Teachers' learning toward the dialogic school - enacting the rhetoric

beyond resistance

Peter McInerney, Robert Hattam, John Smyth & Mike Lawson

Introduction

From what we have argued so far it should be clear that we regard

teachers as prominent actors in school reform and, despite their muted

voices in much of the official discourse on school change, we believe

that it is largely their efforts which determine the success of any

moves to transform schooling practices (Zeichner 1993).

Although much has been written about whole school reform, particularly

the models of change associated with the Disadvantaged Schools Project

and the National Schools Network, the role and nature of teachers'

learning in affecting curriculum reform has received considerably less

attention. In this paper we want to make this connection much more

explicit by focussing more specifically on the struggles and tensions

which accompany the endeavours of school communities as they attempt to

enact a vision of a dialogic school.

Firstly, we want to present a theoretical account of the phases

involved in this process in the form of a model which attempts to

highlight the role of teachers' learning in school change.

Secondly, we want to draw on research from the Teachers' Learning

Project to show how one school community has been able to enact a

vision of social justice based on a recognition of difference and a

curriculum response to poverty.

Finally, we want to draw some inferences for teacher development from

the results of our research and speculate about the nature and content

of resource materials to support teachers' learning.

Throughout this seminar we have referred to the dialogic school as an

ideal to be worked for in school reform but before proceeding with the

paper it might be useful to restate our understanding of this notion.

We believe that a dialogic school has the following features:

¥ democratic forms of practice which successfully engage parents,

¥ a culture of innovation where the primacy of student learning shapes

¥ a concern for social justice as expressed in ongoing efforts to reduce

¥ a discourse which emphasises critical literacies rather than just

¥ a culture of learning where forums and processes for critical

Such a community, we believe, has the potential to function as a

genuine "public sphere" where citizens can come together to deliberate

about their common affairs, to contest prevailing discourses and

construct alternative visions of society (Fraser 1994: 78). At this

point it might be asserted that the emancipatory vision contained in

the concept of the dialogic school represents some fanciful ideal which

is well beyond the reach of school communities. In a current political

climate marked by an emphasis on marketisation and commodification of

education, a 'back to basics' view of learning, and a pre-occupation

with particular forms of educational accountability and standardised

testing (Reid 1997: 8), it appears that teachers work is increasingly

being construed as a technical enterprise directed towards the goals of

a narrow, vocationally oriented education. In some quarters teachers

are being positioned as implementers of centrally determined curriculum

agendas rather than autonomous, transformative agents. While we don't

want to down play the formidable nature of the barriers to school-based

reform we believe that our research shows how some teachers and school

communities are working against this prevailing discourse to sustain a

broader view of teaching as a moral activity where concerns for

educational inequality and social justice underpin teachers' work and

learning. These schools, it seems, have been able to successfully

engage with parents, students and public institutions to:

¥ generate discourses which engage people in changing schools from

¥ open up the dialogic spaces for learning within the community

¥ foster a culture of dialogue around teaching and learning, and

¥ sustain a commitment to teaching and schooling as a moral and

Teachers' learning and school reform - a theoretical model

What enables schools to step out of the straight jacket of conformity

and hegemonic practices and begin to move towards more transformative

and civil democratic communities? We believe that a useful way of

conceptualising the dynamic and problematic nature of this process is

contained in Diagram 1 which attempts to highlight the central

importance of teachers' learning in the trajectory towards the dialogic

school.

DIAGRAM IN HERE

Diagram 1 Teachers' Learning and the Dialogic School: Enacting the

vision beyond rhetoric

From the outset we want to suggest that a circular rather than a linear

model of change best represents the dynamic and problematic nature of

schooling where new educational agendas and changing economic and

social circumstances require school to constantly revisit the

underlying school vision and re-evaluate their curriculum priorities.

What follows is an outline of the main features of this model and an

explanation of the ways in which teachers' learning facilitates the

development of a dialogic school.

Developing a vision

We believe that vibrant schools take seriously the need to have a

courageous vision or statement of purpose that is broadly understood

and shared by the community, and which acts as a guide to school

planning processes and curriculum development. Depending on the

situated nature of the school and its curriculum focus this vision may

be framed around notions such as middle schooling, social justice, the

arts, gender equity or technology. If the vision is to command broad

support it is clear that it must be developed in conjunction with

teachers, parents, students and respond to the significant

social/cultural/economic issues arising from the community. What seems

particularly important here is the sense of community ownership of the

vision and the belief in the transformative possibilities of the school

itself. Obviously the process of developing the vision also entails a

commitment of resources, time to debate educational issues, a

willingness to mine ideas from other sources and attention to the

structures to support the reform process.

