21st Century Teachers: Lead Learners for School Improvement

Abstract

Teachers must be lead learners for 21st Century school improvement, where adaptability, resilience and professionalism will have fundamental importance. The discussion, in adopting a socio-cognitive perspective on learning, is developed in four sections. The introduction elaborates three propositions in relation to teacher learning: it occurs along a continuum; it is deeply contextualised; and, it is a shared responsibility. The second section introduces some of the significant factors framing teacher learning in Singapore. The third section introduces elements of a cognitive view of learning, while the final section extends that discussion to a socio-cultural view of teacher learning. The value of this discussion lies in its bringing-together of otherwise disparate discussions which, while extremely valuable in isolation, once pooled offer a view of teacher learning that corresponds in its complexity to the challenges that face those who seek to promote teacher learning in the 21st Century.

Introduction

In the first decade of the 21st Century, the relationship between teachers/teaching and learners/learning is being re-developed. In the early 20th Century, when teacher education was an apprenticeship in the form of ‘pupil teacher’, the teacher was distinguished from the student primarily in terms of his/her competence in the 3Rs. As teaching became more professionalised, the distinction moved to one of disciplinary expertise, with the teacher the expert, and that expertise was largely developed during initial teacher education (ITE). That expertise had career-long value, as the disciplinary knowledge of relevance to schooling was seen as consolidated and stable. Once curriculum development became less centralised, and the role of teaching expanded, teachers became the object of learning. Teacher professional development (TPD) was seen as an efficient and effective means of upgrading the expertise of teachers during their post-ITE career. In a sense, TPD was/is seen as a relatively straightforward means for transferring expertise from those with more to those with less through sharing best practice—‘levelling up’, as we say in Singapore. Here the teacher is recipient of what others have learned.

The emergent relationship between teacher and learning recognises that in the 21st Century, the complexity of schooling demands a disposition to engage with greater complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty. Thus, the expertise of teachers is expanding from disciplinary authority focused on the propositional knowledge that characterises a discipline, to the procedural and conditional knowledge associated with the limitations of existing knowledge and the development of new knowledge within a discipline. For this reason, teachers will need to become lead learners as well as lead knowers. Please note that we are arguing the need for both lead knowing and lead learning. Indeed, it can be argued that the capacities to enact and to meta-model lead learning (where they explain that enactment) will become core professional capacities of the 21st Century teaching profession. Thus, this discussion is an initial response to the need to develop an explicit view of

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learning that acknowledges the very complex nature and context of professional teacher learning for this new role.

The international research literature is ambiguous in relation to the association between teacher learning and the improvements sought by educational reform initiatives. In her ‘anticipatory’ letter to the next President of the United States, Ann Lieberman (2008) argued that teacher learning is the key to educational reform, and therefore to school improvement. In making this argument, she acknowledged that “professional development, while well intentioned, is often perceived by teachers as fragmented, disconnected, and irrelevant to the real problems of classroom practice” (p. 226). She is also implying that the concepts of teacher development and teacher learning are mutually constituted. This is an implication we accept in this paper. On the other hand, literature also documents regularly the failure in reform efforts, particularly in the US (Putnam & Borko 2000, Slepkov 2008). While we adopt the paradoxical view that both versions are true, we want to suggest that an understanding of teacher learning should inform efforts to achieve both teacher development and educational improvement.

The focus of this paper is on teacher learning, viewed from a socio-cognitive perspective, but learning is always ‘of something’. It is generally accepted that teaching requires a professional knowledge base that minimally includes: (1) content knowledge, (2) knowledge of the curriculum, (3) general pedagogical knowledge, (4) subject-specific pedagogical knowledge, (5) knowledge of students, (6) knowledge of educational goals, and (7) knowledge of other content (Shulman, 1987). In providing this set of categories over two decades ago, Shulman was also arguing that this knowledge must have an intentionality—effective educational practice. It is knowing-for-action rather than knowing-for-knowing’s-sake, an issue elaborated later in the discussion of ‘adaptive expertise’.

The paper reflects three central propositions in relation to teacher learning. First, teacher learning occurs along a continuum, the formal aspects of which begin with ITE, followed by both formal and informal elements of TPD throughout an individual’s career. Second, teacher learning is deeply contextualised. Third, teacher learning is a shared responsibility. Each is elaborated in turn.

