The Good Practice Guide provides guidance on how to find the evidence/possible answers for your inquiry into good/weak practice in your school. The resource encourages an enquiring stance and a sense of exploration. It assumes that your starting point is a need to understand the existing situation and analyse your working environment.

The Good Practice Guide aims to help you develop your practice through reflection. It recommends that you reflect upon your work whilst you are doing it (called ‘reflection in practice’), and also reflect upon your work after you have done it (called ‘reflection upon practice’).

There is a difference between reflecting in and upon practice. Reflecting upon practice is about considering lesson strategies, processes and outcomes and team practice after an event. It has become more commonplace than it used to be in schools, and offers much potential in joint learning about practice. Articulating reflection in practice is much less common and its exploration can lead to a greater understanding about the activities you undertake. Guidance on reflection in and upon practice during an inquiry is provided in the Tools section.

The Good Practice Guide recommends a collaborative approach to the investigation and development of practice. To get a complete picture, it is helpful to involve different people at different levels of your school so that you can understand a situation from a range of different perspectives and take these views into account. In fact, this approach can help to develop the thinking and the practice of both individuals and groups. For example, seeing the context of planning for practice, such as planning for classroom management or for particular curriculum initiatives, through the eyes of senior leaders in school as well as through the eyes of TAs/HLTAs, might provide contrasting views and fresh evidence of the need for improvement. Questions addressed to different staff groups in school are provided in this resource.

First, decide whether you plan to work on your own or with your colleagues (ie as a ‘research team’). You may find that the inquiry has more impact if you work with others rather than on your own, but you should decide what is appropriate. Follow the remainder of these steps individually or as a team, as you think fit.

Before you choose what to work on, gain a whole picture of effective practice by reading through each theme and indicator in the Areas section. This should give you an overview of the issues that all schools should be engaged in, and enable you to identify your own school’s strengths, on which you can then plan to build.

There will be areas in which your school does well, and others that you may feel need development. Consider the area of practice you are interested in developing in your context by re-reading the appropriate themes and indicators in the Areas section until you have found one area to focus on.

When you have chosen an appropriate area, read through the examples provided for that area. It may be worth reading both the primary and secondary examples, even if you do not work in both phases, to give you a clearer picture. Note that some information may be repeated in the two phases.

These examples should help you to consider what the issues are in your own context and your own practice. Consider how the information relates to you.

To help you find out more about your chosen area, look at the lists of support material provided under each example.

The support material should help you to form a better idea of what your inquiry will involve, and what would work in your context.

Print out and share any of the material that you think you might find useful for your inquiry.

Read through the questions in your chosen area. Consider whether they are useful questions to ask in your context, whether they need to be adapted, or if more should be added. Decide which questions you are sure that you know the answer to. Print out the questions that you think would be useful, and mark any that you are not sure about, or that you think someone else might have an answer to. Note your thoughts on the printout(s).

Decide to whom you would address these questions. For example, you may decide that a question should be asked of all the other TAs/HLTAs in your context, or all staff in a year group team, or a specific individual, etc.

Consider how best to ask the questions you have chosen in order to get the information you need. For example, you may get the most useful response from the people you plan to ask if you arrange a conversation/discussion; for others, it may be best to set up a meeting; others may be asked to write an answer, complete a questionnaire or attend a staff development session, etc. Guidance on this is provided in the Tools section.

You should now be ready to plan your inquiry. Remember that the inquiry is not simply about making practice better – it is just as important to acknowledge what is already working well, and consider how these strengths could be reinforced. Whilst you complete the action plan, consider what your school is already good at, and reflect upon how those strengths were developed. This approach should help to justify the need to develop practice further.

Create a plan of action using the blank form provided below. This action plan can help you to structure the development of your strategy.

	Action plan

When making your plan, ensure that the actions you list are feasible. For example, use an already planned meeting to begin with if necessary – dates and deadlines can be set around this. It is essential that a meeting for your research team is put into the plan, to review and update progress.

In addition, make sure that your timing is realistic – remember to allow for exam periods, school outings, Christmas, staff absences or changes, new class groupings, etc. If you are not sure, ‘think big and start small’! (Fullan, 1991).

An example of a completed action plan is provided:

	Completed action plan

How you conduct your inquiry depends on the starting point you have chosen and the action plan you have created. You have to come to a decision about what you want to do, and in what order the inquiry will be conducted. Remember not to be too ambitious to begin with. Keep the longer-term, bigger picture in mind but take careful and small steps to get going.

Whatever is revealed to you during the course of your inquiry, by the very action of asking questions of colleagues and of yourself, changes will ensue. The essential nature of action research and inquiry leads to changes in people’s thinking, attitudes and behaviour. All research is intervention.

As such, then, you have instigated processes of change. It is important that you understand the nature of change, the kinds of barriers that prevent it and the conditions to lead and manage successful processes of change. Resources that will help to develop your understanding of the processes of change are provided in the Tools section, along with activities to support you in taking the lead in the processes of change.

As the changes take shape, remember to review progress and monitor developments. Use your action plan to do this – it is important to keep track of what you have done and the changes that have occurred.

A teacher and an HLTA wish to plan together more effectively. Each has particular knowledge of the curriculum and knows their own strengths. The teacher and HLTA look at area 5: Planning and its explanatory text, and discuss how it relates to their practice. The teacher and HLTA decide that the questions for TAs/HLTAs (5e) and teachers (5f) are appropriate for their research. The teacher and HLTA decide that a line manager (5b) might also be able to answer some of the questions, and the line manager would give the answers to the questions most effectively during an interview. They therefore arrange an interview with the line manager. The line manager encourages a further exploration of the issues, which prompts the teacher and HLTA to involve a larger number of colleagues in the inquiry, and also prompts the teacher and HLTA to reflect in and upon their existing practice. The teacher and HLTA revisit the questions they originally selected, access the tools and activities they need as their inquiry develops, and keep a record of development. As the inquiry progresses, colleagues and pupils notice improvements in the teacher’s and HLTA’s planning, and the teacher and HLTA are invited to share their practice with the rest of the school. Changes to whole school practice gradually follow.