Teacher, Researcher, Professional
How Teachers Learn in Professional Conversation: None
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Charity Okeke, Gert Van Der Westhuizen
This paper examined how teachers’ learn in professional conversation. The purpose was to analyse teachers’ conversation regarding classroom discipline to contribute to the understanding of how teachers learn. The study was a qualitative research that adopted an ethno-methodological research design. Purposive sampling was used to select six teachers from one primary school in the East London Education District who participated in the study. Video recorder was used to capture the conversation session after school hour for 31 minutes, 56 seconds in duration. The recording was viewed and transcribed verbatim. Three learning episodes were selected from the transcript and transcribed again using Jefferson notations for conversation analysis purposes. Clayman and Gill conversation analysis levels were used to analyse the selected episodes to establish how teachers learn in professional conversation. The findings show that teachers learn through requesting advice and testing idea. The teachers as well learn through sharing ideas. The teachers’ further use response preferences, repairing/assisting one another in talk, nodding and laughing as learning strategies. Based on the findings, the study recommends that teachers should embrace professional conversation for exchanging knowledge and experiences for learning purposes. The study also encourages teachers to adopt conversational strategies discovered in this study to improve professional learning. It further recommends that research experts on teacher learning should be involved in school workshops to present their findings and recommendations to further enrich teacher learning.
A Synthesis of Research, Inquiry and Practice: Teachers' Perspectives of Knowledge Development through Research
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Niamh Mc Grogan
In the past decade in the UK, the drive to implement changes to the role teachers assume in educational research has gathered momentum. This is, in part, evidenced in the establishment of a government-designated What Works Centre for Education to determine evidence of "what works" in education to inform practice (EEF, 2016), the designation of schools as ‘Research Schools’ responsible for bringing evidence into practice (DfE, 2016) and changes to the Teacher Professional Standards in Wales. This is not uncontested, particularly in terms of the assumptions underpinning the concept of what works in education (Biesta, 2014; Sheldon, 2016). Using responses to a mixed methods survey, this paper employs quantitative analysis to determine the evidence teachers currently use to inform practice and their perspectives on the value of research evidence to their practice, and a qualitative analysis of specific questions to understand their interpretations of some of the terms currently being used in this context. Initial analysis indicates that teachers currently engage with a range of evidence to inform practice and recognise the value of research informing practice. However, teachers’ hold differing interpretations of the terms "research" and "inquiry," which are used interchangeably throughout the literature. This is an important distinction which has implications for the rhetoric focused on teachers becoming teacher-researchers.
Learning to Make a Social Difference: Developing Senses of the Common Good
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sean O Connor
“Contemporary society worships at the altar of functionalism. Concepts such as process, method, model and project have come to infiltrate our language and determine how we describe our relationships to the world.” This judgment is one starting point to investigate the Conference Theme, “Learning to Make a Social Difference”. Though learning occurs in all life circumstances, the principal social framework is found in the formal and informal processes of school and university education, and the explicit and implicit curricula (the latter hidden). The presentation, a communal act of discernment, will look at where we are and where we could be, mindful that education takes place within i) the context of a set of beliefs and values about the nature of the individual and his or her purposes and place in the universe, and ii) societal socio-economic, political, and cultural frames. It has been asked: “have we become abstractions to one another as citizens, living highly curated lives that minimize our chances of intersecting with anyone who differs from us?” This dilemma (in both secondary and tertiary education) will be first viewed through the lenses of Martin Buber’s “I-It / I Thou” modes of engaging community and the world, asking whether contemporary pressures (divorced from the common good) encourage an abandonment or at least a downgrading of “”I-Thou”. The presentation will finally look at dialogue and monologue, curricular imperatives, and their place in fostering personal and social transformation in the student-learner-citizen.
The Role of Teachers’ Emotion Regulation on Teacher-Student Relationships
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sherri Franklin-Guy, Donna Schnorr
Positive teacher-student relationships have long been implicated as contributors to the success of many students’ in the educational setting. The degree to which teachers’ emotion regulation impact such relationships is important to the continued discussion regarding best educational practices. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of teachers’ emotion regulation on teacher-student relationships. The authors of the investigation will discuss the results of the data analyses and implications for best practices.
