Being an enquiring practitioner requires much more than being able to learn the skills and methods of enquiry. As a teacher, to be a enquiring practitioner you need to be able to develop your ideas and knowledge of teaching. Be able to question and challenge new ideas which will allow you to continuously develop and learn. An enquiring practitioner is one who can learn from critical research and is constantly adapting their teaching ways. This way they can put these new skills into practice in the classroom and again learn from experience what works well and not so well. It is also important for an enquiring practitioner to be flexible; they must be adaptive and open to change.
Being an enquiring practitioner has benefits and challenges. Firstly, it gives teachers a useful way to monitor their own practice. By constantly challenging themselves and asking critical questions such as: ” What is the purpose of this?”, ” What impact is it having?”, ” Is it beneficial to my teaching?” They can improve the quality of their teaching and this in turn will impact the children’s learning. It also allows them to continuously develop new strategies and can enhance their self – esteem and professional identity as it enables them to make more professional judgements. Very importantly, it allows them to make crucial changes to the curriculum and provide the best learning environment for the children.
As said, there are still some disadvantages to this practice. A enquiry made at one school may not have the same beneficial effect in a different school. As a result this method is said to be “situationally unique”. Also, enquiries that are made to just prove practices or find methods that “work best” that have not been explored sufficiently can be said to be superficial.
