Spiral of Inquiry Paper - Timperley Kaser Halbert
Spiral of Inquiry Paper - Timperley Kaser Halbert
Spiral of Inquiry Paper - Timperley Kaser Halbert
234
A framework for transforming
learning in schools: Innovation
and the spiral of inquiry
Helen Timperley, Linda Kaser and Judy Halbert
www.cse.edu.au
234
Introduction
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Where to next?
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Closing thoughts
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2014 Centre for Strategic Education Seminar Series Paper No. 234, April 2014
ISSN 1838-8558
ISBN 978-1-921823-53-4
2014 Centre for Strategic Education, Victoria.
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A framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry
Introduction
We know that education systems designed in
the last century no longer meet the needs of
our learners or our societies. We know that
schools must be transformed to engage todays
young people. We need a sea change in learning
settings for young people. Accepting this view
is relatively easy. The trickier questions involve
knowing what this transformation will look like
and how we can achieve it.
In a truly transformational learning system, the
focus is on high quality and high equity for every
learner, regardless of their starting point. In our
transformed schools, every learner will cross
the stage with dignity, purpose and options. In
addition, learners will leave our schools and
other learning settings more curious than when
they arrived. Their experiences will have created
a passion for learning and a curiosity that
will last them a lifetime. Finally, our schools
will develop active and engaged citizens who
demonstrate a strong sense of personal and
social responsibility. Dignity, purpose, options,
curiosity and social responsibility for each
young person for us, these are the hallmarks
of a transformed school.
Centre for Strategic Education Seminar Series Paper No. 234, April 2014
A framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry
What's going
on for learners?
Focusing
Developing a hunch
Scanning
Learning
How do
we know?
Checking
Taking Action
Centre for Strategic Education Seminar Series Paper No. 234, April 2014
A framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry
How do we know?
Scanning
Whats going on for learners?
The scanning phase of the spiral asks us to
be genuinely curious about our learners and
to stay open to all kinds of new information
and insights. The scanning process starts to
create the motivation and energy for further
engagement. It also ensures a much richer
understanding of student experiences and helps
us avoid the traps of our own assumptions,
biases, judgments or perceptions. A thorough
scanning establishes the foundation for future
learning and informed action. Scanning opens
up divergent thinking.
It is important to avoid restricting the scanning
process to areas for which evidence is already
available. The scan needs to be wide enough so
that key areas like the arts, physical activity,
empathy, resilience and social-emotional
learning do not get missed. In most schools,
detailed information is readily available for
academic learning outcomes, especially in the
areas of literacy and numeracy. Many schools
collect data about office behaviour referrals,
but their ready availability does not mean they
give a real picture of what is going on for and
with young people. We need to get underneath
the data to understand what these numbers are
actually telling us.
Centre for Strategic Education Seminar Series Paper No. 234, April 2014
A framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry
Design challenges
Scans provide the overview. They are not the
main event in the inquiry spiral. The scans
themselves initially may be somewhat imperfect
the key is to get started and to approach the
scanning process with curiosity, through an
inquiry mindset (Kaser and Halbert, 2009).
During the first time through the inquiry spiral,
scanning may take about two months. Once
the spiral of inquiry is integrated into school
practice, scanning will occur throughout
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Centre for Strategic Education Seminar Series Paper No. 234, April 2014
Focusing
Where will concentrating our energies
make the most difference?
Thorough scanning provides a shared picture
of what is going on for learners. The focusing
phase requires us to ask: Where are we going to
concentrate our energies so that we can change
the experiences and outcomes for our learners?
We said earlier that it is important to get
started. However, it is also important to avoid
the temptation at this stage to rush into doing
something. The lets just get going spirit
needs to be resisted not forever but for long
enough to increase the odds that our actions
will have the impact we desire. We need to
have the courage and patience to slow down
and develop a deeper understanding of what is
worth spending time on before moving to hasty
action. Focusing well will lead to informed
action.
The scan will invariably lead to many new
perspectives on the experiences of learners and
the challenge is to determine which area to
concentrate on as a start. We need to consider
focus areas with high leverage in addressing
important issues and, at the same time, ensure
that the chosen direction is manageable.
Making it manageable usually means selecting
no more than one or two areas otherwise
we can become overwhelmed with multiple
A framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry
Design challenges
The multiple possibilities that arise from
scanning mean some desirable options have
to be parked for a later time or dealt with
in a way other than through focused learning
and change. We have found that mediating
between conflicting views about what matters
and delaying something of potential value is one
of the hardest things for inquiry teams to do.
Successfully mediating conflicting demands
and interests matters a great deal. The design
task is to develop wide-spread commitment to
something that is important and worthwhile.
Having everyone (or as close to everyone
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Centre for Strategic Education Seminar Series Paper No. 234, April 2014
Developing a hunch
How are WE contributing
to the situation?
The phases of the inquiry spiral are not rigidly
sequential. They often overlap. Evidence
from one informs the next. Sometimes new
information takes us back to the beginning.