Enacting the vision

It is possible for visions to come 'unstuck' unless schools develop a

set of organisational structures, practices and discourses to support a

culture of innovation necessary to facilitate curriculum reform. This

will necessarily involve a range of learning for teachers which might

include how to work in teams, teach with new technology, negotiate the

curriculum, relate to parents, respond to poverty and so on depending

on the priorities emerging from the school vision. An important element

in this process involves advancing a distributive view of leadership

where those with knowledge and curriculum expertise have an opportunity

to exercise their authority in the school setting. Although it is

possible that teachers can draw on the intellectual resources of their

colleagues to bring about curriculum change, schools also need to look

at ways of bringing new ideas into their midst. In effect school

communities need to develop the skills to appropriate knowledge and

financial resources from external sources, such as state and federally

funded curriculum projects and teacher support groups.

Working through oppositions and tensions

Of course schooling practices are usually contested within and outside

the classroom - by students, other teachers and parents with

alternative view about what constitutes good teaching and learning.

Resistance is likely to come in a number of forms including:

¥ Opposition from teachers themselves concerned about intensification of

¥ Student resistance which in some instances might be framed as a battle

¥ Parental opposition which often surfaces in schools which are

¥ Other forms of resistance may stem from innovative practices which

Hence, attempts to sustain a particular school vision are usually acted

out in an environment characterised by competing view points,

conflicting rights and oppositional elements which need to be

acknowledged and confronted as an integral part of the school reform

process.

Strategic action

We argue that a school's capacity to develop and sustain a coherent

educational vision is dependent upon an ongoing engagement with the

community so that parents, teachers and students are continually

involved in dialogues about student learning, curriculum development

and policy making. Working through opposition also involves

implementing organisational and educative practices which create the

space and opportunities for teachers and parents to develop shared

understandings about teaching practices and student learning. Schools

need to engage in creative processes to facilitate teachers' learning

through:

¥ systematic planning of training and development programs and forums

¥ allocation of resources in ways which maximise support for students

What we have found to be crucial if schools are to move towards the

dialogic school is the capability to make sense of the contestations

and then to implement strategic action to advance the vision in away

which maintains community support.

The model in action - The Gums School

What does this process look like in real life? We want to illustrate

the various elements of the model with an example from our field

research in South Australia. The site in question, which we shall refer

to as The Gums School, is a large R- 7 school with a culturally diverse

community in which more than two thirds of the students are from

non-English speaking backgrounds. Regionally the district is

characterised by relatively high levels of unemployment and areas of

poverty and presently more than 50% of children qualify for government

financial support as School Card Holders.

The educational vision - keeping social justice on the agenda

It is not easy to sustain a commitment to social justice in a political

environment dominated by economic rationalist thinking. Indeed one

could argue that in recent times the rhetoric of social justice seems

to have been all but abandoned in national debates about schooling and

educational achievement in Australian society. In a discourse which

seems to privilege notion of parental choice, quality assurance and

outcomes-based education social justice seems to have been rendered

politically incorrect. Luke (1997: 17) draws our attention to the

damaging consequences for many marginalised communities when social

justice is being re-named 'access', poverty responses have collapsed to

literacy programs, gender equity issues are being framed in terms of

concerns for boys, and cultural diversity is once again being described

in terms of intellectual, linguistic and family deficits . Yet as

Lingard (1994) and Levin (1995) schools require stronger and more

focussed responses to poverty and other forms of oppression if

educational inequalities are to be reduced in Australian society.

At The Gums School such issues are taken seriously and social justice

has remained an ongoing feature of the School Development Plan in spite

of cut-backs to the Federally funded Disadvantaged Schools Project. As

we began to talk to teachers and students at the school it became

clear to us that this commitment extended beyond rhetoric, that social

justice was alive and flourishing in the school community, and that

learning how to develop appropriate responses to the needs of children

in poverty and/or those from culturally diverse backgrounds were high

priorities for teachers' learning. What we saw drove home Connell's

salutary reminder that social justice is more than a distributive

question - it goes to the heart of the curriculum itself (Connell

1992:136). As Connell points out the question of 'how much' in

education cannot be separated from 'what' - in other words there is an

inescapable link between distribution and content, pedagogical

processes and forms of assessment. We also encountered a response to

social justice which sought to engage with the broader causes of

oppression encompassed in Young's notion of the 'politics difference'

(Young 1990) - a response which attempted to address issues of gender,

cultural difference and racism within the curriculum.

Enacting a social justice vision - establishing structures, practices

and discourses

In the model described earlier we spoke of the significance of school

structures, processes and community dialogue in enacting a school

vision. What we saw at The Gums is as good an example as we have seen

of a school planning process which engages all parents, teachers and

students in decisions about curriculum priorities. We think that it

merits some elaboration in this paper.

