As stated on the GTC Scotland website, being an enquiring practitioner is becoming a foremost important aspect in becoming a successful practitioner. A professional enquiry is an investigation with a rationale that can be explained or defended, this information is then shared amongst likeminded colleagues to enhance knowledge creation. Professional enquiry’s help professionals gain multiple viewpoints upon topics, methods and theories to ensure single-mindedness is decreased. This approach is vital in the teaching and learning world as it gives practitioners a wider span of knowledge to draw on in situations and allows for a collaborative community of practitioners that are acting as a team, not simply individuals. However professional enquiry’s may cause less confident members of a group to feel overshadowed and cast out, therefore it is vital to take every persons views on board and ensure everybody voices their opinion. Professional enquiry’s will help me as a student teacher as I will be able to draw on others ideas and incorporate them into my own methods and rationales. They will also give me motivation to work, due to my competitive nature, making me want to be at or above the stage of my peers.
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Max Hatton (Ma Hons)
Max, I like the point you made regarding learning from particular situations as I feel that this is really vital in helping teachers continue to improve. I feel your post was quite short and maybe next time go into some more depth on your points.
Hi Max,
I feel that in your post you have demonstrated that you understand what it means to be an enquiring practitioner. You have clearly shown the benefits and challenges, and I completely agree with all of your views, however I do feel that you could discuss your views in more depth.
I think that you made an interesting point here about your motivation and competitiveness. Do you think that this attitude helps you when working in group situations or are you more comfortable working independently?
I can see that you have mentioned the benefits and challenges of practitioner enquiry within your post, but have you thought about perhaps using sub-headings to signpost and break up your information? I have read about a technique called ‘chunking’ where it states that organizing information into groups can help people to process and remember.