Suggested activity

The Conducting Inquiry chapter presents an inquiry cycle specifically developed for ISTEs that shows how they can build their own knowledge and expertise while simultaneously helping teachers and students to identify their learning needs and work towards meeting them. The cycle is based on the teacher inquiry and knowledge-building cycle proposed in the TPLD BES and is consistent with the findings that have emerged from INSTEP’s research activity. You may like to read that chapter now, perhaps using Stoll et al.’s criteria (page 85) for evaluating its value for your practice.

Pages 13–15 of the TPLD BES describe potential responses to new learning. As you read, you may like to use those ideas to monitor your own responses to the content, for example:

• How do you feel when the writing affirms your current knowledge, theories, and practice? What do you do?
• How do you feel when you encounter new ideas or ideas that are counter to your current knowledge, theories, and practice? What do you do?

Alternatively, you may like to consider these questions:

• What do you consider to be the relationship between the formal and systematic cycle of inquiry described in Conducting Inquiry and the concept of inquiry as a “way of being” or “habit of mind”, as described in this chapter?
• What are the similarities and differences between the inquiry cycle described in Conducting Inquiry and any other inquiry cycles with which you are familiar?
• What are the deeper theoretical principles that you can see sitting beneath the ISTE inquiry and knowledge-building cycle, and how do you respond to them? (For example, do you agree that the measure for improvement in ISTE practice should be shifts in student outcomes?)
• Which of the inquiry approaches (see pages 52–73) that are described are familiar to you? Are approaches presented here that are less familiar to you and that offer possibilities for your own practice?

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