Chartered Teachers and the process of professional enquiry: the experience of five Scottish teachers

This article will map the process of collaborative professional enquiry in an attempt to make sense of the structural elements evident in creating a 'Community of Collaborative Professional Enquiry' (CCPE). At the heart of each CCPE examined was a collaborative, improvement-focused intervention that was designed and implemented by Scottish teachers engaged in professional updating in pursuit of Chartered Teacher status. It is hoped that, in articulating precisely what these teachers attempted to do, this will support our understanding of collaborative professional enquiry as a process. In particular, the paper will examine how collaborative professional enquiry supported teachers' praxis by movement from the identification of practice-based 'problems' to the professional construction of new knowledge.