First, the learning continuum for teachers has both formal and informal aspects, with both aspects strongly associated with experience. Inevitably that includes an individual’s own experience of schooling, as well as later university education and life experiences, including professional experience as an educator. The formal aspect of the learning continuum commences with ITE, which provides a basis for commencing that career and for ongoing learning. In-service learning, by contrast, anticipates and enables a progression towards ‘adaptive expertise’ on the part of those teachers whose teaching roles remain primarily classroom based. We use the term ‘adaptive expertise’ to refer to a disposition to professional practice and learning that involves “intentionally seeking new challenges and insights rather than resting on one’s laurels” (Bransford 2007, p. 1).

This is a view of self that has increasing value to professionals who are working in a rapidly changing world, where less flexible forms of expertise may become impediments to professional competence. Indeed, Darling-Hammond and Bransford (2005), suggest that ‘adaptive expertise’ represents the ‘gold standard’ outcome for professional education. The development of adaptive expertise, as

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represented in Figure 1 below, involves an optimal interaction between engagement in innovation, and the development of the pedagogical routines which are the basis for teaching efficiency. Other research on expertise suggests that this process is more punctuated than incremental—by implication periods of innovation should be followed by periods of consolidation, with the latter allowing the refinement and automation of the new routines that express the particular innovation.

Figure 1: The dimensions of adaptive expertise (after Darling-Hammond & Bransford 2005, p. 49)

In their critique of stage models of professional development, Dall’Alba and Sandberg (2006) argue that a focus on ‘stages’ of step-wise development along that continuum tends to conceal fundamental aspects of professional skill development. They suggest that the development of expertise is embedded within the context of professional practice, and can be characterised in relation to two independent factors: embodied understanding of, and in, practice; and, skill progression that is associated with increasing experience. Thus, Dall’Alba and Sandberg are arguing that professional development tends to follow relatively individual and contextualised developmental trajectories, trajectories as exemplified in Figure 2, below.

Figure 2: Model of development of professional expertise (after Dall’Alba & Sandberg 2006, p. 400)

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The four distinct trajectories represented in Figure 2 acknowledge that: skills can develop without substantive additional understandings – (c); understandings can develop without improvement in skills – (b); and, skilfulness can regress, while understandings improve – (a) – as is often the case with attempts at innovation. On the other hand, (d) represents stasis in terms of the development of professional expertise, an unfortunate yet too common phenomenon. Each of these developmental pathways is available to those teachers engaged in professional learning.

The second and related proposition underlying the paper is that teacher learning is deeply contextualised. That is, while “current teacher development theories put the teacher as learner at their centre” (Slepkov 2008, p. 86), we see this as a necessary but insufficient acknowledgement of the complex relationships between teacher learning, educational improvement, and the ‘local learning infrastructure’. We use this expression to represent site-centric cultures, structures and operational parameters, and the implications of those site-centric factors for the achievement of change in teacher practices, and subsequent impacts on student learning (see Sparks & Hirsh 1997). Change-relevant teacher learning is necessarily located within that ‘local learning infrastructure’, and change in practices is likely to require changes in that infrastructure.

Third, responsibility for teacher learning is shared by a number of parties. The teacher, as one of their professional responsibilities, must be open to learning, and actively seek opportunities to learn in ways that would benefit their professional practice. That is, they must engage in and be models for their own students, of continuous and self-directed learning in ways associated with the notion of adaptive expertise. Given that teachers work collegially and collaboratively their own peers and supervisor/s have a responsibility to support and contribute to teacher learning. In all contexts specific agencies are charged with providing opportunities for formal learning. These usually include both the formal institutions involved in providing ITE and TPD, as well as the employing authorities.

Before leaving this introduction we want to define what we mean by ‘teacher learning’. We use John Biggs’ (1999, p. 13) cognitively-based and adult focused view that learning is:

... a way of interacting with the world. As we learn, our conceptions of phenomena change, and we see the world differently.

