Selwyn College .::. News Centre

Selwise - Our New ‘Teaching as Inquiry’ Model

Posted on Sunday, 30 May 2010, 6:48 p.m. Print Article

Caption: Not supplied.

In our professional development sessions on Wednesday mornings, our teachers have been learning about and implementing ‘Selwise’ – our new ‘Teaching as Inquiry’ model. This model is based on what educational research tells us is best practice in terms of raising student achievement. It is designed to ensure that we review what we are doing in a continuous, consistent and structured manner.

As the poster shows,‘Selwise’ is our own cyclical and ongoing process, in which we have identified a set of key words to highlight the stages:

Reflect, Define, Explore, Process, Create and Communicate.

These stages take us through a process of addressing three core questions:

• What is most important and therefore worth spending time on given where the students are at?

• What strategies are most likely to help the students learn?

• What happened as a result of the teaching and what are the implications for future teaching?

We can apply ‘Selwise’ when reviewing a small part of a lesson right up to reviewing the impact of a whole teaching programme, on student achievement.