How do we Support Teacher Professional Education from Thought to Action? A Collaborative Symposium for Research-based Pedagogical Practices

Author(s):

Jean McNiffLea KozminskyMichal ZellermayerJulian SternKaren Llewellyn

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Symposium

Session Information

10 SES 05 A, How do we Support Teacher Professional Education from Thought to Action? A Collaborative Symposium for Research-based Pedagogical Practices

Symposium

Time:

2009-09-29

08:30-10:00

Room:

NIG, HS D

Chair:

Jean McNiff

Discussant:

Julian Stern

Contribution

The papers in this interactive symposium set out a transformational agenda for emerging debates in the professional education of teachers and teacher educators. They engage with questions about the need for new epistemologies that inform new thinking about the relationships between theory and practice in schools and higher education, and between those institutional settings, thus forming inter-sector partnerships that are grounded in inclusional and relational values and logics. The papers explain how the collaborative research-informed practices of teacher educators in Ireland, Israel and the UK are contributing to new forms of theorisation about improving practices through knowledge creation, grounded in the question, ‘How do I~we improve my~our practices?’ (Whitehead 1989), and that have significant implications for which forms of theory may be appropriate for the education of sustainable social and cultural formations. The papers themselves demonstrate their own dynamic logic and values by explaining the transformational relationships between epistemologies (Zellermeyer and McNiff) and methodologies (Llewellyn), and how these inform institutional practices in schools (Stern) and higher education (Kosminsky). Thus they link underpinning conceptualisations of research as a pedagogical practice, within new theorisations of the formation of collaborative communities of educational enquiry. These ideas have significance for extended thinking about inclusional practices that go beyond the legalistic inclusion of the other (Habermas 2002), to comprehending the need to shift the epistemological and spatial centre (Ngugi 1993); and are grounded in universal commitments to deconstructing difference and the sharing of unique singularities. The symposium therefore becomes the site for explaining commitments for the development of a new form of public sphere for the sharing and validation of personal professional research-informed knowledge claims. The knowledge is grounded in the lived experience of situations and relationships that are always contested and need to be negotiated through dialogue. The symposium also becomes the living demonstration of new relational forms of theory that, while incorporating the most advanced social theories of the day, nevertheless transform into an experience of the mutually-reciprocal nature of thought and action, theory and practice. Drawing on Said’s (1997) understandings, the symposium becomes the live site for new beginnings, where each moment holds its own transformational potentials within itself, a demonstration of the capacity of committed educators to hold themselves accountable for their educational influences in their own and others’ learning.

Method

The methodological orientation of the papers is practice-based action research, where presenters offer descriptions and explanations for their work in the generation of their living educational theories. These living forms of theory are different from traditional propositional theories that offer linguistic definitions from a disciplines perspective. Thus the presenters are engaged in a reconceptualisation of educational theory as grounded in relational values and logics that have the capacity to inform relational practices. Through offering their explanations for their work, presenters also invite the critical responses of symposium participants, to test the validity of their knowledge claims. Thus the symposium transforms into a site for the validation of knowledge claims, with a view to the public legitimation of the ideas.

Expected Outcomes

From the experience of the symposium, it is anticipated that presenters will gain new confidence to continue their collaborative enquiries together, while inviting participants to join them in the development of extended communities of educational enquiry. Thus new collaborative international networks of educational researchers may find ways of influencing the development of new institutional epistemologies that may have profound implications for transformational thinking and practices in the professional education of teachers and teacher educators.

References

Boyer Commission (1999) Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America’s Research Universities. Stony Brook, NY: Carnegie Foundation for University Teaching Brew, A. (2006) Research and Teaching: Beyond the Divide. Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan. Dalin, P. with Rolff, H-G., in co-operation with Kleekamp, B (1993) Changing the School Culture. London, Cassell. Dalin, P. and Rust, V.D. (1983) Can Schools Learn? Windsor, NFER-Nelson. Geras, N. (1995) Solidarity in the Conversation of Humankind. London, Verso. Habermas, J. (2002) The Inclusion of the Other. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. Healey, M. (2005) Linking Research and Teaching: Exploring Disciplinary Spaces and the Role of Inquiry-based Learning. A chapter in R. Barnett (ed.) Reshaping the University: New Relationships between Research, Scholarship and Teaching. Maidenhead, SRHE and Open University Press. HEFCE (2006) Teaching Quality Enhancement Fund: Funding arrangements 2006-07 and 2008-09 (March 2006/11). Hodge, D., Haynes, C., LePore, P., Pasquesi, K. and Hirsh, M. (2008) From Inquiry to Discovery: Developing the Student as Scholar in a Networked World. A paper presented at the Learning Through Enquiry Alliance Conference 2008 ‘Inquiry in a Networked World’; June 25-27, University of Sheffield, UK. Jenkins, A. and Healey, M. (2005) Institutional Strategies to Link Teaching and Research. The Higher Education Academy Jenkins A, Healey M and Zetter R (2007) Linking Teaching and Research in Disciplines and Departments The Higher Education Academy Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge, CUP. Livingston, K., McCall, J., & Morgado, M. (2009). Teacher educators as researchers. In A. Swennen, & M. van der Klink (eds), Becoming a teacher educator - Theory and practice for teacher educators (pp. 191-203). Dordrecht, Springer. MacBeath, J (1999) Schools Must Speak For Themselves: The Case for School Self-Evaluation. London, RoutledgeFalmer. Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1993) Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedoms. Oxford, James Curry. Rowland, S. (2006) The Enquiring University: Compliance and Contestation in Higher Education. SRHE and Open University Press. Said, E. (1997) Beginnings: Intent and Method. London, Granta. Schön, D. (1995) ‘Knowing-in-action: The New Scholarship Requires a New Epistemology, Change, Nov.–Dec.:27–32. Stern, L J (2007) Schools and Religions: Imagining the Real. London, Continuum. Stern, L J (2009) The Spirit of the School. London, Continuum. Whitehead, J. (1989) ‘Creating a Living Educational Theory from Questions of the Kind, “How do I Improve my Practice?”’, Cambridge Journal of Education, 19(1): 137–53. Whitehead, J and McNiff, J (2006) Action Research: Living Theory. London, SAGE.

Author Information

Jean McNiff

York St John University

Education and Theology

Poole

Lea Kozminsky

The MOFET Institute

Research Authority

Tel Aviv

Michal Zellermayer

Levinsky College of Education

The Graduate Program

Tel Aviv

Julian Stern

York St John University

Faculty of Education & Theology

York

Karen Llewellyn

York St John University, United Kingdom,

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