Practitioner Enquiry Tip of the Week: control. There's feeling research should be controlled and tightly planned, to a certain extent that's true. But who does the controlling and what does this look like? To what extent do we actually mean strategic/1
#PractitionerEnquiryTotW

If researching in real life is complete control of research process possible or even desired? Research will always be secondary in teachers' list of priorities. Even where feedback loops between research and practice are tight, the teaching and learning comes has to come first/2

Is strategic is a better term? Strategic in regards plan for evidence collection and synthesis (line of enquiry) and strategic in regards proposed link to teaching and learning (student need). Both are important. But to control everything about these aspects is impossible/3

Real life settings for research will always be fraught with obstacles and require changes to intent (this year has taught us that in spades), so to try and control these will be detrimental to the research and to the individuals involved (whether teacher-researcher or learners)/4

So this means some mental and process flexibility for expected and unexpected 'what ifs'. It also means a forgiving perspective when engaging with other's real life research. It's not about whether they stuck to plan, rather how they talk about and explain the changes needed/5

If you lead practitioner enquiry communities then flexibility needs to be modelled and accepted. Putting restrictions on topic and tight expectations on process and outcomes is problematic. Trust individual's narrative and develop time to share thinking to explain what occurred/6

So many typos in this thread - apologies. Symptomatic of the day I am having! I think the meaning stands comes through though