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This is week four: Spirals of Inquiry,

lecture three, where we're going to be looking

at developing a hunch and new professional learning.

Linda introduced you to the spiral last

time and spent some time talking about focusing

and scanning, where we're really taking the time

to say what's going on for our learners.

How do we know, why does that matter, and then what is the area where, if we put our

time and attention and really focused our planning that

we would make a bigger impact for our learners.

So, now we're moving to the third phase of the

spiral, and this is an interesting and maybe somewhat challenging phase,

because this is when we develop a hunch.

So, what is a hunch?

A hunch is a guess, it's an idea, it's a sentiment.

It's listening to our intuition.

It's taking a step back and saying, what's going on

for our learners and how are we contributing to it?

The key point of this phase is it's not about what's right or wrong.

It's not about having all of the answers.

It's certainly not about blaming anybody.

It's just really saying, what's going on for our

learners and how are we contributing to the situation?

Let me illustrate that with an example from an elementary school.

The school was concerned because they had observed increasing

levels of anxiety in their learners, particularly in the area of mathematics.

And they weren't sure what to do about it.

When, as they worked through the spiral when they got to the developing

a hunch stage, they said, you know, "What's

our intuition telling us about what's going on?"

And they wondered whether their increased emphasis on testing in

mathematics, whether the pressure that they were putting on their learners,

whether some of the pressure that they felt from external exams

was actually leading to the increased anxiety in their learners.

And they also wondered about their assessment practices and how were

they providing feedback to their learners about their progress in mathematics.

So, their hunch was that their practices in both assessment and in reinforcing the

external demands around mathematics were leading to anxiety for their learners.

So, the hunch is about what's going on for our learners, how

do we know, what do we think, what can we test out?

Another example from an elementary school where the learners were coming

late to school in the morning, just at the hunch section,

the hunch stage of the process, is that maybe

what we're doing isn't very engaging to the learners in the morning.

Maybe if we made school more fun, more inviting, more

alive when the learners walked in, we could deal with

lates better than what we're doing right now, which is

detentions, phoning parents, and punishing the learners for being late.

So, it was giving the opportunity for their intuition and then testing out

their ideas that actually has moved that school in a very dramatically different way.

So, our hunch is about getting our assumptions and our beliefs and our

ideas out on the table where we can explore them together as a group.

It just might be you and a teaching partner.

It might be your whole grade level.

It might be your whole school.

You've got to have a conversation about what do you think

is leading to this situation for your learners.

It's really about our professional practice.

So, the important thing, as we develop a hunch,

it's not about areas over which we have no control.

It's not about blaming the parents or the

preschool or the government or the secondary school.

It's about what is that that we're doing that's contributing to this situation.

It's not about venting, it's not about blame.

It's about trusting the intuition of teachers and providing that

space for us to think and to explore our own assumptions.

So, once we've had that opportunity to explore what's going on and to make

some guesses about what's happening for our

learners, then we're going to move to new learning.

And this is a critically important part of the Spiral of Inquiry.

What we observe in teachers that we work with in

North America is that desire for action, that we see a

problem with our learners, we see a challenge, we see an

issue, and we immediately want to fix it and do something.

If we're really going to make a difference, we need to

get some new learning and to try some new things,

not just going harder at what we've already been doing.

So, in the new professional learning phase, we need to be

asking ourselves, what is it that I need to learn more about?

How am I going to learn that?

Who's going to help me?

Where can I get the support that I need?

What resources might be necessary?

How can I use both my local community and

an online community to support me in my new learning?

If we go back to Nielsen Elementary

School, they decided that what they needed

to learn more about was anxiety, what are the root causes of anxiety in learners?

How could they build more mindfulness into their

practice so to reduce the anxiety of their learners?

They also looked at assessment for learning and how was it that the way

they were providing feedback to their learners

might have been contributing to their anxiety?

So, they had two areas that they learned a lot more about,

and the outcomes for their learners has been exciting,

encouraging, and it's also been very energizing for the staff.

Because they've seen that their actions, their new learning is leading

to a much different experience, both for themselves and for their learners.

So, in new professional learning this is what we do as teachers.

We are in the business of learning.

We need to pay attention to our own learning needs.

And we need to look for a variety of ways of accessing that learning.

Some of the things that we've really learned that are important for

us to think about is that learning is not a one-shot wonder.

If we're going to be exploring issues of

childhood anxiety or assessment for learning strategies, we

need to devote the time and we need

to provide multiple opportunities for us to learn.

Whether that's locally or globally, we need

to provide lots and lots of opportunities

to think, to try some things, and to come back together and see what we've learned.

We also need to think about

professional learning, not just as what program

is available, who's the guru that's coming through town, that's what we've gotta do -

no, it's about what is it that our learners need,

and, what is it that we're going to learn more about.

So, the spiral of inquiry is all

about being grounded in the experiences of our learners.

That, through scanning, we get a clear idea of what their experience is.

As we focus, we need to say which area, if we

concentrate on this, will have the biggest impact for our learners.

As we develop a hunch, we explore those

guesses, those intuitions, those ideas about what's leading

to this situation for our learners, which will

move us towards areas of new professional learning.

And as we move forward, in the next lecture, we're

going to be taking a look now at action and at checking.

So, stay tuned for that, and we look forward to continuing our

exploration of the spiral of inquiry and to seeing you next time.

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Lecture 3: Spirals of Inquiry: Developing a Hunch and New Professional Learning

Foundations of Teaching for Learning: Planning for Teaching and Learning

Meet the Instructors