Surprises are inevitable and, in many ways,
hunches about what might be leading to
what occur throughout (Johnson, 2010).
Our intuition and our hunches, together with
relevant evidence, inform scanning. They
guide focusing. In this phase of the spiral we
consciously surface individual hunches, about
what we are doing that is leading to the specific
situation for our learners. As we do this we
develop a collective understanding of these
hunches.
The word hunch itself is really important. Our
hunches are not necessarily grounded in fact.
They may not be totally accurate. They may be
100 per cent right or they might be completely
wrong. They are based on our intuition and
they often implicitly drive our behaviour. What
is essential is that we get our hunches out on
the table so that we can test them by seeking
relevant evidence to figure out which ones are
likely to be more accurate and useful. Then we
can see which possible courses of action and
new learning are indicated.
A framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry
Design Challenges
One of the challenges in developing hunches is
that they are often believed passionately to be
the truth, when they are really just someones
perception of the root causes. These truths
are usually about other people rather than
about ourselves and come out in expressions
like, They wont or, If only they would
. Ignoring or dismissing these deeply held
opinions does not work. They will just keep
popping up at every opportunity. It takes
persistence and tenacity to shift the focus from
others to ourselves.
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Centre for Strategic Education Seminar Series Paper No. 234, April 2014
New Learning
How and where will we learn
more about what to do?
All phases of the spiral involve learning. We have
drawn particular attention to it here because this
is the time to really take our own professional
learning seriously, as we ask, How and where
can we learn more about what to do?
This phase is critically important because
better outcomes for learners are a result of
teachers and leaders acquiring new knowledge
and developing new skills that lead to new
actions. Simply doing what has always been
done and hoping for different results is not only
delusional, it is highly demoralising.
A framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry
Design challenges
The first consideration is to ensure that new
learning is directly connected to the focus
that has been determined and informed by the
hunches that were developed. This may seem
self-evident but we have seen far too often that
professional learning can be derailed by what
is convenient, expedient, readily available or
popular.
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Centre for Strategic Education Seminar Series Paper No. 234, April 2014
A framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry
Taking Action
What can we do differently to make
enough of a difference?
We call this a spiral of inquiry, learning and
action for a good reason. Clearly something
has to change in young peoples learning
environments for their experiences to change.
The wording in the question is designed to
indicate that this phase is not just about taking
any actions. It is about taking informed actions
that will make enough of a difference. This is
now the time to put new ideas that we have
learned into informed, focused and team-led
action.
It is important to see this phase as more than
just implementing some new strategies that we
learned in the previous phase. By taking action
we are deepening our learning. For example, we
may learn about the ways in which assessment
for learning changes the power relationships in
classrooms, but it is not until we try it out that
we discover what that rather abstract idea really
means. Usually we have to try something out
in action, reflect on how it went, have someone
help us to understand the ideas more deeply,
and then try it out again.
At this stage, lets look at how the elementary
school, which we described earlier, integrated
learning and action. This was the school where
the teachers and leaders were concerned that
many of their learners often arrived at school
late and were not engaged in school, particularly
in reading. Their long-term goal was to create
the conditions for intellectual engagement,
but they made a strategic choice to focus on
increasing engagement by developing stronger
social and emotional connections, through
physical activity as a starting point. One of
their hunches was that perhaps the usual way
they started each day was not consistent with
what we now know about social-emotional
engagement and physical activity.
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Centre for Strategic Education Seminar Series Paper No. 234, April 2014
Design challenges
Taking action is a team sport not a solo
activity. A challenge in designing this phase
of the spiral is to make sure that there are
opportunities for everyone to get ideas from
one another, support each other when the
going gets tough and to celebrate successes.
This means creating opportunities for dialogue,
observation, reflection and for second, third
and fourth tries without fear of judgment or
fear of failure.
A framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry
Checking
Have we made enough of a difference?
The whole purpose of the spiral of inquiry is to
make a difference to the learning environments
for learners and to valued outcomes for them.
The checking question asks, Have we made
enough of a difference?
The innovative changes we are talking about are
complex and our best efforts to address them
usually have mixed results. It is only through
careful checking that we can decide if we have
made enough of a difference and this will
start to inform where we go next. What is most
important in this question is the word enough.
Most of what we do as educators makes a
difference, but collectively we still have much
more to do before every learner crosses the stage
with dignity, purpose and options.
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Centre for Strategic Education Seminar Series Paper No. 234, April 2014
Design challenges
One design challenge is to get the timing right
and this will depend on the context and the
scope of the changes being made. We need to
allow sufficient time for our learning and action
A framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry
Where to next?
Innovation floats on a sea of inquiry. The spiral
of inquiry leads to innovation, as educators
create new approaches that are fundamentally
different from the way in which things were
done before. These changes are based on new
sets of assumptions about how young people
learn, and on new ideas about how to construct
learning environments. The changes are also
based on a rich understanding of what is
going on for learners. As groups of educators
work with the spiral of inquiry framework,
their success with small changes creates the
confidence to design and implement more
radical changes. This is how transformation
begins.
