[MUSIC] 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. [MUSIC]