The range of interactions that could contribute to teacher learning include, but are not limited to, experience itself, conversations with colleagues, reading, reflecting, experimenting. Not only can teachers ‘see the world differently’ as a result of such interactions, but as a result they can interact with it differently. For teachers this can result in two different types of outcomes. Learning can focus on improving what they are currently doing. For example, they can seek to improve the relevance to their students of a particular unit of work. This might involve attempting to see that aspect of the world more as their student see it. This improvement-focused learning tends to be incremental in nature, and most of practice-focused learning is of this type. Learning can also focus on changing what teachers do. Educational policies call for this second type of learning when they require teachers ‘to see the world differently’ in ways that depart from current practice.

An individual’s ‘conceptions of phenomena’ are an outcome of learning. Gunnar Handal and Per Lauvås (1987) provide a representation of teacher knowledge that links ‘conceptions’ with interactions, and was one of the earlier expressions of the intellectual tradition which John Biggs (1999) draws on in his definition quoted above. Handal and Lauvås (1987) distinguished between

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the conceptions associated with formal theories and those which are the basis of personal understandings, and which are the basis for decision making and action. We refer to this knowledge as ‘personal-professional knowledge’. Figure 3, illustrates an adapted version of their discussion.

Figure 3: Personal-professional knowledge (after Handal & Lauvås 1987)

Personal-professional knowledge is an outcome of both personal experiences and transmitted knowledge. Most importantly, a teacher’s attitudes, beliefs and values are the filters through which they give attention to those experiences and knowledge, and which frame the meaning that they attach to those experiences and knowledge. (We return to the issue of perceptual filters in the later discussion of Biggs’ ‘3P’ model of learning.) In a profound sense, teacher learning is the process through which an individual’s ‘personal-professional knowledge’ is updated.

In summary, teacher learning involves the interactions with their world by which teachers develop the personal-professional knowledge that is the basis of their professional decision-making and practice, and through which they change that knowledge as a means to improve and/or change specific aspects of those decisions and/or that practice.

Teacher learning in Singapore

Harion Salleh (2008, pp. 88-92) identified three landmark initiatives in terms of recent professional development in Singapore. The first involved the establishment on the Teachers Network in 1998. As a unit within the Ministry of Education (MOE) its vision and mission are to:

“build a fraternity of reflective teachers dedicated to excellent practice through a network of support, professional exchange and learning”; and,

“serve as a catalyst and support for teacher-initiated development through sharing, collaboration and reflection leading to self-mastery, excellent practice and fulfilment” (Salleh 2008, p. 88).

The bottom-up nature of these statements is indicative of a significant new approach to teacher learning, in contrast with the more traditional top-down approach. The personal and networked approach, combined with the breadth of the Teachers Network’s mission, imply that the MOE, as a system, is supportive of a non-instrumentalist view of teacher learning.

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The second landmark development can be seen to complement this view. This involved the introduction of the Enhanced Performance Management System (EPMS) in 2001. This provides “a comprehensive appraisal framework for all staff in education in accordance to the three tracks – Teaching, Leadership, and Specialist” – within which they are located. Within each track, “13 competencies are identified to be effective in raising the performance of the education officer” (Salleh 2008, p. 89). In a profound sense, the EPMS maps the limits of the desired outcomes for teacher learning. Put differently, the EPMS provides the ‘top-down’ targets for the ‘bottom-up’ learning.

The third landmark, initiated in 2003, involved the call for “bottom-up initiative, top-down support” (Salleh 2008, p. 91). This is clearly aligned with the first two developments, in that it identifies MOE’s responsibility for providing the necessary flexibility in support to enable ‘bottom-up’ learning “in the spirit of diversity and ‘peaks of excellence’” (p. 91). Collectively, these three developments mean that in Singapore, MOE and school leaders share responsibility for initiating and supporting teacher learning that addresses the needs of staff and students, tailored to the site-specific needs. While those ‘needs’ are often generated as a result of top-down policy initiatives, the responses are intended to be ‘bottom-up’— teacher-initiated and site-specific. In a profound sense, this is a response to the much-discussed requirement for flexibility, initiative, diversity and excellence in educational practice necessary to national success as a knowledge economy.

The more recent call by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong for teachers “to teach less to our students so that they will learn more” (Lee 2004) provides a substantial addition to the top-down framing of teacher learning. This new frame, known as ‘teach less, learn more’ or TLLM, represents “a change on fundamental ideas on epistemology” in a number of areas, as summarised by Ng Pak Tee (2008, 10-11):

Construction of knowledge (not just transmission of knowledge) Understanding (not just memory) Pedagogy (not just activity) Social constructivism (not just individual study) Self-directed learning (not just teacher-directed) Formative assessment and self assessment (not just summative grades) Learning about learning (not just learning about subject).

