Hazel Bryan

Mentoring: A Practice Developed in Community?.

Behaviourist and cognitive theories of learning view learning as a process of individual internalisation. Social theorists view learning as a process that is socially constructed and developed in social contexts. Wenger suggests that professional practice is a social process that is constructed in communities. Mentoring in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) has been a feature of the ITE landscape since the advent of the internship schemes but might be viewed by many teachers acting as mentors to be a small part of their remit. Some mentors while part of school communities might be seen as discharging their mentoring responsibilities in a relatively isolated manner. This study seeks to develop an understanding of how mentors operating in different phases learn to mentor and to sustain their growth as mentors and to seek to identify how they construct their ‘communities of mentoring’.

Reconstructing the teacher as a post secular pedagogue: a consideration of the new Teachers’ Standards

The new Teachers’ Standards draw upon the Prevent Strategy in foregrounding the upholding of ‘fundamental British values’ as a central tenet in teacher work. This article explores the relationship between values, religion and Standards in teacher work. A consideration of the new Standards gives rise to the notion of teacher as cultural custodian, moral compass and upholder of the virtues. The cornerstone of Western liberal education – that education is essentially secular – is, arguably, challenged in the light of the new Teachers’ Standards, which have made a significant break with past Professional Standards. As such, this article considers the tension between the (contested) secular norm and the introduction of a professional and personal values dimension in teacher work. The model of teacher as post secular pedagogue is thus advanced in this article.

Performativity, Faith and Professional Identity: Student Religious Education Teachers and The Ambiguities of Objectivity

Abstract This paper considers the way in which Christian Religious Education (RE) teachers articulate the difficulties and challenges they experience both in school and with their peers as they navigate their way through their Initial Teacher Education. The paper offers a unique exploration of the relationship between elements of the three discourses of faith identity, emerging professional identity and the requirements of a performative teacher training context. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 184 student RE teachers across three universities. It became clear that all students interpreted the Standards and policy guidelines ambiguously, as being value-laden or value-free. The idea of the ‘good teacher’ as someone who was, by very definition, neutral and objective immediately made the faith position of students problematic. This is a key point in relation to the notion of performativity and education and the disproportionate impact it made on Christian students. It appeared as though many Christian students were concerned to stress that although their faith was personally important for them it was not something that contributed to their understanding of a ‘good teacher’.

Calibrating Fundamental British Values: How Head Teachers Are Approaching Appraisal in the Light of the Teachers' Standards 2012, Prevent and the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act, 2015.

Abstract In requiring that teachers should ‘not undermine fundamental British values (FBV)’, a phrase originally articulated in the Home Office counter-terrorism document, Prevent, the Teachers’ Standards has brought into focus the nature of teacher professionalism. Teachers in England are now required to promote FBV within and outside school, and, since the publication of the Counter Terrorism and Security Act of 2015 and the White Paper ‘Educational Excellence Everywhere’, are required to prevent pupils from being drawn towards radicalisation. School practices in relation to the promotion of British values are now subject to OfSTED inspection under the Common Inspection Framework of 2015. The research presented here considers the policy and purpose of appraisal in such new times, and engages with 48 school leaders from across the education sector to reveal issues in emerging appraisal practices. Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of Liquid Modernity is used to fully understand the issues and dilemmas that are emerging in new times and argue that fear and ‘impermanence’ are key characteristics of the way school leaders engage with FBV.

Leaders’ views on the values of school-based research: contemporary themes and issues

In 2004, McLaughlin, Black-Hawkins and McIntyre published a literature review that explored the ways in which individual teachers, whole schools and groups of networked schools were engaging in practitioner research and enquiry. In the light of significant changes to the education landscape, the empirical research in this article provides an account of engagement with 25 school leaders to explore what schools are doing in the area of practitioner ‘research’ or ‘enquiry’ today. Although teachers in schools may both use research and generate findings, this research was particularly concerned with the generation of professional knowledge through research and enquiry in schools in England today. A sample of school leaders was interviewed to establish their current approach. Findings include questions about the effects on teachers’ dissatisfaction in the face of a revealed gap between actuality and idealism, the possible evolution of a new teacher-educator population and the effects on those working in higher education as they address the shifting needs of twenty-first-century teacher education. As school-based research continues to be a factor, this represents a timely scoping of the thinking of school senior leaders and considers the implications of this developing practice.

