Learning from Practitioner Enquiries

This report presents the outcomes of the University of Glasgow’s project, ‘Playing the long game: Building capacity in final year initial teacher education and newly qualified teachers to improve outcomes for children in disadvantaged communities’, funded as part of the Scottish Attainment Challenge project of the Scottish Council of Deans of Education. The project asked three questions: • What learning can be gained and shared from practitioner enquiries undertaken in teacher education? • Can such contextualised learning also generate decontextualized learning that could resource other teacher education students and the profession? • Could sharing practitioner enquiries undertaken in disadvantaged communities contribute to professional growth and the Scottish Attainment Challenge? These questions where explored through interviews with two cohorts of PGDE students about to enter their probationer year, and repeat interviews with some of the first cohort one year later. Recruitment for the second cohort was impacted by COVID-19. Practitioner enquiry is now an essential part of teacher preparation, cultivating professional judgment and research-informed curiosity about practice within actual classroom settings. These enquiries can draw on theory, concepts, practice, past experience, tips and reflections to address problems of practice or explore enriched approaches within a particular classroom context. The current literature debates the merits of practioner enquiry as a pedagogy for professional growth, with contextualisation considered either a strength or a weakness. The report argues that attention to context is of particular relevance to teachers’ practice in sites of multiple deprivation. The theoretical framing was interested in how teachers’ professional learning over time seeks to integrate theory and experiential insight with ideas of possible alternatives then apply these in new contexts. The literature review raised the possibility that presumptions about what is possible in contexts of high deprivation might deter the use of more innovative pedagogies. The interviews explored whether and how contextualised learning from an enquiry might be de-contextualised as abstract principles, or re-contextualised to inform practice embedded within a new context, and what kinds of contextual conditions informed their professional judgements. The participants’ responses demonstrated that learning of different types can be recontextualised from their own and others’ practioner enquiries and that novice teachers are sensitive to multiple factors that condition their contexts of practice. There was evidence that the respondents considered innovative pedagogies more, not less, relevant in contexts of high deprivation, and that potential learning from others’ enquiries can resource an appreciation of complexity and diversity across contexts. The conclusion argues that sharing enquiries conducted in SIMD 1-40 contexts would have benefit, particularly for ITE students who do not experience such settings on their placements.