Teachers are leaders of learning in a diverse community who nurture, inspire and empower one another.

We KNOW from Carol Dweck’s work and Guy Claxton’s work that all students can learn and will learn given the right environment. As teachers it is very easy to write our students off because of our own beliefs.
We have a Professional Inquiry model that will challenge our beliefs and theories and support teachers to see their own responsibility in the learning of their students. Professional Inquiry is both a rigorous and collaborative process with teachers enlisting ‘critical friends’ to work alongside them. Teachers are required to write up in detail the process of their inquiry and then the learning that they can take with them.
The most important part of the model is what the teacher learns and what implications that will have for their future planning and teaching.

At ASHS, our Professional Inquiry is:

• Agentic (you are in charge of your learning. It fits with the needs of your students)
• Collaborative (your colleagues challenge and critique your theories and you share your knowledge with cross-curricular teams, departmental teams and students)
• Embedded (an integral part of your teaching practice)
• Timely (so that it makes a difference to the learning of the students in front of you now, and focuses on underachieving students)
• Iterative (informs your future planning and your learning journey)

What it looks like

• Each teacher carries out 2 extended inquiries per year.
• The inquiry model demands that the teachers focus is on the students in front of them NOW!
• The model is iterative and focusses on student need and student voice.
• The Senior Leadership Team work with a group of Specialist Subject Leaders and Team Leaders to improve their inquiries to support the leadership of the inquiries with their own teams.
• There are opportunities during Professional Learning and development time for individual teachers to present their own learning from the inquiries they have undertaken at a full staff meeting.
• At the end of the year all teachers present their inquiries with a particular emphasis on their own learning, to the rest of the staff.