Background

My School’s vision for professional learning groups has been for groups and individual teachers to collaboratively inquire into teacher actions that encourage active participation to develop learners who: achieve academically; are well-rounded and confident individuals, and are articulate communicators.

In this reflection, I will use Rolfe et al.’s reflective model.

Possible benefits (and disadvantages of Inquiry) (What)

Benefits of students been proactive and actively participating in lessons includes, increased understanding of concepts and increased confidence. It is expected that this will be improve in their overall achievement in impending exams. “Students learn more when they participate in the process of learning, whether it’s through discussion, practice, review, or application” (Grunert, 1997). I do not see any real disadvantage of the impact of my inquiry apart from the fact that students will have to put up with new ways of learning.

How is the observed impact different from or similar to the anticipated one? (So What)

I did anticipate learners increased engagement and achievement with the strategies I outlined but did not include Pear Deck as I did not know about it at that time. As Earl and Timperley (2018), argues our if you are a leader with an Inquiry mind you should not presume an outcome but rather be open minded to a range of outcomes and in all cases keep searching for clarity and understanding of your outcomes. I implemented my Inquiry across different year levels and I noticed that the students reacted differently to “The I am awesome slides”. Whilst year 10 and 11 students were very committed and enthused, Year 12 Early Childhood and Hospitality classes did not. The year 10 and 11 classes consequently have bonded very well with me where as the bonding between the year 12’s are not that strong.

I have a strong conviction that the inclusion of pear deck has made a very great difference in increased engagement and active participation.

Impact Future of Inquiry Practice (What Next)

Through this Inquiry I have come to realise that building relationships, setting up the teaching and learning process to involve group work combined with appropriate digital and collaborative tools is the key to stimulate students intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to become active learners. Hence I will continue to work with this Inquiry framework.

My biggest takeaway is that of timing, as I have had a change in school in the middle of the process and as a result, I got entangled with settling in and also having to follow through the Inquiry. This led to the situation that I had to implement the phases concurrently. The ideal situation was for me to have finished the first four phases of the inquiry by the beginning of the year and continue with taking action by the start of the year.

Since my current school has a school wide focussed Inquiry culture, in my future Inquiries I will just make sure I give enough time for each phase so as to get a better learning experiences and outcomes for my Inquiries. I also need to find out other ways of measuring my impact of an inquiry which is vital for revisiting the spiral inquiry.