1.2 Challenges of educational inquiry
Working within any institution involves negotiating a complex set of practices, assumptions, images and narratives of what inquiry means. These may be internal to the institution (i.e. particular to the FE college, school, university, Early Years setting) or they may be part of a broader set of values and assumptions that derive from policy or guidance within the sector.
Case study: A conversation between two practitioners during an annual review meeting
Lucy: So, I think it would be good for you to undertake an inquiry project next year using your professional development workload as it will help you work towards the promotions criteria. Have you thought at all about what you might look at?
Nell: Yes, I have been thinking for a while that there is a problem about engaging our struggling learners in using some of our IT programmes, which could actually help them a huge amount if they would take the time to work on it.
Lucy: Okay, great – finding out why they aren’t engaging would be really helpful as I know we are struggling with a similar thing in my department. Can you make sure that, when you collect your data, you focus on the cohort with Daria, Shenna and Chloe in it? Are you thinking of observing them with the IT, or running additional support sessions? How are you going to baseline the problem first? I’d really like to know what the block to them engaging is.
Nell: I’m not sure. Actually, I don’t find they are the ones struggling. For me, it is more widespread than that, it is the way the learners are engaging, not a specific group who aren’t. I suppose I’m more interested in how we can use the IT in a different way – how we might introduce it or teach it differently. I have a friend who uses it very differently to us and I wonder if it’s worth exploring that approach.
Lucy: Yes, sure. I would get some baseline information about this group first, though, otherwise how are you going to know if you’ve had any impact? Do you think you might be able to do something to help with our inclusivity policy, which we are going to rewrite next academic year? It would be good to include your recommendations if we can.
Activity 3 Assumptions about the term ‘inquiry’
Consider the conversation above. What assumptions are embedded in it? You might think about what is considered to be the purpose, methods and outcomes of inquiry.
Comment
You may have considered some of the following aspects which are implied in the conversation.
- Inquiry linked to personal professional standings – i.e. directly linked to promotion.
- Inquiry as focused on an identified problem – something that needs solving.
- Inquiry outcomes as transferable – i.e. the reasons for non-engagement will be the same across different contexts.
- Inquiry as finding out knowledge about something that is already there and is collectable as data – i.e. seeing inquiry as uncovering or revealing a set of ‘truths’.
- Inquiry as focused on investigating current issues or practices rather than about future practices or trying something different.
- Inquiry as having to have a quantitative measurement of impact, from a baseline, to show what has happened as a result.
- Inquiry as an alignment of personal practices with institutional or local/regional/national policy drivers.
- Inquiry as an individual responsibility.
Of course, none of these assumptions in themselves are incorrect. Inquiry can be all of these things, but this course will begin to show that it doesn’t have to be, and that every aspect, from the initial stimulus right through to enacting different practices as a result, can be framed differently. But, to do inquiry differently, it is important to understand these assumptions and values that you may come across in conversations with colleagues or in the processes of inquiry that you are supported to use. One significant assumption that underpins much of the discussion about inquiry is the problem based approach.
The next section will explain what this is and how appreciative inquiry challenges this assumption.