Session Information
Contribution
Description: This paper centres on the possibilities and dilemmas of professional learning that emerge when working at the micro level of schools within the wider context of policy initiatives that aim to address educational inequalities. In New Zealand, as elsewhere, the recent educational terrain has been significantly shaped by policy initiatives that aim to improve educational outcomes for all students through drawing on best evidence approaches to improving teaching and learning in the classroom (e.g. Ministry of Education initiatives like Making a Bigger Difference For All Students: Schooling Strategy 2005-2010 (Ministry of Education, 2005) and the Iterative Best Evidence Synthesis Programme (Alton-Lee, 2003; 2004)). Whilst international debate has focused on the polemics of empirical research (e.g. Atkinson, 2000; Slavin, 2002), recent voices challenge educationists to investigate the political and philosophical bases of empirical work, in order to enrich and deepen educational practice (Gitlin, 2005; Phillips, 2005). With this in mind, we will explore the ways in which political tensions emerged, and our negotiation of them, within a pilot study investigating the effects of professional learning and practice on student writing outcomes in a low socio-economic, multi-cultural, 'academy-type' secondary school.
Methodology: We are drawing on a rich database produced throughout the development of the project and its initial phases. This includes informal ethnographic data collected through meeting notes, written drafts and feedback, email communications, as well as more formal data collection methods such as field notes, policy analysis and semi-structured interviews. The data is interrogated for the micro and macro discourses that impact upon teacher identity and learning, the role of university researchers in professional learning towards school reform and what is achievable for both parties in effecting better student outcomes.
Conclusions: The rhetoric of policy intiatives obscure the problematics of collaborative learning relationships between universities and schools. Whilst offering great potential for transforming both academic and professional knowledge and practice, these relationships seem inevitably fraught (Stronach & McNamara, 2002). In order to benefit from a shared commitment to addressing educational disparities, partnerships, constructed between partners with signficantly different positionalities, must be formed through recognition of the dynamics of participation, knowledge and power. Macro and micro politics impact on all aspects of collaborative educational professional activity including issues such as ownership, descisionmaking and leadership.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.