Awakening the Concealed Beauty in Education is the account of the unseen intrinsic transformative harvest that arises within reciprocal relational encounters in education. This research will adopt the methodology of the Scholarly Personal Narrative (SPN) (Nash, J. and Bradley, D.L., 2011), conducted by a Primary School leader in the twilight of her career in Ireland. A meaning making, critically reflective and transformational epilogue, it aims to encapsulate the major themes of her career using reflective practice and dialogue. Through a rigorous process of reflection using Brookfield’s (2012) four lenses; pupils’ eyes; colleagues’ perspectives; theory and research; and personal experience, she will confront the validity of her beliefs and values.

Dialogue is a central theme in the SPN. The researcher’s epistemological stance sees the acquisition of knowledge and competencies as active, participatory, relational, and agentic. Ontologically she attests that people evolve as consequence of what they learn about themselves in relation to others and the world. Buber’s ‘I/Thou’ educational philosophy appertains to the encounter between the teacher, the ‘living centre’ and ‘builder’ of educational experience, and the pupil, in which reciprocal learning is actualised (Buber, M. 1970). O’ Donoghue (2003) attests that the quality of the approach determines the outcome: “When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things.” The researcher anticipates the awakening of identity, agency, consciousness and understanding of democracy through an internal receptive and expressive encounter as well as the external. “As we live, we grow, and our beliefs change. They must change. So, I think we should live with this constant discovery”. (Martin Buber in Hodes 1972)

Democracy constitutes yet another core thrust of the SPN. Assumptions of power, hegemony and the democratization of teaching, learning and leadership will undergo rigorous interrogation. Shields (2010) posits that transformative leadership should enact the “deconstruction and reconstruction of social/cultural knowledge frameworks that generate inequity”. Shields further elucidates on the concept of power as being a “positional, hegemonic, tool for oppression as well as for action” and suggests that a highly efficient leader should “live[s] with tension & challenge” that “requires moral courage (and) activism” (p.562). The researcher contends that ideals of transformative leadership cohabit in an uneasy fusion with the covert presence of uncontested hegemony. Exposing power differentials, as they jostle in an unseen mob of assumptions, ideals, and traditions, is a brave aspect of the SPN. It is intended that principal identity may simultaneously unfold from the same democratic encounter as the emergent teacher and pupil identities during two praxis-orientated subsidiary studies of the SPN, outlined in the methodology section. A communal witness of a plethora of identities could activate kinetic democracy through a habitual deconstructing and reconstructing that challenges preconceived notions of power structures in schools.

The SPN will grapple with the divide between theory and practice and the dilemma of didactic, technical professional learning. The necessity for critical thinking, professional learning communities and opportunities for dialogue, as a new curriculum dawns, is paramount. A growth mindset can dictate the outcome of its launch. Traditional mechanisms of the tokenistic minority consultation, brief training days and comprehensive policy statement denigrates teacher disposition. This Hence the SPN aims to explore the benefits, and consequential necessity, of democratic dialogical learning for teachers, which is a missing jigsaw piece in the history of Irish education. Surely, if educators are to enact democracy in the classroom, then they too should partake in equitable opportunities afforded to develop and enhance the same.

The SPN lies within the constructivist paradigm and has transformational intent. “[T]eachers are the gatekeepers of change” (Rudduck, J. 2006, p. 139), but they must undergo the change in the first instance. The gate opener is the discerning school leader who knows the key to unlock the metamorphosis. The role of the principal, holding the power to influence systemic change, is pivotal. Consequently, the potential influence of the SPN as being an authentic contextual and evidential appraisal for foundational learning and growth mindset is noteworthy. Supported by a merger of curiosity, dauntless mettle, dialogue and action research, the relationships, beliefs, and values of one school leader will undergo scrutiny against a backdrop of current educational theory, research, and literature. The supplemental data collated from two subsidiary participatory studies will corroborate her findings in respect of new learning and the central themes of the research, adding validity and credibility to the SPN. Data from her personal experience, individual and collective reflection through dialogue and journaling (which is dialogue with oneself) and participation in the studies will interweave the storyline. With thirty-one years in education, twenty in leadership and nine as school principal, the researcher proffers comprehensive experiential data. The literary review will underpin and crisscross the descriptive narrative. Recurring themes of democracy, dialogue, relational learning, identity, and agency as well as other emerging themes will be coded and annotated. Incontrovertibly, the SPN of a leader necessitates the unravelling of integral issues of power and hegemony in the process. The initial subsidiary study will document the collaborative dialectic of a co-design and authorship of a picture book. Data collected will illuminate the innovative creativity that emerges “from a stream of meaning flowing among and through us and between us” (Bohm 1996:7) and will arise from the recorded dialogue between the researcher and her teacher daughter. The book, amongst other recommended books, will be utilized in the second study, where volunteer pupils and staff, in the researcher’s school, participate in a multi-layered approach to critical thinking. Mary Roche’s (2015) ‘Critical Thinking and Book Talk’ approach to enhancing critical thinking in children will be initiated concurrently with Communities of Practice (Wenger, E., 1998) among the teachers activating a synthesised reflection upon the books, practice, and the educational theory. The critical component of the SPN’s methodology particularly complements this research, for it a dialectic emergent process and not a static picture.

In the authentic spirit of SPN, the researcher will scrutinise the unconscious power relations and hegemonic slumber that unravel democratic ideals. She will also explore the political exploitation of leaders by the governors of educational reform and the lonely burden of transformational leadership that grapples with resistance to change. Liberated by a ‘nothing to lose’ stance at her transition from one career to another, she will utilise the format of the SPN to ‘spit out the butt ends of [her] days and ways’ (Eliot, T.S., 1917) in a deep and honest professional narrative. It will represent a note of caution for leaders and aspiring leaders and will simulate a foreknowing at career closure that is often denied leaders when they retire and the ‘shock of the unforeseen amputation’, as described by a leader colleague, can be lessened. This SPN is about dialogue with oneself, with others, and with an educational landscape of theory, policy, and research. It about dialogue convened in protective relational spaces, scaffolded by frameworks for highly effective practice and validated by the critical consciousness that transpires as result of individual and collective reflection. It is about the data of dialogue and the knowledge it yields and a deeper understanding of the complexities of democratic aspiration and endeavor. The SPN aims to spotlight and contest the tacit tensions that coexist between socio-cultural and political agendas and informed intuitive contextual autonomy. Reconciliation between the expectations and prescriptions of politics and socio-economic factors and a pathway towards authentic professional identity, must be navigated. Dusty heart and intuition strings can be set in thrum, allowing educators to become the experts of their profession and context so that they may realign their personal and professional ethos with emergent theory, thus ensuring ethical and philosophical continuity and dispositional readiness for another new curriculum. ------------------------------------------------------

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