Improving classroom practice through meaningful engagement with research-informed teacher enquiry

Alexandra Morgan and Emmajane Milton, School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, UK There is an increasingly dominant narrative internationally that classroom practice should be research-informed and that teachers themselves benefit from being engaged in research-informed teacher enquiry (BERA/RSA, 2014). In this article, aimed at all educators, we suggest that care is needed when engaging in this form of professional learning to ensure that it is authentic, contextually specific, meaningful and sustained over time. When research-informed teacher enquiry is undertaken and supported well it can result in valuable and transformational professional learning – really ‘lifting the lid’ or ‘shining the light’ on practice. Alternatively, when it is not, it can be trivial, inauthentic and a waste of time. Drawing on our experiences as teacher-educators working to support research-informed teacher enquiry projects and the development of an enquiry stance (Sachs, 2016), we outl