Professional Competence and Reflective Practice

Teachers as lead intellectuals!

‘the lad/lass o pairts’

Dimensions of Development Evidenced by

• greater complexity in teaching e.g. in

handling mixed-ability classes, reluctant learners, classes marked by significant diversity, or inter-disciplinary work;

• the deployment of a wider range of teaching strategies;

• the ability to adduce evidence of one’s effectiveness;

• basing teaching on a wider range of evidence, reading and research; and

A pronounced capacity for self-criticism and self-improvement; the ability to impact on colleagues through mentoring and coaching, modelling good practice, contributing to the literature on teaching and learning and public discussion of professional issues, leading staff development , all based on the capacity to theorise about policy and practice.

A confluence of three ideas

Problem Solving

Research Lesson Study

Communities of Practice

Karl Popper

Problem solving and the nature of knowledge

P1 TS EE P2

Knowledge as problem solving

• Retrograde Motion

Sharpe, R. (2004)

Professional Knowledge is no longer viewed as just consisting of a standardised, explicit and fixed knowledge base. It is now seen as knowledge which exists as knowledge in use, is ethical in its use and is changed by experience. The distinctive nature of professional knowledge lies in the interplay between its construction and use. When teachers use their knowledge, use changes what knowledge is.

Research Lesson Study (RLS)

TS1

P1 TS2 EE P2

TSn

Professional Communities

Community as normative prescription or empirical description

Gemeinschaft or Gesellschaft?

A Definition

Communities of practice are groups of people informally bound together by shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise.

They are not new:

e.g.1 corporations of metal workers, potters, and masons in Classical Greece

e.g.2 Craft Guilds in the Middle Ages

How they compare with other groups.

A Snapshot ComparisonCommunities of practice, formal work groups, teams and informal networks are useful in complementary ways. Below is a summary of their characteristics.

What’s the purpose? Who belongs? What holds it together?

How long does it last?

Community of practice

To develop members’ capabilities; to build and exchange knowledge

Members who select themselves

Passion, commitment, and identification with the group’s expertise

As long as there is interest in maintaining the group

Formal work group To deliver a product or service

Everyone who reports to the group’s manager

Job requirements and common goals

Until the next reorganisation

Project team To accomplish a specified task

Employees assigned by senior management

The project’s milestones and goals

Until the project has been completed

Informal network To collect and pass on business information

Friends and business acquaintances

Mutual needs As long as people have a reason to connect

engaged diversity doing things together relationshipssocial complexity community maintenance

mutual engagementmutual engagement

storiesstyles artefactsactions tools historical eventsdiscourses concepts

shared repertoireshared repertoire

joint enterprise joint enterprise

negotiated enterprise mutual accountability interpretations rhythmslocal response

Dimensions of practice as the property of a community

•Mutual engagement•A joint enterprise•A shared repertoire ‘Communities of practice’ Learning, Meaning and Identity Etienne Wenger 2006

They don’t replace existing structures but

complement them and radically galvanise knowledge sharing, learning and change

However, the organic, spontaneous and informal nature of communities of practice makes them resistant to supervision and interference!

Successful managers cannot mandate communities of practice they can only hope to create them together by:

• providing an infrastructure to nurture them; and

• bringing the right people together.

Competent membership of a community of practice

• The ability to engage with other members and respond to their actions;

• The ability to establish relationships as a basis for participation;

• The ability to understand the work of the community deeply enough to take some responsibility for it; and

• The ability to make use of the repertoire of practice to engage in the history of practice and to make this history newly meaningful.

Communities of Practice: the Organisational Frontier?

&Organisational Challenges

Burns and Stalker -The Management of Innovation

Ideal types (after Weber)

Mechanistic organisations

V

Organic organisations

A Practical example

The Problem (P1)

Pupils in key stage 3 don’t work well in groups

TLRP findings (1)

Blatchford et al (2001-2004)

Group work can be made to work with benefits to attainment, motivation and behaviour.

Group work skills need to be approached developmentally: social skills first, then communication skills, then problem-solving. 

TLRP findings (2)

McGuinness and Sheehy (2001-2004)

Developing pupils’ capacity to learn takes time and special attention needs to be paid to those with poorer cognitive and social resources.

This in turn requires teachers to develop both their practices and their beliefs about learners.

TLRP findings (3)

Hughes et al and Brookes Attention needs to be given to the creation of positive classroom

climates characterized by respect, trust and mutual exchange of dignity.

The most fundamental form of education – the process of becoming a person – requires as much careful consideration as the acquisition of knowledge and skills.

Personalized provision in schools should build on an understanding of the development of these strategic biographies, and respond to the social, cultural and material experiences of different groups of learners

Tentative solution

Plan a lesson which approaches group work from a development perspective.

What social and communication skills do we need to explicitly factor into our lesson plan?

How can we build a positive classroom climate which facilitates pupils working in groups?

RLS (1) and (EE)

RLS(2) and (EE)

RLS (n) and (EE)

Modified problem 1 or new problem 2

Process begins anew

Professional competence

leading to

Ontological security