To be an Enquiring Practitioner means to take part in the process of your own progression as a professional. It means taking responsibility for your own improvement, may this be in your teaching styles, presentation, interaction or any other aspect of the job. An Enquiring Practitioner will take part in many ways to evaluate their performance and use the results to better themselves.

This is a diagram of 10 factors that should be considered when taking part in practitioner enquiry.  These factors influence how successful the enquiry project is. A description of why each of these factors are improtant when considering practitioner enquiry can be found through this link by clicking on each section.

http://www.gtcs.org.uk/professional-update/practitioner-enquiry/critical-considerations.aspx#expert-partnerships

The benefits of being an enquiring professional are plenty. It allows you to better your practice meaning your students will be better off. You will gain knowledge of new initiatives or methods of teaching that could benefit individuals you are teaching which you may not have come across otherwise. Enquiry allows a teacher to assess where they are and critique themselves. This is a fantastic skill to practice because it means you are actively engaging in bettering yourself and are not finding yourself stuck in the same old ways of practice. Professional Enquiry can also help you work collaboratively with other practitioners. This could open up a whole new range of possibilities for a teacher such as access to new lessons, styles of teaching or joint learning opportunities.

Enquiry can be a difficult thing for some professionals as some people find it hard to be critical of their actions. I think it is very important however for professionals to get past this challenge because so many benefits can arise from professional enquiry.

As a student teacher I think for me, professional enquiry is something I will benefit from looking into. It has helped me realize that you never stop trying to better yourself as a teacher, and although I am at the very beginning of my professional journey and may feel like teachers I work with are so far ahead of me, they are still themselves learning new things and bettering their understanding of the field. This is inspiring to me because I know that teachers I will be working with will understand my learning journey and are still taking part in it themselves. I will continue to critique myself in all aspects of becoming a professional teacher and try my best to work on the areas I find lacking.