Main Content
Session Information
01 SES 02 B, Professionalisation and Policy
Parallel Paper Session<br /> Joint Session with NW 13
Contribution
This paper offers a conceptually tentative re-working of familiar notions of professionalism. In doing so it also problematises those specific constructions of ‘profession’ and ‘professional’ that are situated as categories of difference within the context of teacher, leadership and institutional development programmes and initiatives in international higher education at the present time. In using a range of Deleuzian figures and conceptualisations the paper is designed to offer a speculative cartography of professional-becomings that, in turn, suggest the need for inquiry into always differentiating possibilities for professional subjectivities, practices and developmental strategies. The continuing growth of links and partnerships between European and international HE institutions underlines the importance of developing multi-perspective and inter-professional approaches that are likely to emerge out of research of this kind. The crisis of confidence in professional knowledge that Schon (1987) proclaimed as evident some 20 years ago, whilst having undergone certain changes, has not disappeared and, in the view of this paper, continues to require attention. In arguing for a form of professionalism that will continually and actively explore and create concepts as events, this paper will suggest that a reliance upon rigid specifications of the ‘professional’ and of ‘professional practice’ can contribute to the perpetuation of this sense of crisis in professional development in education today and serve to limit the potential for the continued growth of trans-national professional links and contacts.
The paper emerges from an ongoing action research project currently being carried out by the author into writing as professional development with a group of HE professional practitioners in the UK. Notions of ‘professionalism’, ‘professional identity’ and ‘professional practice’ are creatively examined through the use of a plural, reflexive and methodologically relevant Deleuzian action research praxis that promotes conceptualisation as event. In this respect, the use of participant collaborative writing activities within the research project have begun to demonstrate that conceptualisations of professional teaching and learning are not necessarily limited to classrooms, formal professional development agendas and nationally specific policy initiatives. These have also been found to be effectively contextualised through a range of sensate, affective and intuitively informed situations and practices. So, for example, in these settings, the on-going and highly engaged research practice of placing the discursively constructed professional/personal binary under erasure has become a highly productive modus vivendi.
In drawing upon a range of Deleuzian approaches and figures, such as ‘assemblage’, ‘becoming’, ‘multiplicity’ and others, the research continues to promote inquiry into the influence of organisational cultures upon professional teacher learning and knowledge. In carrying this out a theory and practice of writing as a method of individual and collaborative inquiry has begun to offer an approach to professional learning that tolerates ambiguity and works to make the familiar strange. On the basis of this research the paper will therefore attempt to offer a reflexive engagement with a creative form of professionalisation that, it is claimed, can work effectively to engage in decision-making in the changing and uncertain conditions of contemporary higher education in European and broader international settings.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Done, E., Knowler, H., Murphy, M., Rea, T. and Gale. K. (2011) (Re)Writing CPD: Creative Analytical Practices and the ‘Continuing Professional Development’ of Teachers, Reflective Practice, 12.3 (June 2011) Peseta, T. (2007) Troubling our desires for research and writing within the academic development project, International Journal for Academic Development, 12, 15-23. Richardson, L. and St Pierre, E. (2005) (3rd Edition) Writing: A method of inquiry, in: Denzin NK and Lincoln YS (Eds.) Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Schon, D. (1987) Educating the reflective practitioner, San Francisco: Jossey Bass. St.Pierre E. (1997) Methodology in the fold and the irruption of transgressive data, Qualitative Studies in Education, 10, 175–189. Wyatt J, Gale K, Gannon S and Davies B (2011) Deleuze and collaborative writing: an immanent plane of composition, London: Peter Lang.
Programme by Networks, ECER 2021
00. Central Events (Keynotes, EERA-Panel, EERJ Round Table, Invited Sessions)
Network 1. Continuing Professional Development: Learning for Individuals, Leaders, and Organisations
Network 2. Vocational Education and Training (VETNET)
Network 3. Curriculum Innovation
Network 4. Inclusive Education
Network 5. Children and Youth at Risk and Urban Education
Network 6. Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures
Network 7. Social Justice and Intercultural Education
Network 8. Research on Health Education
Network 9. Assessment, Evaluation, Testing and Measurement
Network 10. Teacher Education Research
Network 11. Educational Effectiveness and Quality Assurance
Network 12. LISnet - Library and Information Science Network
Network 13. Philosophy of Education
Network 14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research
Network 15. Research Partnerships in Education
Network 16. ICT in Education and Training
Network 17. Histories of Education
Network 18. Research in Sport Pedagogy
Network 19. Ethnography
Network 20. Research in Innovative Intercultural Learning Environments
Network 22. Research in Higher Education
Network 23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Network 24. Mathematics Education Research
Network 25. Research on Children's Rights in Education
Network 26. Educational Leadership
Network 27. Didactics – Learning and Teaching
Network 28. Sociologies of Education
Network 29. Reserach on Arts Education
Network 30. Research on Environmental und Sustainability Education
Network 31. Research on Language and Education (LEd)
Network 32. Organizational Education
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