This inquiry framework has been deliberately
designed as a spiral to indicate that one inquiry
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Centre for Strategic Education Seminar Series Paper No. 234, April 2014
Closing thoughts
As we pointed out at the beginning of this
paper, we are deeply committed to transforming
todays schools into communities of strong
connectedness and high intellectual engagement.
We have experienced the power of collaborative
inquiry to transform systems. For the past
several years, educators in a variety of settings
and at multiple levels classrooms, schools,
districts, universities, networks, regions and
provinces have been applying an inquiry
framework to their change initiatives. We have
learned a great deal from our active involvement
in these various initiatives.
An inquiry approach in New Zealand resulted
in significant gains in the literacy. In this
project external facilitators worked with
leaders and teachers through multiple cycles of
inquiry in 300 schools over a two-year period.
Through this initiative educators deepened
their understanding of assessment practices and
how to use these understandings for student
learning. Teachers improved their knowledge of
how texts work and how to use this knowledge
in their literacy programs. Most of all, they
learned how to be responsive to their learners
by constantly checking: Do they get what I
am teaching?
All learners showed acceleration in their literacy
achievement; the rate of progress for those
learners who were initially in the lowest 20
per cent was even larger. The gains equated
to progress of more than three times over and
above the usual progress for reading, and of six
times over the usual progress in writing. Schools
that continued to build on the inquiry process,
after the external facilitation resource was
completed, either maintained these accelerated
gains for new groups of learners or increased
them (Timperley, Parr, and Meissel, 2010).
British Columbia provides a useful case study of
a jurisdiction where teachers, schools, districts,
associations, education faculties and provincial
networks have been using an inquiry approach
in their change initiatives for some time. One
A framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry
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Centre for Strategic Education Seminar Series Paper No. 234, April 2014
Endnotes
1.
2.
3.
4.
References
Bishop, R, Berryman, M, Cavanaugh, I, Teddy, L
and Clapham, S (2006) Te Kotahitana Phase
3 Whakawhanaungatanga: Establishing a
Culturally Responsive Pedagogy of Relations
in Mainstream Secondary School, Ministry of
Education Research Division, Wellington.
Christensen, C, Johnson, C W and Horn, M B (2008)
Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation
Will Change the Way the World Learns, McGraw
Hill, New York.
Dumont, H, Istance, D and Benavides, F (2010) The
Nature of Learning: Using Research to Inspire
Practice, OECD Publications, Paris.
Halbert, J and Kaser, L (2013) Spirals of Inquiry for
Equity and Quality, BCPVPA Press, Vancouver.
Further information available at www.bcpvpa.
bc.ca/node/108.
Johnson, S (2010) Where Good Ideas Come From:
The Natural History of Innovation, Riverhead
Books, Penguin, New York.
Kaser, L and Halbert, J (2009) Leadership Mindsets:
Innovation and Learning in the Transformation
of Schools, Routledge, London.
Le Fevre, D (2010) Changing tack: Talking about
change knowledge for professional learning, in
H Timperley and J Parr (Eds) Weaving Evidence,
Inquiry and Standards to Build Better Schools,
NZCER Press, Wellington.
McGregor, C (2013) Aboriginal Inquiry: Lifting All
Learners, an Impact Assessment of the Aboriginal
Enhancement School Network (AESN), Report to
the Office of the Federal Interlocutor, Aboriginal
and External Relations Branch, Aboriginal Affairs
and Northern Development Canada and to the
British Columbia Ministry of Education. Accessed
12 April 2014, at inquiry.noii.ca.
OECD (2013) Innovative Learning Environments,
Educational Research and Innovation, OECD
Publishing, Paris. Accessed 12 April 2014 at
dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264203488-en.
Additional reading
Readers may also be interested to read the following
items, which were used in preparing this paper but
not referred to explicitly in the text .
Leadbeater, C (2012) Innovation in Education:
Lessons from Pioneers around the World,
Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, Doha.
Timperley, H and Parr, J (2009) Chain of influence
from policy to practice in the New Zealand
literacy strategy, Research Papers in Education,
24, 2, p 135154.
CSE/IARTV Publications
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Leading the education debate Volume 3: Selected papers from the CSEs Seminar Series and Occasional Papers, 20072010 (2011)
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This third collection from the CSE Seminar Series and Occasional Papers has contributions from a number of significant
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Strategic Educations website www.cse.edu.au. Alternatively contact Centre for Strategic Education, phone
(+61 3) 9654 1200, fax (+61 3) 9650 5396, email [email protected].
Linda Kaser and Judy Halbert, of Halbert and Kaser Leadership, Vancouver, are
co-founders of the Networks of Inquiry and Innovation in British Columbia,
Canada and are faculty members and directors at the Centre for Innovative
Educational Leadership at Vancouver Island University. They are the authors of
Leadership Mindsets: Learning and Innovation in the Transformation of Schools
(2009) published by Routledge and Spirals of Inquiry for equity and quality
(2013) published by BCPVPA Press.
ISSN 1838-8558
ISBN 978-1-921823-53-4