Curriculum review occurs bi-annually at The Gums School. On the most

recent occasion children were engaged in the process through several

forums. Meetings were held with the student council, the Aboriginal

student group and students from non English-speaking backgrounds to

discuss the issues related to quality of education in the 8 required

areas of study identified in the Department for Education and

Children's Services policy guidelines, 'Educating for the 21st

Century'. Students in small groups of mixed age and gender were also

invited to contribute to the review in class settings. They were given

some information about their entitlement to a quality education and

were asked to identify areas in the curriculum where they thought they

were getting good outcomes and areas which they thought needed to be

improved in the school.

Students were required to justify their decisions and they used a

preferential voting system to decide their priorities. Every child had

6 green dots to allocate in a way that best reflected the strength of

their feelings. In the final analysis students strongly voted for the

Arts (visual, performing) followed by Aboriginal Education. There was a

good deal of lobbying from Aboriginal children and parents to support

the latter priority. Class representatives were involved in the

collection of data from student groups and the whole process was used

as a model for student participation in the school.

When the process was conducted with staff the 2 major priorities

identified were Literacy and Science. The consultation with parents

included discussions with the Vietnamese, Khmer and Polish communities

as well as members of the school council and Aboriginal groups. Most

parents voted for Literacy but Vietnamese parents chose Science as a

major focus and Aboriginal parents wanted an emphasis on Aboriginal

Education.

This information was taken back to the staff for their consideration of

the varying priorities of teachers, parents and students. They talked

about the data in small groups and then voted on the direction of the

school and the professional development of the staff for the next 4

years. When it came to the final voting a lot of staff changed their

vote and supported students in their choice of the Arts. The student

presentation had made a big impact on many teachers. After staff

deliberation agreement was reached that Literacy and the Arts would

form the major priorities. Aboriginal Education was added because of

the lobbying from Aboriginal parents and Science will be added in 1998.

It is easy to pay lip service to community consultation in curriculum

reform but we think that this example illustrates the powerful ways in

which schools can develop shared educational visions through democratic

and educative planning processes.

For teachers at The Gums School successful teaching hinges on the

applying of knowledge about the educational issues associated with

poverty and the cultural backgrounds of students. A significant

proportion of Disadvantaged Schools Project funds are directed towards

programs which enhance teacher's learning in areas directly related to

social justice and schooling - for example TRT funding to release

teachers for workshops on poverty, multiculturalism and Aboriginal

education. At the classroom level teachers have developed practices

which attempt to respond to poverty, gender and cultural differences

by:

¥ sustaining a success oriented learning environment where students play

¥ emphasising critical literacy approaches which reposition students as

¥ celebrating and valuing the multi-cultural heritage and traditions of

¥ explicit teaching approaches and the use of data to assess

Working though resistance - engaging with the school community

These changes are not taking place without elements of opposition from

within and outside the school community. In fact there have been some

'feisty 'debates about issues ranging from reporting and assessment

practices and curriculum priorities to the schools participation in the

Basic Skills Test - a state government initiative which ties funding

for literacy programs to results in literacy and numeracy testing

programs of students in Years 3 and 5.

Several aspects of the school's capacity to work through these elements

of resistance stand out. Firstly, the school has not closed down the

public spaces where conflicting views about the school's curriculum

directions can be debated and considered in the light of new ideas.

Rather, the school has taken seriously the notion of keeping dialogues

open and allowing for the continued exploration of major curriculum

issues. The following remarks from a teacher at the school captures the

nature of this process rather well.

We have had some tricky issues like the teacher a few years ago who

wanted us to adopt an A B C D E F mode of reporting because it was a

less time consuming process for teachers. We could have made an

attempt to silence him or to avoid taking the issue to the whole staff

group . . . We didn't do it that way . . . [Rather] we asked, what

kind of information do kids need to be able to improve their learning .

. . In the end [when it went for a vote] he didn't vote for his own

idea . . .

As the narrator of this story went on to say, often quite productive

outcomes can emerge out of situations where authenticity is tested to

the extreme:

At the moment we are sticking with writing descriptive reports . . . .

doing portfolios and writing stuff on work samples, but I don't reckon

that's the end of that conversation either . . . Even though [the

above teachers' solution] was a bit scary, the conversation from that

is still going on and it lead to lots of debate.

Secondly, the school has strategies and processes which actively engage

members of the school community in curriculum change so that they

develop their own knowledge and understanding of new ideas and

approaches to learning. A spectacular example of this took place when

the school embarked on the painting of a set of murals to enhance the

aesthetic and educational environment of the grounds and buildings as

part of the arts curriculum focus. A teacher who described himself as a

'failed artist' managed to secure 20 TRT days to release teachers for a

series of workshops designed to teach them the necessary skills to get

the project up and running. Parents also participated in these

workshops and joined forces with the students to make the murals a

truly community project.

