For the last five years all teachers at Hagley have completed an inquiry into an aspect of their teaching. This ‘Teaching as Inquiry’ model is based on much research and was introduced into the NZ curriculum in 2007. The Education Review Office (ERO) recommends that all schools make “teaching as inquiry a useful and integral part of everyday teaching practice” (ERO, 2011).

The dual purpose behind this model is to give teachers a tool to use to focus them on improving their teaching, and in doing so, to improve outcomes for students. Teachers will choose a group of students they teach who they think may be at risk of not achieving in a certain area, and will inquire into the nature of the issue for the students. They will then look at different ways or approaches that they can embed in their teaching that may help the students be more successful in their learning.

While teachers select their area of inquiry, there are identifiable patterns that teachers inquire into. In 2016, five broad areas for inquiry included developing bi-culturalism in the classroom, transferable skills development, improving achievement and engagement, improving literacy and numeracy, and improving transitions. Teachers share their inquiries with their department colleagues at the end of the year, and, as well, with the teachers' permission, the inquiries are loaded onto our internal Sharepoint site so that teachers can read each other’s reports.

What we are finding is that teachers are doing more professional reading to inform their inquiries; they are gathering student voice more readily and thus responding to student need more obviously. There is also stronger collaboration between teachers happening as a result of inquiries, as teachers will sometimes bring a colleague into their classroom to observe them trying out something new with their students.

New pools of knowledge emerge for Hagley as a result of the inquiries. In 2016 several teachers tried new ways of helping students learn about their own learning process, new ways of encouraging strong self-regulation around homework processes and new ways of helping students understand the link between emotions and learning...just to name a few areas of exploration.