The place of community in professional development: a study of newly qualified teachers and newly appointed heads of department engaged in the Masters in Teaching and Learning

This research explores the value and challenges of establishing and maintaining a master’s-level professional learning community. The research has a focus upon participants on the Masters in Teaching and Learning (MTL) in one higher education institution (HEI) in the south-east of England. The impulse for the design of the MTL was concern on the part of the UK Government that schools placed in the category of ‘National Challenge’ suffered from an unsettling turnover of staff and low pupil attainment. The MTL was thus designed with the aim of addressing these issues through a new and rather different master’s programme that merged the boundaries between school and university. This three-year longitudinal study draws upon work undertaken with 30 MTL participants on the value of a learning community. Through narrative enquiry, participants’ voices have been captured, focusing in particular upon a consideration of critical incidents. Participants’ voices highlighted the demands of working in challenging schools and the value of the MTL community which has evolved. The significance of this community in terms of supporting the development of shared rituals, a critical, empowering discourse and structural and emotional enablers is explored in this paper. The findings interrogate the challenges faced by participants in National Challenge schools and celebrate the emergence of an enabling professional learning community, rich in potential to create powerful relationships, affirming practices and teacher agency. The learning community has been seen to counteract alienation and provide emotional support for early career professionals practising in demanding contexts.

Understanding ethics in school-based research

Abstract The notion of the ‘teacher as researcher’ has been in the education lexicon since the mid-1970s. School-based research, we suggest, is currently enjoying something of a renaissance, flourishing within the emerging, complex school landscape. This empirical research engages with 25 school leaders to explore the ways in which research-active schools are aware of, and using, ethical guidance in their research practices. In light of a dramatically changed educational landscape, we argue that the time is ripe for a discussion with teachers about ethical considerations and approaches to research. While this research takes place in England, the findings are relevant to international audiences, grappling as they do with issues of professional practice, research practice and understandings of ethical issues in school-based research.

Counter Terrorism Law and Education: Student Teachers’ Induction into UK Prevent Duty Through the Lens of Bauman’s Liquid Modernity

This chapter explores the way student teachers understand their professional role in relation to the UK’s counter terrorism legislation as it relates to schools. Data were collected from one hundred and fifty students based on their experiences in schools and analysed using Bauman’s notion of liquid modernity as a theoretical frame. We argue that despite a normative attachment to notions of professional objectivity and political detachment in the classroom, most student teachers interpreted their new duties as legitimate and were uncritical of legislation and policy that expects them to play an overtly political role in schools.

Fundamental British values in education: radicalisation, national identity and Britishness

The notion of Britishness and national identity have rarely been examined with such intensity in education and society as they are today. Although the requirement to promote a sense of nationhood in schools is not a new one, the politicised nature of the values associated with Britishness and the security agenda in which schools now operate has intensified greatly in recent years. This timely book provides a critical analysis of the statutory requirements to promote Fundamental British Values in schools, universities and other childcare groups in the UK. It begins by charting the development of Britishness and British values in the post-war period and highlights how even in the recent past British values have been understood and executed in policy in relation to schools in very different ways. In the past Britishness and national identity was either assumed or conveyed through the employment of cultural forms; it is only now that Britishness in education, in the form of fundamental British values is articulated through explicitly political language. The book continues by examining the impact of fundamental British values on teacher professionalism. It will show how the legislation and policy that structures the way teachers (and other educators) must engage with fundamental British values works to reposition the status of teachers in the public sphere. Teacher’s work and relationship with the state is recast so that personal political and individual acts are now situated within the remit of state control and legislation. The concept of Liquid Professionalism is promoted as a form of teacher professionalism for these securitised times.