In short the school has managed to win the support of parents and

students to ensure a sense of community ownership of the school's

vision that goes a long way to counteracting the forms of opposition to

curriculum reform encountered in less democratic and less civic-minded

communities.

Inferences about teachers' learning and school reform

A major aim of the Teachers' Learning Project is to trial and develop

resource materials that might enhance teachers' learning in schools.

What this model suggests is that teachers' learning and school reform

are intimately connected and that enhancing teachers' learning is about

shifting the school culture towards the critical collaborative school.

If this is the case then, materials that might enhance teachers

learning need to contribute to a cultural reformation of schools. The

materials need to attend to the sorts of oppositions that we have

identified in the paper - and hence advance some of the more

significant strategic actions outlined in the case study.

Although we are still engaged in the drafting of case studies and

ongoing theorising about the nature of teachers' learning we have begun

to speculate about the contents of the materials to support teachers'

learning. We want to canvas the following examples of modules or topics

which we regard as potentially useful in supporting schools and

teachers engaged in 'grass roots' reform.

School development planning: towards the dialogic school

A module which explores the notion of whole school change with these

features: reforming the mainstream curriculum to improve the learning

outcomes of all students; involving parents and students in curriculum

decision making; integrating the change process in existing school

structures; and, redirecting resources to assist in the change process.

Critical reflection on classroom practice

Central to enhancing teacher learning is being able to investigate

rigorously what's happening in classrooms - investigations that are

managed by teachers, involving their peers and being able to situate

themselves within a wider milieu.

Making sense of what students are learning

This module proposes an approach to assessment that also involves

evaluation of the curriculum. What are students learning also needs to

be understood in terms of what opportunities are they given to learn?

Enhancing student voice in schools

Students voices are often silent in curriculum change. We suggest that

there is an urgent need to explore the ways in which students can be

involved in school planning, decision making, negotiating the

curriculum, school evaluation and doing research.

Investigating the nature of the school community

Curriculum relevance is about minimising 'interactive trouble' - of

being able to make curriculum that is sensitive to cultural difference

and to the social and geographical nature of the community. Dialogue

with the community is essential. if teachers are able to develop

appropriate curriculum responses to the school context.

Who gets to be a leader around here?

Curriculum leadership is often cited as a panacea for reforming

schools. But an important question to be pursued is: "how is

leadership understood and it might be reformulated so that the learning

resources of everyone in the school are utilised"?

Moving to a middle school approach

Middle schooling is about developing pedagogy that: emphasises the

student-teacher relationship; engages students in negotiating the

curriculum; involves constructing curriculum that is sensitive to the

social and cultural milieu impacting on the construction of student

identity encourages collaboration between teachers, and students, in

the learning experience; and, favours success-oriented assessment

Doing critical cultural studies in schools

We propose that a critical cultural studies that provides a way of

looking at the cultural complexity of daily life and the diversity of

cultural artefacts and texts which inform, limit and enable

understandings and actions of people as independent and social actors

within Australian society.

Conclusions

In this paper we have placed a great deal of faith in the capacity of

schools and teachersÊto enact reforms which will engage students in a

socially relevant and worthwhile curriculum as part of a resolve to

ensure more socially just outcomes in schooling. We have taken the

position that schools are the best sites for making decisions about the

substantive issues involving the curriculum and that efforts to enhance

teachers' learning are central to any endeavours to improve the

learning for students. In this context we believe that the model of

change proposed in the paper provides some useful concepts to begin to

understand how teachers' learning might be enhanced to enact a vision

of a dialogic school that moves beyond rhetoric and resistance to

reality.

References

Connell, R. (1992) Citizenship, social justice and curriculum,

International Studies in Sociology of Education, 2 (2) pp 133 - 146

Fraser, N. (1994) Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the

critique of actually existing democracy, in Giroux (ed) Between

Borders: Pedagogy and the politics of Cultural Studies, (London:

Routledge).

Goodman, J. (1995) Change without difference: A school restructuring in

historical perspective, Harvard Educational Review, 65 (1) pp 1 - 29

Kemmis, S. (1994) School reform in the 90s: Reclaiming social justice,

Flinders Institute for the Study of Teaching Conference Paper

Levin, B. (1995) Educational responses to poverty, Canadian Journal of

Education, 20 (2) p 211 - 223

Lingard, B. (1994) The struggle for socially just schooling, Queensland

Teachers Journal, 12 (1) pp 1 - 5

Luke, A. (1997) New narratives of human capital: Recent Redirections in

Australian Educational Policy, The Australian Educational Researcher,

24 (2) pp 1 - 24

Reid, A. (1997) The national educational agenda: Implications for

leadership in Australian schools, Educational Leader, 9 (4) pp 1 - 11

Young, I. (1990) Justice and the politics of difference (New Jersey:

Princeton University Press).