ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at four more case studies. I look at the use of practitioner enquiry by different schools and their leadership teams, and the reasons they chose to use this approach. I look at some more primary schools, as well as a secondary school. All have different contexts, and each has its own unique characteristics. We consider how they used practitioner enquiry, and the reasons for this, as well as the insights teachers and school leaders gained from the process. Importantly, I look at evidence of the impact for learners in these different schools, what has improved for them? The first case study is a voluntary collaborative structure, or affiliation, of four, then six, small rural primary schools, who used the focus of practitioner enquiry to develop a mutually supportive professional development network. In the second I look at another primary school that is three years into an engagement with practitioner enquiry, which was being used as the driver for the improvement of learning and teaching across the school. The third study involves a large secondary school, who used the development of collaborative professional enquiry, alongside professional learning communities (PLCs), to improve and develop the learning culture across the school. The final study is of another primary school, which has just completed one year with a focus on practitioner enquiry. All of these schools illustrate many of the issues and benefits from an engagement with practitioner enquiry, as well as show how the approaches can be used in different ways, for context specific purposes, and to reflect different schools’ positions in terms of development.
