Teach Secondary 14.4

Gordon Cairns examines how Practitioner Enquiry casts teachers as researchers of their own practice – but could it ever take the place of CPD? A growing number of UK schools are encouraging their teaching staff to undertake a ‘Practitioner Enquiry’ as a way to supplement, or even replace their traditional CPD training. By investing time, resources and academic input into their teaching staff, institutions hope to create conditions in which teachers can investigate aspects of their own teaching practice. A recent in-depth longitudinal study into a number of such projects found that undertaking a Practitioner Enquiry can have a positive impact – though precisely how this impact lands might not be what the practitioner or their school might have expected... Giving teachers agency Of course, the concept of teachers examining their ownmethodologies has been around for a while. Around half a century ago, Lawrence Stenhouse recognised that teachers were, in effect, researching their own practice whenever they engaged in curriculum development. In the years since, educational thinkers have continued searching for ways of harnessing the desire of teachers to examine and improve their own practice. And yet, the multitude of names given to this process reveals just how difficult the search has been for a definitive approach has been. Hence, we’ve seen the emergence of ‘reflective practice’, ‘action research’, ‘teacher research’, ‘practitioner research’, ‘collaborative inquiry’, ‘critical enquiry’ and even ‘critical collaborative enquiry’ – all implemented at various points by different educational authorities since the 1980s. By 2019, theWelsh Government had come to favour the term ‘Professional Enquiry’, citing what it saw as “ Strong evidence to suggest that teachers, like other professionals, find this one of the most effective forms of professional development. ” While there’s now some general agreement that giving teachers the agency to examine their own practice with a view to improvement is a good thing, there’s less uniformity of thought as to what makes a successful study. With scores of individual projects being carried out across the country aimed at ironing out personal classroom concerns, or simply sourcing evidence to back up an individual hunch, there’s been relatively little research into what actually works, or does not work. That changed last year, however, following the publication of a study by researchers at the Universities of Brighton and Buckingham, entitled ‘Teacher practitioner enquiry: a process for developing teacher learning and practice?’ Unforeseen benefits Academics BrianMarsh and Mark Deacon wanted to discover what made for a successful Professional Enquiry – and conversely, why other projects failed to work – so they established a five-year longitudinal study across five schools in the South of England, looking into the Professional Enquiries of 71 teachers. Perhaps the biggest surprise from their findings was that, despite the obvious goal of any professional development being to improve young people’s outcomes, there seemed to be scant evidence showing that class teachers researching their own practice were actually doing that. The data didn’t support an explicit link between undertaking a Practitioner Enquiry and the raising of pupil attainment – even amongst those teachers who claimed otherwise when presenting their completed work. The researchers simply found it impossible to disentangle the specific impact of a given enquiry project from all the other elements of a school that naturally work together for students’ benefit. However, this shouldn’t be taken to imply that creating research projects is pointless. On the contrary, note the report’s authors, “ The findings point to taking part in practitioner research as a valuable form of teacher professional development. We found evidence of teachers becoming more confident and more knowledgeable in the collection and use of evidence. Moreover, there is evidence of the participant teachers learning about their own learning . “ For many, the research led to ‘informed reflection’ and it impacted on practice with benefits to their own teaching and leadership. There was a significant impact on the morale. As one senior leader said, ‘I think the biggest impact is on teacher thinking rather than the outcome of their projects .’” A source close to the research adds that conducting a Professional Enquiry was able to make teachers more reflective practitioners. Participating in academic analysis is another benefit, as once teachers are qualified, they typically won’t tend to read and reflect on what’s out “Youmight think that encouragingyoungpeople to take part inoutdoor learning will improve their sleep – but howcanyouquantify that?” Test your TEACHING 24 teachwire.net/secondary