Blog entries

Overview

Background

I’ve much of my time in recent years designing and delivering professional development. The traditional way of doing so is to build a course - typically a one-day workshop. This model fits well with our traditional approach to professional learning - hiring a casual teacher to cover the course participant’s class. The problem with this model is that it’s not very effective (Cole, 2012).

When I first started in this type of role I realised there was room to improve this model - I’d provide a resource package to support the practice after the course; offer follow up support; sustain learning over weeks or terms, with tasks in between. It was still broken. I’d see teachers in workshops using the time to write reports or clear their inbox. The learning wasn’t relevant, timely or challenging for everyone in the room. The course content was fine - it was well researched, had clear links to the curriculum, provided a sound theoretical basis with practical strategies for implementation.

I thought, perhaps it was the format that was broken.

Professional development can be seen as something we do to attain registered hours for accreditation procedures. I fear that this detracts from the intent of professional learning - to improve our ability to support every student to improve.

The toolkit

This insight has led me to develop a resource for this task - one that combines the elements of quality professional development with a format that better represents how we learn new things - by accessing them when we need them.

This toolkit provides an understanding of:

• why teachers may choose to implement an inquiry approach, and when it may be suitable to do so
• why inquiry learning is (and what it isn’t)
• how to implement inquiry learning.

This last point is where I think I have added the most value for our teachers. There is plenty of information online about inquiry learning. What I’ve tried to do is contextualise it within the curriculum so that it’s not seen as “something on top of” what we already do; rather, inquiry can be an effective and engaging approach to developing student knowledge, skills, understanding and capabilities across the entire curriculum.

Duration

Because our school contexts are so varied, there is no prescribed time or way to use the resources in this toolkit. The model presented for inquiry learning in the Australian Curriculum is designed to be implemented across a sustained period of time, but teachers may choose to start with some strategies for information literacy, questioning techniques, or social learning. The just-in-time and ongoing nature of the resources is designed so that teachers will return to the website when they need another injection of learning.

Learning outcomes

Over time, users of this toolkit will:

• Develop an understanding of inquiry learning pedagogies
• understand the knowledge, skills and capabilities that can be developed through inquiry approaches
• be able to plan and implement inquiry learning that engages students in a range of learning activities that are enhanced using technology and space.

Rationale

Read my rationale where I explain how I've structured this toolkit.