Session Information
99 ERC SES 05 H, Vocational Education and Training (VETNET)
Paper Session
Contribution
Scholarship underscores the pivotal role of teacher training in maintaining standardized education, primarily institutionalized via different sorts of learning communities (i.e., professional development programs materialized via professional learning communities (PLCs), communities of practice (CoPs), action research groups) within schools, arguably to enhance curricular content, instructional practices, and student academic performance (Nawab et al., 2021; Sullivan, 2020). However, in Western-centric contexts, efforts to enhance teacher-learning communities often prioritize reforms, policymaking, and empirical studies aligning with business-sponsored agendas rooted in neoliberal market ideologies (Giroux, 2019; Darling-Hammond et al., 2005). Unfortunately, these initiatives frequently lack meaningful participation from key stakeholders, hindering teachers’ professionalism and critical skills development for transformative education, social justice, and climate change awareness (Giroux, 2021). Against this backdrop, teacher-learning communities are often operationalized as socio-political and historical learning-as-training projects, neglecting the complexities of the educational experience and its axiological commitment to social change (Macedo, 2018).
This study builds upon educational experiences in the Americas and Europe, exploring transformative possibilities in teacher-learning communities intersecting with critical pedagogies. It aims to articulate critical pedagogy's conceptualization of practical hope and radical love (Freire, 2005; Goméz, 2015; Agnello, 2016) as community-oriented axiological-educational frameworks sustaining teacher learning communities, referred to as communities of praxis. This exploration may bring forth collectively crafted counternarratives anchored in relational engagements, dialogic encounters, knowledge co-creation, eco-justice ethics, and situated practices (Flecha, 2015). According to Freire (2005), critical educational counternarratives should be grounded in practical hope and radical love. Hope serves as a fundamental aspect of our human condition and educational practice, motivating collective intervention in shaping history. Love provides sustenance for the struggle against historical determinisms, promoting possibility, solidarity, humility, and openness—goals inherent in communities of praxis.
Studies addressing practical hope and radical love as educational frameworks are virtually nonexistent (Torres Olave et al., 2023) and even more limited through the lenses of teacher-learning communities. While addressing the research question (How may communities of praxis be enacted in schools?), my study aims to collect data documenting teachers’ dialogic interactions in small-group gatherings as they may co-construct pathways to develop a community of praxis, engaging in transformative experiences and unsettling dominant curricular-pedagogical approaches and sociopolitical-educational practices.
The theoretical-conceptual framework guiding this study integrates a critical theory/pedagogy of situated learning-in-practice (Lave, 2019; Freire, 2005), a relational-axiological embodied theory of cognition-knowing (Maturana, 2012) and the pursuit of transformative and emancipatory goals (Carr & Thésée, 2020).
Situated learning, as articulated by Lave, embraces the social nature of human existence where knowing is subject to practice as a relational process of constant becoming (identity formation as a continuum) among individuals in communities of practices situated in evolving sociopolitical-educational contexts. Critical pedagogy elaborates further on the nature of situated learning, underscoring the transformative potential of learning-in-place that occurs intertwined with sociopolitical practices in the multiplicity of voices in the world, shaping one's affect, senses, emotions, and emergent subjectivities. Enactivism introduces an embodied theory of cognition-knowing to learning, asserting that cognition arises from bodily experiences within broader psychological and cultural contexts, emphasizing how individuals co-construct knowledge and inner worlds articulating axiological dimensions. Transformative and Emancipatory Education (Carr & Thésée, 2020) advocates for the encounter of multiplicities when building learning communities, offering pathways to challenging systemic barriers through alternative constructs to conventional teacher learning-as-training within Western-centric educational systems. Altogether, these theories comprise a framework for the enaction of communities of praxisthatpoints at practical hope as a sociopolitical-educational transformative project and at radical love as praxis to struggle against educational determinisms while exploring new possibilities in the contemporary landscape.
Method
Drawing from Denzin and Lincoln’s (2018) conceptualizations, inspired by Lévi-Strauss (1968), Kincheloe and Berry’s (2004) Rigour and Complexity, and Tobin and Steinberg's (2015) Doing Educational Research, this study proposes an Action Research-oriented (AR) bricolage design. Bricolage is an emancipatory research construct, a dynamic orientation to address the complexity of human worlds and experiences, where the bricoleur—someone who looks through the lenses of the bricolage— “moves back and forth between theories and practices” to construct context-based research paths, diverging from the predetermined “procedures of traditional monological research” (Kincheloe & Berry, 2004, p. 107). The overarching emerging design of my bricolage attempts to blur boundaries between disciplinary borders—rejecting reductionism—and instead encourages the interaction of diverse theories, techniques, and knowledges to study the educational phenomenon and construct richer and more nuanced interpretations of its complexity, in this case, regarding teacher learning communities. Through the lenses of bricolage, AR may take advantage of a multiplicity of research constructs to allow the emergence of methodological inventiveness, participants’ agency, multilogical interpretations, community-oriented emancipatory goals, sociopolitical-educational advocacy, activism, and intervention (Kincheloe & Berry, 2004; Cohen et al., 2018). By embracing the multiperspectival rigour of bricolage, the complexity of the phenomenon of interest is approached not only through the specific lenses of AR but also from the crystallization of other orientations. For the scope of this study and based on my experience with qualitative research, such research orientations include phenomenological hermeneutics, ethnographies, narrative inquiry, historiography, and creative-based methods, leaving space for considering other available ‘tools’ that may befit the unfolding complexity of the research phenomenon under study (Berry, 2015). From such a methodological repertoire, interviews—particularly unstructured walking interviews with teachers—alongside journals, photovoice, participant observation, and art-based artifacts have proved the most beneficial methods for fostering critical dialogues and collecting thick data, asserting participants’ agency while triggering awareness-raising processes. Additionally, discourse and content analysis provide systematic and rigorous ways to deepen narrative analysis and connect teachers’ lived experiences to institutional (con)texts.
