and improve and role model process/7
We need to show strategies for working out and how we ensure enquiry is not taking over our lives. How do we fit enquiry into 9-5 and what compromises are made as a result. How do we connect different elements of role through enquiry and make sure that the outcomes are useful?/6
Genuine enquiry when we don't know answer is hard and often doesn't go way we expect. Supporting this level of challenge in prof learning is important. Leaders need to show they don't always get a perfect outcome and get stuck. That learning from failure is just as relevent/5
Leaders create spaces for enquiry dialogue. Sharing process and outcome is essential for individual sense making as well as community capacity building. We set tone of these spaces in regard support of tentative thinking, of exploration, and response to potential disagreement/4
Leading a practitioner enquiry community means facilitating teacher autonomy - their question, approach to finding out, decisions about appropriate evidence, timescales, and approaches to sharing. Refrain from telling people what to do, ask questions of the thinking behind: why/3
I am one of those leaders and with 20+ years supporting enquiry, I see 2 aspects to this: how we lead communities of enquirers in ways that are supportive, connected and realistic; and how we carry out our own enquiries admitting we still don't know and are striving to find out/2
Practitioner Enquiry Tip of the Week: Leading for and through enquiry. School leaders can make or break enquiry communities in regard the support and space offered to enquirers they work with, and in regard how model our own processes of finding out/1🧵
#PractitionerEnquiryTotW
#PractitionerEnquiryTotW
And the sun sets on another #StrathEdD MELS day. Lots of interesting chat about being active in the reading and writing process and input into what makes good systematic review questions. Lovely to see some of last year’s cohort sharing their experiences 👏👏 @strath-ioe.bsky.social
Key to manageability is ensuring neither becomes separate from the classroom and learners within it. It always should be useful questions that relate to your practice. What becomes a project is up to you, but there are strategies to keep it connected and stop it being extra/9
Project is not better than stance. A good teacher does both. Enquiry as stance musings turn into enquiry projects; enquiry projects will be reflected on after they are complete (stance). Both are about questioning what we do and why, which makes us better professionals/8
Enquiry projects are great for being a bit more robust and rigorous. Research process gives a bit more credibility; commitment to share helps codify with literature and wider prof community. But it should still be embedded in practice: useful questions related to learner need/7
Enquiry projects are the exception; we may do 1 or 2 a session. Its the more research-y side of the enquiry spectrum where explicit questions are asked with strategic selection and analysis of evidence is prioritised. These are the types of enquiry we most often hear shared/6
Enquiry as stance is complemented by enquiry as project when the volume is turned up on a particularly pertinent issue or stubborn problem that you genuinely are not sure about. We turn the volume up in regard the kind of evidence that we collect and the way it is shared/5