Ng cautions that, while the changes in epistemological beliefs associated with TLLM are intended to lead to changes in pedagogical practices, the question remains as to “whether the initiatives delve beyond the surface to change the basic philosophy and approach to education” (p. 13). While acknowledging that this policy is intended to transform Singaporean education through transforming schooling practices, the enormous demand for and of, teacher learning that it requires also needs to be acknowledged.

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Elements of a cognitive view of teacher learning

The literature on teacher learning has been subject to substantive consolidation in recent years. One of the most important expressions of that consolidation is the work edited by Linda Darling-Hammond and John Bransford (2005). In that work, Hammerness, Darling-Hammond, Bransford and colleagues (2005), nominate three widely documented challenges for teacher learning. The first challenge is titled the ‘apprenticeship of observation’, first discussed by Dan Lortie in 1975. This refers to “the learning that takes place by virtue of being a student for twelve or more years in traditional classroom settings” (p. 359). This apprenticeship is the basis for the preconceptions, particularly the tacit attitudes and beliefs, that all who begin the formal process of learning to teach, bring to that process. The second challenge, termed ‘the problem of enactment’ by Mary Kennedy in 1999, requires those who are learning to teach to develop the ability to “think like a teacher” (p. 359). In essence, this challenge involves the need to enact in practice the new understandings that they develop during initial teacher preparation. The obverse of this is what Scardemalia and Bereiter referred to as ‘inert knowledge’ – knowledge that can be recalled but not applied in the context of practice. The third challenge involves ‘the problem of complexity’. This involves the need to develop both behavioural routines (based on the ability to ‘think like a teacher’) and the capacity to interrupt those routines so as to adapt behaviour to specific student responses, “and the particular objectives sought at a given moment” (Hammerness et al 2005, p. 359).

These three challenges reflect the limitations of our human capacity to think—our basic cognitive capacities. We want to provide a brief overview of the operation of those capacities. In so doing we draw on the work of John Biggs, specifically his ‘3P’ model of learning. The model represents learning as an interactive system, identifying “three points of time at which learning-related factors are placed: presage, before learning takes place; process, during learning; and product, the outcome of learning” (Biggs, 1999, p. 18) – see Figure 4, below.

Figure 4: Adapted representation of Biggs’ ‘3P’ model of learning

The original 3P model has been adapted to include: the recognition that ‘the learner’ can be an individual, or a school community, or a larger

community;

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the recognition that learning is an ongoing process, so that with the passage of time, ‘products’ become ‘presage’; and,

the role of ‘attentional filters’ in the interactions between the two sets of presage factors, and the presage factors that are operationalised during the process stage.

The notion of ‘attentional filters’ was added to the original ‘3P’ model to acknowledge the literature which suggests that the key ‘process’ actors tend to give differentiated attention to the presage factors—ignoring some while giving sustained attention to others.

The 3P model represents any formal process of ‘instruction’ as an intervention in an otherwise natural and relatively taken-for-granted flow of experience. As such, all interventions represent an attempt to capture and/or direct attention. This can be done in at least three ways: the provision of content-like information – ‘learn this’ or ‘hear this’ – propositional knowledge; the provision of models or exemplars of procedures – ‘do it this way’ – procedural knowledge perhaps accompanied by conditional knowledge; and, the provision of information about thinking and learning itself – ‘approach the issue in this way’ – meta-cognitive knowledge. As a result of this intervention, the presage conditions are changed. Thus, learning has to be understood as a cyclic process. Put this way, learning is initiated through an interruption of the relatively taken-for-granted flow of experience – whether that experience is self-directed, or ‘other’ directed, and leads to a change in how the flow of experience is understood and/or engaged with.

One of the key contributions of the ‘3P’ model is the attention it gives to the presage issues. Informal views of learning tend to treat the learner as a tabula rasa—the classic ‘empty jug’ into which information is poured. In our experience, many failures of learning are best understood in terms of a failure to engage with and address these presage issues. In particular, the ‘apprenticeship of observation’ noted above gives rise to particular personal-professional knowledge, as well as the benefits and limitations of particular enactments of that knowledge —beginning teachers tend to model themselves of their favourite teachers, and to overlook the fact that those teachers may not have been effective for all their peers.

