Teacher inquiry at PBS 2023...

This year Dianne Fisi'iahi and I are both in-school COL teachers for Panmure Bridge School. What I like about this is that there are two of us leading the implementation of teacher inquiries for 2023. This means neither of us are trying to find time to have the professional discussions needed with our colleagues. By sharing the responsibility we are able to manage this much more effectively than past years. I look after the teachers participating in the RPI program as I am their mentor, and our beginning teachers. Dianne looks after the more experienced teachers. This means we are playing to our strengths and guiding teacher inquiry effectively in our school.

We began our journey by using the presentation I created a few years ago which helps us set up our PBS staff for their inquiries into their own practice. With two sets of eyes we have adapted and tweaked my original slides, making our inquiry process more streamlined. I am also enjoying the fact their are two voices delivering the messages, which means we can support each other in staff meetings. 

We began by supporting our teachers to analyse their data to find the gaps in learner knowledge, then use this to identify a target group and formulate their inquiry questions. All inquiries are visible with links to professional blogs being recorded on a shared doc so that we can learn with and from each other. Our second TAI session was about creating a causal chain to help map out inquiries and stay on track. Both of these TAI staff meetings have been shared with a purpose to encourage buy-in and inform blog posts. 

Dianne and I share our inquiries as exemplars to guide those new to this process. We have also shared the link to the Manaiakalani Kahui Ako page so that teachers can find exemplars of inquiries that align with their year levels. Our next step is to encourage our PBS teachers to tap into the expertise of the Across School COL teachers.