It was great to meet with you all in November/December and whilst almost everyone started by saying - 'We haven't done very much since the face to face meeting,' it was very clear that you all had!

Certainly some hard thinking had been going on and lots of reading. 

This period is properly called RECONNAISSANCE ('preliminary surveying or research' according to the dictionary, and from the French reconnaitre!🔍) and is an important element in forming and reforming your research questions, and refining down your area of activity ready for planning your intervention and collecting some baseline data. 

 I think the main things to come out of our discussions were:

1. Keep the focus tight and narrow - frame your question/s as specifically as you can, and be realistic over timescales and scope so be precise - which grade, which subject area or aspect of learning, length of your intervention, who specifically will be involved, and what are the logistics of putting this together.
Think of a sand timer - broad at the neck, narrowing right down and then opening up at the bottom! ⌛
Look at the timescale and our timeframe on the Homepage

2. Whilst a main focus is on student agency and framing interventions around this, the kind of research you are doing is primarily about impact on the researcher -YOU! Changing one thing about your teaching or learning environment and seeing what happens, and how it impacts the researcher’s learning; change the teacher, change the student learning experience. It’s emphasising the small scale nature as a first cycle inquiry and changing practice so it becomes commonplace to use research thinking to approach change. We change the world one small step at a time!

3. As ever keep thinking ethics and this includes not overwhelming each other and colleagues with surveys and questionnaires!

And see the Research Consent Form below when relevant