A key aspect of presage conditions, be they meta-contextual or learner-specific, is their relative ‘invisibility’. Beginning and experienced teachers tend to be relatively unaware of the personal-professional knowledge that influences their participation in any learning process. Similarly, the institutional culture tends to be ‘recognised’ by those who are new to it, but be taken for granted by those who have worked within it for some time. The literature on ‘conceptual change’, developed mostly in relation to the teaching of science and mathematics, demonstrates the power of so-called naive understandings or preferences. That literature should serve as a warning that presage conditions, be they personal or social in nature, have a remarkable resilience. One of the results of this resilience is the too frequent adoption of the so-called surface approach to learning, where a prime intention is to perform as though learning has occurred or that change has been achieved, when these performances have minimal, if any, impact on the original presage conditions.

A socio-cultural view of teacher learning

The literature on teacher learning is increasingly underpinned by socio-cultural views of learning. This is exemplified in the work of Darling-Hammond and Bransford (2005), and Putnam and Borko

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(2000), as well as the rapidly expanding corpus that explores learning within professional communities, as exemplified by McLaughlin and Talbert (2006) and Stoll and Louis (2007). Putnam and Borko (2000) identify three themes within this work: “that cognition is (a) situated in particular physical and social contexts; (b) social in nature; and, (c) distributed across the individual, other persons, and tools” (p. 4). We briefly elaborate each theme.

The process or activity of learning always takes place in a setting that has physical, social and affective characteristics. As humans we automatically attend to those aspects, as well as the more specific cognitive information that is provided, or develops through that process. Those contextual aspects are automatically integrated within the ‘content’. Integration is so significant that the recall of content tends to be triggered by re-experiencing one or more of those contexts. For example, cognitive research suggests that our memory functions to automatically make available to us the information that the physical context implies that we will need. A common example is the memory of how to place the key correctly in a car ignition system is something to which drivers who are very familiar with that car need to give no conscious attention. Similarly, students are advised to prepare for examinations in conditions which approximate the expected physical environment of the exam, as this assists recall of that information during the subsequent exam.

Cognition-as-social acknowledges the fundamental importance of language to conceptual learning, and that language, in turn, is a social convention. It is through describing and naming experiences that we develop understanding. Putnam and Borko (2000) extend this argument to include cultural practices beyond language itself, suggesting that “learning is as much a matter of enculturation into a community’s ways of thinking and dispositions as it is a result of direct instruction in specific concepts, skills, and procedures” (p. 5). This position is expressed in the significance attached to communities of practice as sites of and for learning, as well developed in the literature on professional learning communities, and in the literature that critiques campus-based initial teacher preparation. Uwe Gellert (2008) extends this acknowledgement through research on pedagogical routines and collective orientations of mathematics teachers. In particular he argues the need for the focus of research to shift from individual teachers to communities of teachers in order to understand how change in pedagogical practice requires both individual and collective engagement.

We want to extend the analysis of Putnam and Borko by drawing attention to the fundamental role of emotions in attempts to revise personal-professional knowledge. Immordno-Yang and Damasio (2007) suggest that “the relationship between learning, emotion and body state runs much deeper than many educators realize and is interwoven with the notion of learning itself” (p. 3). Drawing on findings from neuroscience, they argue that effective functioning in the ‘real world’ requires the integration of emotional and cognitive thought. Indeed, they suggest that emotions direct effective reasoning, rather than vice versa: “the processes of recognizing and responding to complex situations ... are fundamentally emotional and social” (p. 7). The acknowledgement of the ‘personal’ nature of the understandings that underlie actions is an acknowledgement that those theories have an affective as well as cognitive nature. By implication, the explanatory power of transmissible knowledge may appear of little value to real world functioning of teachers that ‘requires the integration of emotional and cognitive thought’. Indeed, the very focus on ‘rationality’ may contribute to the much-lamented theory-practice divide.

