Outline of the Inquiry

I had an excellent tutorial with Paula this afternoon that's given me a 'lightbulb' moment and provided me with a lot more direction. We had had a discussion earlier in the afternoon about not making my inquiry so child centred. My original idea was almost like an 'experiment' on the children. Given I am not currently a qualified teacher I don't have the authority to do this. If I wish to observe the children in anyway, it must only be during my normal working day. From this, I have decided to do general observations that will go in my reflective journal (alongside interviews with colleagues within my professional practice).

I next gave myself an hour deadline to bullet point each section of the inquiry. Working under this pressure fuelled me to work quickly and get to the point with my thoughts. After doing this, it was time to call Paula to review and discuss what I had written.

We then spent an hour reading through the inquiry plan and taking every point further and more in depth. She challenged me to question my ideas in more detail and explained that my inquiry isn't there to prove something but to ask how and why? I need to keep a neutral stance but discuss both sides of the debate within my inquiry (in my case, for or against a Growth Mindset in education). Paula explained that I need to really look into theories and explore all the ideas behind the questions I ask to add depth to my inquiry. Where did these ideas come from? What other theories inspired them/are along similar lines? Which theorists disagree and why?

My task now is to take all these ideas and put them into my plan in full including gathering literature and references to support my thoughts. This process has really helped.

Unpick everything you can and keep questioning how and why.

Paula wanted to remind everybody that it is infact week 9! So these draft inquiry plans need to be sent to her to give written feedback ASAP! (Ideally by the end of this week!).

(I will be adding a document of what I had written before my conversation with Paula, but have not had time on first post of this!)

Module 2: Task 5c - Reader 5 and Online Session on Ethics

Before taking on Reader 5 my views on ethics were very straight forward and simple. I knew the importance of privacy and keeping personal information confidential (a lot of this coming from when we looked at ethics online). However, now I've read Reader 5 in depth there is much more to ethics than I first thought. Not only is it about protecting yourself, but being certain that the discovery you are trying to make won't harm others.

When taking in all this information on ethics, I attempted to relate all the theories to my place of work or inquiry ideas.  For example, 'Immanuel Kant (1779) believed that moral rules are absolute and he based this on reason rather than religion. He argued this from a categorical imperative stance whereby you should help people no matter what your desires are.'

I tried to think of different practices to compare to my own where this ethical stance might not be appropriate. For example, within a school environment it would be morally and ethically wrong for a teacher to lie to a parent about their child. However, in a different line of work such as retail; in an effort to sell a product, staff might be encouraged to lie about using the said product themselves or exaggerate it's benefits. The latter would not have a damaging affect on anyone involved.

I personally feel that given the fact I work with young children, Kant's (1779) deontologist viewpoint is how I should approach my inquiry. There is a huge amount of responsibility given to teachers with the amount of time they spend with their students and the impact they have on their learning and development. I hope my inquiry will benefit children and their education. Therefore, anything that I come across during my inquiry that I deem ethically or morally wrong, I will immediately act to change this.

Reader 5 definitely allowed me to see ethics from different perspectives in general and with regards to my inquiry ideas. When reading the case studies within the reader, the different ethical viewpoints allowed me better grounds on which to make a decision to whether the action taken was morally right or wrong.


On Wednesday 25th October, I took part in an online session with Paula and a group of my course colleagues. This session cleared up any confusion I had with ethics and opened my mind to some ethical problems that may arise during my inquiry.

• Originally, I wanted to interview the children but as the session brought to light, this would involve having parents permission as the children are under the age of 16. As well as this, I would have to explain to the children that they could opt out of the inquiry at any time. However, due to the young age of the children I currently work with, I feel their understanding would be limited and would therefore affect the results of my investigation. I have decided that I will observe the children instead, as this will just involve me being in my normal position as a Teaching Assistant among the students. This will hopefully provide me with more accurate discoveries. 
• I will need permission from the Headteacher at my school and will explain to them the investigation I am carrying out as part of my degree. With that, I can also interview practitioners that I work alongside in order to deepen my investigation and collect information from another perspective. Those that I interview will need to sign an Ethics Release Form.