At this stage you may have a  potential area of focus for your enquiring approach. Many people describe this as being their ‘itch’.

What is the biggest issue in your professional practice just now?

Which learners are concerning you?

What's going well that you would like to better understand?

What’s the biggest gap between your values and your practice?

In an ideal world, how would you like learning to be in your setting?

What could you do differently to help achieve this?

In order to help narrow down your focus, you might want to discuss your thinking with a colleague, your senior leadership team, your learners and perhaps even parents, if appropriate.

This is an important stage and it does take time to refine an enquiry question or focus but that's okay. You might even find that when you get started that your enquiry question or focus may change and that's okay too.

The Clarify Canvas Tool from Dr Simon Breakspear might support you as you consider:

• What impact do we want to have?
• What problem/s are we trying to solve?
• What change/s could we make that would result in improvement?
• How will we judge whether or not we have been successful?

Tool - Clarify Canvas | Dr Simon Breakspear

Prompts for reflection:

• Outline the thematic area you have chosen and the possible areas of practice you might focus on in your enquiring approach and why.
• Give ideas of what you might do differently and what impact you think this could have on learners. You will probably have more than one idea as to what you might change or try at this stage – this is ok, just note them all down.
• You might even have considered how you would evidence the impact of what you plan to do – if so make sure to keep a note of this for later!