of professional judgement underpinning the methodology in surfacing values and
challenging assumptions in the endeavour to improve outcomes for all concerned.
The importance of professional judgement is highlighted by Biesta ( 2009 , p. 186)
who states that judgements made by teachers are‘not simply of a technical or
instrumental nature’but‘always involve an evaluation of the means themselves and
hence requirevalue judgmentsabout the desirability of the ways in which particular
ends and means might be achieved’(emph. in original). Finally the term‘Enquiry’
rather than‘research’is deliberately utilised in CCPE, seeking to avoid conflation
with the role of the researcher, whose prime responsibility may be considered to be
predominantly focused on reporting the outcomes of research, whereas a‘practi-
tioner’researcher’s key responsibility is on improving outcomes for their students
and colleagues. Thus, the methodology is designed to encompass elements iden-
tified as pertinent to improving teacher learning, namely: collaborative action,
critical reflection and self-evaluation, and teacher leadership (Reeves and Drew
2012 ).
52.3.2 Developing a Robust Model for Enquiry
The programme, that forms the focus of the remainder of this chapter, originated
through dialogue between Local Authority Education Officers and University
researchers about how they might work in partnership, to address some of these
complex and intertwining issues arising from the implementation of CfE in primary
and secondary schools. It was significant, that local authority officers were at the
time experiencing similar problems associated with curriculum development to
those reported in University of Stirling research, conducted in another local
authority (see Priestley and Minty 2013 ). These problems included poor under-
standing of the principles and purposes of CfE and superficial and/or strategic
compliance with the new curriculum. Conversations between the researchers and
local authority officers identified the strong potential of CCPE to‘interrupt’habitual
practices in a manner which would be consonant with CfE. The programme was
designed to take cognisance of the critique described previously, relating to some of
the perceived limitations of or concerns with practitioner research.
Foremost among these was the need to connect the purposes of the curriculum
(and other big ideas of education) through the methodology of professional enquiry,
since in previous partnership working, this had led in some cases to the develop-
ment of instrumental (and even trivial) development of practice linked to teachers’
short-term classroom concerns, for instance relating to the behaviour of individual
students rather than educational purposes and principles. The new programme thus
explicitly linked CCPE to the notion of CfE as a process curriculum (see Priestley
774 M. Priestley and V. Drew