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The link between emotion and cognition requires acknowledgment because of the central role of the teacher as an individual, a person, as implied in the earlier quotation: “current teacher development theories put the teacher as learner at their centre” (Slepkov 2008, p. 86, our emphasis). There are two issues that have particular salience as a result of this acknowledgement: the moral nature of, and, the emotional labour that is, teaching. Robert Boody (2008) exemplifies the relationship between moral purpose and professional learning, and illustrates the way that moral commitments tend to provide the motivation for undertaking the risky but rewarding work of self-directed teacher learning. He uses the expression ‘tough love’ to express this sense of obligation and moral response. Mary Dixon and Rose Liang (2009), in interviewing 75 Singaporean primary and secondary teachers, found their individual moral commitments gave profound meaning and direction to their education practices. They suggest that these individuals experienced considerable emotional stress as a result of the tension between their sense of personal moral purpose, and the prevailing (and necessary) systems-based approach to educational improvement. Few accounts of teacher learning acknowledge this personal and emotional element, or its significance.

The complexity of some tasks requires that their achievement involve contributions from teams of individuals, as well as physical and symbolic tools, often in the form of sensors attached to computers. Modern motor cars, for example, are so reliant on sensors and computer decision-systems that even experienced mechanics require additional computing capacity to engage with the car’s own diagnostic systems. Similarly, there are consistent calls for inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary collaborations as a means to access the range of information needed to address any complex problem. The research of Gellert (2008), referred to above, illustrates the collective nature of learning (and not-learning) as teachers engaged in professional conversations.

These three factors sit uncomfortably with the relatively individualistic notions of learning that are implied by most traditional forms of educational practice, including professional development. This is most evident in the assessment practices associated with formal education, where open book exams and group work are viewed with scepticism in terms of ‘measuring’ individual learning. The notion of ‘authentic’ assessment has been developed as a response to this perception, but even then, the focus of application tends to remain the ‘isolated cognitive individual’ rather than real world functioning that require recognition and response to complex situations in ways that are ‘fundamentally emotional and social’. The significance of these three factors has to be addressed in any model of the process of teacher learning. One account that approaches this acknowledgement, represented in Figure 5 below, is provided by Peter Jarvis (2005).

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Social Situation

(2)

TimeTime The Whole Person – unchanged

(4)

The Whole Person – Body/Mind/Self – Life History

(1)

An Experience – (Episode) Socially constructed

(3)

Figure 5: A model of the process of human learning (after Jarvis 2005, p. 8) While all models are simplifications, this model suggests that learning results from a complex of interactions involving: the person’s life history; social situations; socially constructed experiences; emotion; action; and, thought/reflection. The top section of the figure implies that if an experience fails to engage emotions and actions and thought, then it is unlikely to lead to learning. This involves the 1+2+3 subroutine that results in outcome 4. On the other hand, the 1+3+5+6+7 subroutine results in outcome 8, ie, a change in personal-professional knowledge. Jarvis argues that both the whole person and experience as-a-unity are transformed as a result of learning: “As time progresses and experiences are transformed, human beings are always in the process of becoming ... always emerging ” (Jarvis 2005, p. 13).

In acknowledging the involvement of both external and internal contexts in learning, it also acknowledges that experience, in itself, does not necessarily lead to changes in personal-professional knowledge. Similarly, exposure to ‘transmitted knowledge’ (see Figure 3) or ‘professional development’, of itself, may not lead to learning. Significantly, the 1+3+5+6+7 sub-routine involves engagement in and with, experience, reflection, emotion and action. It reflects a fundamental rejection of a view of human learning as strictly rational. The latter view reflects what Gray (2002, p.64) refers to as a ‘cardinal error’—equating “what we know with what we learn through conscious awareness”. Our point is that a socio-cognitive view of learning neither implies nor requires rationality. It is, on the other hand, the basis for functioning as lead learners.

Conclusion

This discussion of teacher learning for school improvement can be summarised in terms of an adapted version of the three challenges for teacher learning identified by Hammerness et al (2005), discussed above. This adaptation locates those challenges along the continuum of teacher learning, rather than within ITE. At a more generic level, these challenges are largely associated with the presage and process of learning, particularly the former. In this broader context the ‘apprenticeship of observation’ includes observations and experiences of attempts at teacher learning for school improvement. In particular, we highlight the impact of negative experiences of this process in teachers’ preparedness to re-engage with this intention. Our experiences suggest that one of the best predictors of the potential for change in a school, are the outcomes of recent attempts to engage in change – positive presage can be built upon, negative cannot be ignored.

