It is important to consider the scale and manageability of your enquiry focus. Remember that this enquiry should work around and complement your other commitments. You are not trying to solve the problems of education, you are honing in on a specific part of your practice. This could be linked to your reflections on self, settings and learners or the current educational context. This may involve one learner, a small group or a larger group or class.

If your focus is creeping out to involve whole levels of learners/year groups or departments/whole school or setting cohorts, we would seriously urge you to consider the practicalities of this. Do you have enough time, support and resources to take on an enquiry of this size? Is it necessary for you to do so at this time? If not, simpler is better. The main priority is this enquiry should benefit YOUR practice and YOUR learners.

Framework for your question

A simple a framework for an enquiry question can help you to focus your question.

You can think of an enquiring question as consisting of three parts:

The question stem

This is really important as it influences the way you approach your evidence gathering.

For example, if you start with “Does……..” you will be attempting to ‘prove’ that your approach has worked, which is unrealistic and not overly informative and should therefore be avoided.

Better question stems include “In what way……….” or “How does………..” or “What happens when……..”. This encourages you to instead explore what is happening rather than attempting to prove it works. This can often result in more qualitative forms of evidence gathering and less of a focus on quantitative evidence.

The change

This is the aspect of practice you are trying out or changing which has been informed by evidence and literature.

The outcome

This is the outcome you’re anticipating will arise from your enquiring approach for the learners. So an example question might be:

“In what way does an online professional learning programme affect educators’ confidence to take an enquiring approach to developing their practice?”

Now that you have your question you are ready to move on with your plans and conduct your enquiry. You may find the learning resources in conducting a practitioner enquiry helpful as you work on your enquiry.