This template is designed to help teachers develop a sense of what is happening for students in their classroom. The tool equips you to collect observational data, as well as student perspectives on the learning programme and their progress during the lesson. There is also space to plot student progress and achievement. This tool is a starting point, so any findings would need to be explored in a broader context and further evidence collected prior to moving onto the focusing phase. 

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This tool has been designed for use by a colleague or critical friend to observe a lesson or part of a lesson and collect observational data. It also provides a tool to collect data on your interactions with students, student voice and measure student progress during the lesson. Teachers could also use this template when watching a video of their own practice.

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This tool is designed to help you bring all your data together to assess its quality and thoroughness, and to look for emerging patterns, categories and trends that are worthy of attention in the subsequent stages of inquiry.

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This tool is designed to help you bring all your data together to assess its quality and thoroughness, and to look for emerging patterns, categories and trends that are worthy of attention in the subsequent stages of inquiry.

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This survey tool is designed to allow you to collect student voice across a range of academic and socio-emotional factors.

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This tool has been designed to help teachers list things that emerged during the scanning phase, to evaluate what’s working well and what’s not, and to consider the amount and quality of data collected prior to selecting an area of focus. It is useful for helping to narrow your focus and identify any areas where you might need to collect a bit more evidence.

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Use this tool to help you to select an area to focus on. It will help you rate potential areas to address against the level of need, your capacity to make changes, your strengths, challenges, your interest in it, potential to collaborate and ease of assessing progress and change. It’s a very quick tool to use to help you keep moving through the inquiry process.

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If you have a general area in need of improvement, use this tool to narrow your focus by identifying the who, what, how and why of your key observations, and what the learning should look like. You can also use it to speculate possible causes of the problem or challenges. A narrow focus will enable you to conduct a tighter and deeper inquiry.

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The 5 Whys analysis method is useful for identifying and defining the problem. It can be very difficult to clearly identify the root problem or issue, and this tool helps you to get past symptoms or factors, such as poor student attendance, that may affect a student’s behaviour and motivation in class but are not the true cause of the problem.

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Use this tool to develop a clear picture of a problem, understand why this problem occurs, and to begin to generate potential ways to address it. This tool works well following on from the 5 Whys Analysis from the focusing phase.Brainstorm possible causes and group them into categories. Some categories could be people, curriculum, methods, policies, procedures, equipment, materials, and the environment. Identify the effects that the causes have on students, staff, the school, and the community. You need a good understanding of the causes and effects of the problem to begin come up with some improvement actions. Try to decide what changes you would like to see, so that in the checking phase you can assess whether your actions have made a difference.

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Use this tool to help you to select an area to focus on. It will help you rate potential areas to address against the level of need, your capacity to make changes, your strengths, challenges, your interest in it, potential to collaborate and ease of assessing progress and change. It’s a very quick tool to use to help you keep moving through the inquiry process.

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Use this tool to formulate ‘if, then’ statements and to consider what evidence you will need to collect in order to test your hunch and what further information and professional learning you will need in order to take action.

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Use this tool to identify what you want to learn in this phase of inquiry and to set a SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results-driven, Time-bound). A SMART goal will enable you to clarify what you are researching, focus your efforts, and use your time and resources more productively.

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Use this tool to brainstorm potential resources you could access, and to plan the learning strategies you will use.

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Use this detailed chart to record iterative cycles of planning throughout the inquiry.

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This simple tool provides the space to list and monitor the progress of actions you are planning to take and/or strategies you are planning to trial.

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This tool has been designed for teams to monitor progress in a group inquiry. There is space to identify where team members are feeling stuck and tweaks to be made, and to list next steps.

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Evaluate and measure the impact of your inquiry.

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Use this table to collate and compare the data from the beginning of the inquiry in the scanning and focusing phases and in the checking phase.

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Use this table to collate and critically interrogate your data for this inquiry. This tool includes some critical questions to help you evaluate the impact your actions has had on your teaching practice and student learning.

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Use the same data collection methods as you did in the scanning phase in order to measure the effectiveness of your actions.

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Revisit your Detailed Action Plan from the taking action phase to examine your findings, reflect, and set a new SMART goal for the next cycle of your inquiry.