Expected Outcomes
In delving into a qualitative research exploration with teachers, this paper anticipates multifaceted outcomes that extend beyond traditional academic boundaries. The primary objective lies in the embodiment and articulation of a comprehensive research framework, grounded in the theoretical-conceptual underpinnings of bricolage. By envisioning the possibilities of communities of praxis, the research seeks to advance the scholarship of bricolage within the realm of educational research. Targeted towards scholars with interests in qualitative research, critical pedagogy, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), teachers-as-researchers, action research (AR), decolonial education, place-based education, and multi-modal research approaches, this research aspires to contribute significantly to the theoretical and methodological foundations of these fields. Intertwining practice and theory through autoethnographic elements, expected outcomes may also engage a broader audience beyond academia, offering insights that resonate with practitioners keen on advancing critical educational approaches within their everyday contexts. By bridging the gap between scholarly discourse and practical application, the research endeavours to empower and inspire educators to enact transformative sociopolitical-educational learning communities in their schools. The study aims to present findings not merely as empirical results but as valuable learning-teachable experiences gained in the field while conducting bricolage-research. In doing so, it outlines practical approaches to co-develop teacher communities of praxis within educational institutions, fostering a collective ethos of shared learning and collaboration. A pivotal focus of this research lies in elucidating the methodological rigour of bricolage. It explores the researcher's role as an educational bricoleur, weaving together experiences with teachers-as-co-researchers.
References
Agnello, M. F. (2016). Enactivating Radical Love: Joe L. Kincheloe’s 10 Precepts of Teachers as Researchers. International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 7(3), 67–78. Berry, K. (2015). Research as bricolage: Embracing relationality, multiplicity and complexity. In: Tobin S, Steinberg S (eds) Doing Educational Research, second edition. Rotterdam, Boston, Taipei: Sense Publishers, p.79–110. Carr, P., & Thésée, G. (2020). Social theories. In S. Steinberg, D. Barry, & J. Robinson (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Critical Pedagogies, pp. 67 – 74. SAGE Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2018). Research Methods in Education 8th Ed. Routledge Darling-Hammond, L., Holtzman, D. J., Gatlin, S. J., & Heilig, J. V. (2005). Does teacher preparation matter? Evidence about teacher certification, Teach for America, and teacher effectiveness. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 42, 13. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2018). The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research. Flecha, R. (2015). SPRINGER BRIEFS IN EDUCATION Successful Educational Actions for Inclusion and Social Cohesion in Europe. Springer. Freire, P. (2005). Pedagogy of the Oppressed (30th Anniversary Ed). Continuum Giroux, H. A. (2019). Neoliberalism and the weaponising of language and education. Race and Class, 61(1), 26–45. Giroux, H. A. (2021). Race, Politics, and Pandemic Pedagogy: Education in a Time of Crisis. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Gómez, J. (2015). Radical love. A revolution for the 21st century. Peter Lang. Kincheloe, J., & Berry, K. (2004). Rigour and complexity in educational research. Open University Press. Lave, J. (2019). Learning and Everyday Life: Access, Participation, and Changing Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108616416 Lévi-Strauss, C. (1968). The savage mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Macedo, D. (2018). Literacies of Power: What Americans Are Not Allowed to Know. Routledge Maturana, H. (2012). Reflections on my collaboration with Francisco Varela. Constructivist Foundations, 7(3), 155–164 Nawab, A., Bissaker, K., & Datoo, A. K. (2021). Contemporary trends in professional development of teachers: importance of recognising the context. International Journal of Educational Management, 35(6), 1176–1190. Sullivan, F. (2020). Critical pedagogy and teacher professional development for online and blended learning: the equity imperative in the shift to digital. Education Tech Research Dev 69, pp. 21-24. Springer Tobin K., & Steinberg, S. (2015). Doing Educational Research, 2nd edition. Rotterdam, Boston, Taipei: Sense Publishers Torres Olave, B., Tolbert, S. & Frausto Aceves, A. Reflecting on Freire: a praxis of radical love and critical hope for science education. Cult Stud of Sci Educ 18, 1–20 (2023).
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