Jenny Reeves

The Social Dynamics of Changing Practice.

In this paper we develop a socio‐dynamic account for the impact of continuing professional development (CPD) on practice. The model we propose for changing practice challenges the essentially individualised explanation of practical learning offered by a number of writers and researchers in the field of CPD such as Joyce and Showers (1988), Eraut (1994), and Schön (1983). It also offers a basis for exploring the micro‐political realities of changing practice and the links between individual and group learning that are largely absent in the socio‐cultural accounts of organisational and situated learning (Senge, 1990; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Weick, 1995). It proposes a model that allows for tracking the influence of discourses in relation to teacher re‐professionalism from the level of policy to the point of enactment in the school and re‐examines the connections between individual and group learning to arrive at a dynamic framework for understanding changing practice.

INVENTING THE CHARTERED TEACHER

ABSTRACT: This paper explores the effects of enacting a collaborative and enquiry based model of teacher professionalism in the UK. Based on work with Chartered Teachers in Scotland, it indicates that the barriers to changing the basis of teacher professionalism are complex and multi-faceted because of the contested nature of teachers’ work identities. Chartered Teacher status is achieved by qualification against an occupational standard which positions those who attain it as leading teachers, exerting a significant influence with their colleagues to improve the quality of teaching and learning in schools. This paper looks at some of the conceptual and practical difficulties faced by Chartered Teachers as they try to enact what this new ‘status’ means. It argues that those with an interest in the professional development of teachers need to position themselves as knowing agents in the complex systemic and political aspects of changing practice in schools.

Developing a Model of Practice: Designing a framework for the professional development of school leaders and managers

This paper describes the origins and evolution of a framework for leadership and management development in Scottish schools. In arriving at the current model the authors have been working with competence frameworks for 4 years. The design of the latest framework is underpinned by a model for professional action which should support experiential learning and critical reflection. The paper argues for the synthesis of a number of approaches to management development on the basis of a holistic model of practice.

What’s in a vision? Introducing an organisational learning strategy in a local authority’s education service

It is frequently asserted that schools and local authorities should become ‘learning organisations’ as a pre‐condition for school improvement, but there is very little evidence about the specific processes and activities involved in such a transformation. This paper analyses the initial stages of the implementation by a Scottish local authority Education Department of an organisational learning strategy, whose ultimate purpose was to improve pupils’ attainment and achievement by developing the Authority’s collective capacity to learn new ways of meeting their needs. The analysis focuses on some of the processes that, despite a huge literature on the subject of organisational learning and change, have hitherto remained somewhat mysterious. Adopting an analytical framework derived from activity and actor network theory, we explore empirical evidence of the key stages in ‘vision building’, showing how sense‐making was structured and highlighting the processes and activities which constituted the initial stages in learning to learn as an organisation.

Changing their minds: the social dynamics of school leaders' learning

This paper questions whether a focus on individual development is appropriate when it comes to attempting to change professional practice. Based on a study of the conceptual development of candidates on the Scottish Qualification for Headship Programme (SQH), the paper examines evidence from detailed case studies of the learning of some of the students. These were constructed using the reflective commentaries written by the candidates at the end of each year and the outcomes of semi‐structured interviews to explore their experiences of the course and what they felt they had learned as a result. The evidence indicated that there was a complex dynamic involved in learning to change practice where the conceptual development of individuals was closely related to their experience of enacting new behaviours in the social setting of the workplace. The sense that candidates made of school leadership and management was shaped and embedded in their social experience. Change and development on their part was closely bound to the capacity and willingness to change on the part of others.

Relays and relations: tracking a policy initiative for improving teacher professionalism

This paper offers a new way of exploring some of the complexities inherent in attempts by policy makers and others to promote educational change. The focus of this study is on the current drive in education policy to alter the basis of teacher professionalism through the application of principles of lifelong learning to teachers’ professional development. Drawing upon data from two studies of the Chartered Teacher (CT) initiative in Scotland the paper examines the formation of successive transmission points as material relays of relations during the process of implementing this policy objective. It explores how three key discursive elements of a professional standard for accomplished teaching: collaborative action, critical reflection and enquiry, and teacher leadership, were progressively recontextualised during the introduction of CT status in schools. The findings indicate some of the conceptual and political struggles involved at the critical junctures where policy implementation requires the movement of a discourse from one social context to another. The paper suggests that a discursive analysis of how a centrally mandated initiative is transmitted can help to promote an understanding of the complexities of this process and increase critical awareness of the issues at stake for those involved.

Tracking the Links between Pupil Attainment and Development Planning.

The study reported here was part of a more extensive research project commissioned by the Scottish Office Education Department in 1994 called the Improving School Effectiveness Project (ISEP). The project gathered extensive quantitative and other data on 80 schools (primary and secondary) and qualitative data on a subset of 24 schools (12 in each sector). The research brief for the study was to examine the theme of development planning within the context of the overall project. The article tracks through the development of a set of associations between the value-added attainment results of 12 primary and 12 secondary schools and some characteristics of their approach to development and features of their culture and organisation.

Headship: issues of career

Abstract ‘Effective School Leadership in a Time of Change’ was a three-year project involving 34 school leaders from three countries: Denmark, England and Scotland. During initial interviews we asked the school leaders to tell us something of their careers and their experiences of headship. Analysing the data seemed to show that our respondents went through a number of stages after appointment and that there was a certain commonality in what happened during each of these stages. We then asked the school leaders to draw their career lines from the time of their appointment to a headship until the present to check the interview data. This paper presents the results of the exercise and suggests the outcomes have important implications for the training and support of headteachers.

Professional learning as relational practice

Mapping the Relational Spaces of Educating.- Adopting a New Approach to Professional Learning.- Describing Educating Systems.- The Field of Educating: Tracking Relations and Relays.- Making Learning Spaces Visible.- Professional Learning as Relational Practice.- Changing Self: Interactions of Space and Identity.- Pedagogy: Creating a Hub in a Field of Relays.- Constructing Knowledge and Agency.- Tracking Knowledge Creation and Exchange.- Knowledge Creation: The Reflexivity of Hybrid Systems.- Conclusion.

Exploring the Impact of Continuing Professional Development on Practice in the Context of the Scottish Qualification for Headship.

Abstract In this article the authors look at how aspiring headteachers conceptualise school leadership and management. The authors have earlier identified some of the ways in which the Scottish Qualification for Headship (SQH) candidates understood the notion of critical reflection. Since then their thinking has developed further as a result of some of the evaluative feedback from the first year of implementing the qualification. This has led the authors to want to focus on some of the social processes that influence and mediate the learning of established practitioners. They believe that these factors operate rather differently for those who have already established a professional role within their workplace than they do for those new to the profession whose learning, in terms of socialisation, has been the subject of investigation in the past. They suspect that social processes have a crucial and, as yet, relatively unexplored effect on the impact of CPD