Systematic enquiry made public
Sharing what you have learned from your inquiry is an important stage in the process as it requires the articulation of your ideas and the presentation of them to an audience who have not been directly involved in the experience. Stenhouse talked of the importance of the outcomes of inquiry being ‘made public’ as this would not only ensure the rigour of the work by laying it open to scrutiny but also contribute to the building up of a body of professional knowledge. How the ‘public’ should be understood in this context has been debated and it has been suggested that this could be sharing locally rather than with a national or international audience and need not be in a written ‘report’ but by a range of different means.
Translation and transformation
Certainly, sharing what has been a rich and complex experience with other people presents difficulties in terms of making what you know explicit and understandable. Learning from your inquiry will involve a process of translation and transformation rather than one of transfer or dissemination and so one of the challenges is to understood the nature of any knowledge that has been gained. It is important at this point to raise the question of dealing with neutral or negative outcomes of an inquiry as teachers often find this difficult, even painful, to share with other people as they may feel that their efforts have been pointless or wasted. Recognising that finding out that something hasn’t made a difference is just as important in terms of building up professional knowledge as celebrating ‘success’. It is ironic that as teachers we find it hard to follow our own advice to students that we learn as much from our mistakes - provided we are prepared to acknowledge and reflect on them - as we do from what comes more easily to us. Once again it is being part of a community of inquiry, in which an environment that values problem-posing as well as problem-solving is fostered, that is vital. Otherwise the natural tendency of teachers to feel a sometimes overwhelming sense of responsibility to make things work can undermine confidence.
Professional learning task: Learning from mistakes and problems posed