Abstract:
Precarious economic conditions on a global scale including persistent concerns about post-industrial reorganization, effective allocation of resources and global competitiveness are compelling all schools to entertain possibilities for transformation beyond curriculum redesign of literacy and numeracy. Education and schooling are increasingly being theorised as a web of practices incorporating teaching, learning, leading, researching, and professional learning. Little is known about professional learning in schools as a lever for improving student learning outcomes or as a roadmap for navigating global and local policy goals.
Through a seemingly ‘eternal recurrence’ (Nietzsche, 1974) of professional learning in schools, what appears to work in the mainstream continuously fails in the context of socio-economically disadvantaged schools. In a global context of education and schooling dominated by forms of accountability, performativity and measurement, most professional learning in schools is short-term, individualistic and decontextualized, typically dedicated to rapid policy implementation and administration.
The point of departure is a description of a unique model of professional learning under precarious circumstances; a whole school approach to action research in a disadvantaged public secondary school situated within a significantly disadvantaged urban region on the northern outskirts of Adelaide, Australia. Using case study methodology over a calendar year, interviews, observations and document analyses were conducted, beginning with the leaders responsible for overseeing action research and action research training for the whole staff. The case study progressively narrowed to a cohort of teachers enacting action research, where the object of the research was one’s own classroom practice and pedagogy.
Galvanized by a negative reputation with the community and violent student behavior, necessity became the mother of invention. Interviews with teachers outlined and differentiated ‘the crazy stuff we are trying to do’ from frequently conflicting policy demands and mandated measures of accountability. The findings reveal locally designed and enacted professional learning including just and inclusive pedagogies and outcomes contributing to productive and sustainable learning in the school and beyond.
The author contributes to scarce debates on professional learning in schools while giving voice to the usually silenced majority of professional learning. Through amplifying the hopeful stories of teachers who are redesigning pedagogies and naming their own problems in response to their contextual issues, the findings have the potential to magnify possibilities for radical change in professional practice. As hierarchical trees are being uprooted on slippery slopes, teachers are learning and doing ‘crazy stuff’ and actually making a difference.
Through a seemingly ‘eternal recurrence’ (Nietzsche, 1974) of professional learning in schools, what appears to work in the mainstream continuously fails in the context of socio-economically disadvantaged schools. In a global context of education and schooling dominated by forms of accountability, performativity and measurement, most professional learning in schools is short-term, individualistic and decontextualized, typically dedicated to rapid policy implementation and administration.
The point of departure is a description of a unique model of professional learning under precarious circumstances; a whole school approach to action research in a disadvantaged public secondary school situated within a significantly disadvantaged urban region on the northern outskirts of Adelaide, Australia. Using case study methodology over a calendar year, interviews, observations and document analyses were conducted, beginning with the leaders responsible for overseeing action research and action research training for the whole staff. The case study progressively narrowed to a cohort of teachers enacting action research, where the object of the research was one’s own classroom practice and pedagogy.
Galvanized by a negative reputation with the community and violent student behavior, necessity became the mother of invention. Interviews with teachers outlined and differentiated ‘the crazy stuff we are trying to do’ from frequently conflicting policy demands and mandated measures of accountability. The findings reveal locally designed and enacted professional learning including just and inclusive pedagogies and outcomes contributing to productive and sustainable learning in the school and beyond.
The author contributes to scarce debates on professional learning in schools while giving voice to the usually silenced majority of professional learning. Through amplifying the hopeful stories of teachers who are redesigning pedagogies and naming their own problems in response to their contextual issues, the findings have the potential to magnify possibilities for radical change in professional practice. As hierarchical trees are being uprooted on slippery slopes, teachers are learning and doing ‘crazy stuff’ and actually making a difference.