Outline of the Inquiry

I had an excellent tutorial with Paula this afternoon that's given me a 'lightbulb' moment and provided me with a lot more direction. We had had a discussion earlier in the afternoon about not making my inquiry so child centred. My original idea was almost like an 'experiment' on the children. Given I am not currently a qualified teacher I don't have the authority to do this. If I wish to observe the children in anyway, it must only be during my normal working day. From this, I have decided to do general observations that will go in my reflective journal (alongside interviews with colleagues within my professional practice).

I next gave myself an hour deadline to bullet point each section of the inquiry. Working under this pressure fuelled me to work quickly and get to the point with my thoughts. After doing this, it was time to call Paula to review and discuss what I had written.

We then spent an hour reading through the inquiry plan and taking every point further and more in depth. She challenged me to question my ideas in more detail and explained that my inquiry isn't there to prove something but to ask how and why? I need to keep a neutral stance but discuss both sides of the debate within my inquiry (in my case, for or against a Growth Mindset in education). Paula explained that I need to really look into theories and explore all the ideas behind the questions I ask to add depth to my inquiry. Where did these ideas come from? What other theories inspired them/are along similar lines? Which theorists disagree and why?

My task now is to take all these ideas and put them into my plan in full including gathering literature and references to support my thoughts. This process has really helped.

Unpick everything you can and keep questioning how and why.

Paula wanted to remind everybody that it is infact week 9! So these draft inquiry plans need to be sent to her to give written feedback ASAP! (Ideally by the end of this week!).

(I will be adding a document of what I had written before my conversation with Paula, but have not had time on first post of this!)