My research explores the capacity of overseas volunteering as professional development for teachers, examining its impact on professional lives and identity, which may enhance their capacity for teaching social justice. There are three central research areas:

1.      To identify and name the professional (and personal) development of the Irish teachers participating in Global Schoolroom as teacher educators, and what benefits do they gain

2.      To see examples of this impact during the academic year through the integration of global perspectives into their work, or other changes in their teaching

3.      To learn more on the process of teacher learning through the overseas volunteering preparation programme

Since 2005, the Global Schoolroom engages Irish teachers to work voluntarily in India providing a professional development programme for unqualified teachers there (Boyle 2008).  Each year Irish teachers are recruited as volunteers to facilitate the programme for four weeks for the month of July. Assessment is on-going and participants are required to complete a number of assignments over the year and to keep a reflective journal. In addition their teaching is observed and periodically monitored. In July 2011, 27 Irish teachers were recruited from Ireland and Northern Ireland to deliver the teaching programme at 10 teaching centres in the states of Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura. While this programme focuses on Indian teacher’s professional development, there are also considerable professional development to the Irish participating teachers.

A review of the literature on teacher professional development shows it to be a contested term with much confusion over types of provision between in-service, training and continuing professional development. Some educationalists argue the concept of in-service is out-moded and outdated (Sugrue 2002), while Granville found ‘in-service experience remains dominated by information transfer in relation to curriculum and assessment’ (Granville 2005, p59). These comments and critiques have been interpreted as part of the instrumentalist ideology which dominates in Irish teaching and education policies (Gleeson 2012). Hoban (2002) advocates use of the term professional learning system in recognition of the insights on professional change from complexity (or systems) theory. To him, a professional learning system encourages learning that is both transformative of teaching practices and generative through creation of new knowledge and understandings (2002, p68).  This definition and approach reflects educational theorising which emphasises teachers as reflective practitioners (Schön 1983: Brockbank and McGill 2007).

Applying this model to my work addresses both the theme of transformation and identity in my question 1, and knowledge creation through teaching for social justice in question 2. This generative aspect, I believe, reflects the praxis Freire (1970) argues for, where education becomes the practice of freedom rather than integration into dominant thinking. Praxis is not just reflection or dialogue but moves towards ‘action upon the world in order to transform it’ (Freire 1970, p36). Praxis involves social transformation and within the context of the Global Schoolroom programme, transformation can occur within the teacher’s classrooms and approaches to learning.

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