An enquiring practitioner is responsible for maintaining and enhancing professional competency for pedagogical development. It means going beyond the role of reflecting and conducting practice based research for a deeper insight to improve practice.
Professor John Hattie said “The biggest effects on student learning occur when teachers become learners of their own teaching”.
Teaching in Scotland has been reconceptualised vastly within policy, legislation and what it means to be a teacher; the benefits of which are tangible in practitioner enquiry. This quote places huge emphasis on the fact that practitioner enquiry should always be carried out in mind of improving practice for the benefit of the children being taught. An enquiring practitioner creates space to review and engage in reflective practice to help gain an enhanced understanding of not only their own teaching but when working collaboratively. Now, there is more emphasis about understanding incentives to drive teachers, colleagues and children forward to make a difference.
It’s easy to be critical of others however to challenge yourself takes confidence. You wouldn’t do the things the way you do if you didn’t feel it was suitable. What we, as students, need to understand that the fundamental principles of practitioner enquiry is not to root out weaknesses but to refine existing ideas on what it means to be a good teacher.
As first year students there is already huge importance on the Standard for Provisional and Full Registration in preparation for autonomous life-long learning. Practitioner enquiry impacts on us all as students as we need to always have higher expectations of ourselves, become critically adaptive in how to improve our own learning and utilise this is practice. Ultimately, the result of practitioner enquiry is to better meet the needs of children and improve achievement.
I think your reflection presents an accurate description of what it means to be an enquiring practitioner. You outlined the problem that criticizing your own work can be challenging as we base our practice on what we believe is right. I think this is an excellent point to make in your reflection because it outlines one of the challenges to being an enquiring practitioner.
You outlined that reflective practice allows for improvement in teaching, perhaps you would like to follow this up by thinking about methods of reflective practice, and in what ways teaching would be improved by these methods.
You have remained punctual throughout your post and have presented information in a way that is clear and understandable to the reader. You have provided good points towards your reflection, which could be enhanced upon on further reflection if desired.
Hi Hannah 🙂 I really enjoyed your post. I liked how you used your imagination to create an interesting title (much more interesting than mine), I find that titles like this are more likely to draw the reader in. Your use of language and style of writing make your posts enjoyable to read. I think that you have met all the criteria of this TDT and I agree with many of the points you have made. You have highlighted many positives associated with being an enquiring practitioner!
you really made good points about what it means to be an enquiring practitioner and I like how you used a quote from Prof. John Hattie to show what it means for learning as a student. you gave many benefits of what it means to be an enquiring practitioner, however you could have given more details of the challenges of this (although I found this hard too!)