The concept of the reflective practitioner is well established, but to move beyond reflection to strategic action can be seen as risky. Engaging in and with research (Cordingley, 2015) through cycles of practitioner enquiry is seen as one way to facilitate this active stance (Hall & Wall, 2019), with the assumption being that the process of asking questions will align with grassroots professional learning (Mintrop et al., 2018). For these reasons practitioner enquiry has become a central feature of initial teacher education (ITE) across Scottish universities (Forde, 2015). While reflective practice and enquiry-based learning have been consistent features of ITE for some time in Scotland (Menter et al., 2010), there is now more of an explicit focus on enquiry as essential to teacher preparation (Donaldson, 2011) following growing awareness of the connection between research-engagement and professionalism. Its role in the ‘professionalisation’ of teachers is further reinforced by the General Teaching Council for Scotland’s (GTCS) Professional Standards (GTCS, 2021), which state that teachers must demonstrate knowledge and understanding of enquiry to meet the standard for provisional registration. While this positioning might suggest unified acceptance of its importance, there is divergence in its conceptualisation (Forde, 2015). Although this might not immediately present as problematic, there is the possibility that it could lead to tensions within practice. These conceptualisations fit broadly into two themes: ‘project’ and ‘stance’ (Wall, 2018). A potential key difference is the role of reflexivity, with it playing a more significant role in the latter. We argue that reflexivity, within a practitioner enquiry frame, is the cumulative, reflective and strategic narrative that connects and overlays cycles of enquiry. This ensures enquiry is embedded across professional learning trajectories with a metacognitive narrative thread that makes the learning explicit (Porthillo & Medhina, 2016). This paper is embedded in a larger project on the knowledge politics of the ‘Teacher-as-Researcher’ in Scotland and explores the extent to which different models of practitioner enquiry might facilitate a reflexive stance. We draw on data collected from three Scottish universities over two phases: 1) document analysis of handbooks from ITE programmes; and 2) semi-structured interviews with teacher educators in those universities. Using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2020) for dataset analysis, we explore the extent to which ‘reflexivity’ is framed as an integral part of enquiry in ITE courses and compare conceptualisations across ITE models.

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