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Thought / Reflection

(5)Emotion

(6)Action

(7)

TimeThe Person (Body/Mind/Self) changed – changes ‘stored’

Person more experienced

(8)

The belief systems of individuals represent, as noted earlier, a particularly important presage factor associated with the ‘apprenticeship of observation’. The beliefs, and related language patterns, developed through this apprenticeship serve to both anchor learning with particular patterns of experience, and to invite a miss-recognition by participants of richer theoretical ideas as having either similar meaning to an individual’s personal-professional knowledge, or no relevance in the context of their professional practice. Other research indicates that it is more difficult to change existing beliefs than to develop new ones. Again, this makes the challenge of refurbishing the personal-professional knowledge of those engaged in TPD very difficult. The ‘take home message’ is that teachers play a key role in their own learning through the individual personal-professional knowledge that they bring to ITE and TPD. Of no less significance is the risk that experience tends to consolidate those personal-professional theories, making subsequent changes in them more difficult to achieve.

This is where the interactions between the embedded and embodied nature of professional practice, and the ‘local learning infrastructure’, and the intended outcomes, must be acknowledged and engaged with in order to address ‘the problem of enactment’. The routines that express teachers’ personal-professional knowledge are both collegial and individual. School improvement necessarily involves changes and/or refinement in those routines. However, it is emotion rather than conscious decision making that direct those routines. The achievement of lead learning will require teachers to reflect, individually and collectively, on the affective underpinnings of their former practices, and to anticipate the affective consequences of the intended practices, for themselves, their students and increasingly, the parents of their students.

This discussion anticipates the ‘problem of complexity’, here strongly associated with the requirements of ‘adaptive expertise’. One response to this challenge involves the development of a ‘local learning infrastructure’ within which individual teachers are able to enact a larger repertoire of pedagogical routines. The current reality, reinforced by socio-political pressures for accountability and risk minimisation, is that these school-level infrastructures often exhibit profound disfunctionality in relation the notions of lead learning, and adaptive expertise. These desired outcomes involve risk taking, and high levels of trust in teachers to make professional decisions in an iterative and developmental way. Accountability and risk minimisation too often point in the opposite direction—towards pedagogical practices that are predictable and highly aligned with pre-structured curriculum packages, and performance standards for both teachers and students. Successful engagement with complexity requires an environment of high trust, one where all key stakeholders engage in processes that are characterised by respect, structure, challenge, and a shared language that enables meaningful conversations about and through those processes.

The view of teacher learning for school improvement presented here is, like the context within which it is located, characterised by complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty. Efforts to support teacher learning within ITE and TPD need to be informed by, and to provide a meta-introduction to, this thinking if it is to be effective in terms of both direct contributions to the development of teachers’ capacities, as well as to a less-direct but more long-term contribution to teachers’ self-awareness. Most discussions of teacher learning indicate that reflection is an essential tool for such learning, yet they tend to ignore the cognitive and social complexities within which such reflection necessarily occurs. Recent research, such as that of Asman and Markovits (2009) and Kaasila,

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Hannula, Laine and Pehkonen (2008), illustrate the profound impact of personal beliefs and socio-emotional orientations on teachers’ attempts to engage in learning. This discussion and that research argue that a rational, linear-cumulative view of learning is an inadequate basis for the development of teachers for the 21st century.

The value of this discussion lies in its bringing-together of otherwise disparate discussions which, while extremely valuable in their own right, once pooled offer a view of teacher learning that corresponds in its complexity to the challenges that face those who seek to promote teacher learning in the 21st Century. For teachers to be lead learners for 21st Century school improvement, where adaptability, resilience and professionalism have fundamental importance, teacher learning must be understood and located within social-cultural, emotional, and ‘local learning infrastructures’. Learning that helps to achieve change within a context of complexity necessarily involves uncertainty and risk. This type of learning cannot rely on templates and/or processes that were developed elsewhere. The professionals best placed to engage with that uncertainty and risk are those who work within it—teachers who become lead learners can help achieve and lead local school improvement. While Singapore’s MOE knows this, its own efforts to support TPD need to be based on a more rigorous and robust understanding of the complexities of teacher learning.

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