Laurette Bristol

What is ‘good’ mentoring? Understanding mentoring practices of teacher induction through case studies of Finland and Australia

Mentoring is a practice widely utilised to support new teachers. However, in locally formed systems, the practice of mentoring is conditioned by traditions and arrangements specific to the site. To understand ‘good’ mentoring, these local arrangements cannot be ignored. In this article, the theory of practice architectures is employed to make explicit the prefiguring arrangements of mentoring practices in Finland and NSW Australia. The findings suggest that mentoring practices are shaped by their ontological specificity and this makes reproducing mentoring practices in different sites problematic. Explicating the prefiguring architectures of practices is critical to understanding the contested nature of mentoring.

Leading-for-Inclusion: Transforming Action through Teacher Talk.

In Australia, recent policies for educational development have emphasised the importance of stakeholder involvement and advocacy in the promotion of student outcomes. There is robust support for the promotion and development of inclusive educational communities able to respond to the various educational needs of students, communities and staff. This paper advocates a practice perspective and establishes a direct correlation between leading practices and the formation of more inclusive school communities. It provides a consideration of the practice architectures which co-construct the ways in which six educational leaders draw on the potential of teacher talk as a vehicle for practice modification. Teacher talk, as a characteristic of leading practice, responds to the increasing dynamism in the profile of schools, students and teachers in rural New South Wales (NSW), socially, cognitively, economically, linguistically and culturally. This paper uses the medium of teacher talk to: explore the relationship between leading and inclusion – leading-for-inclusion – and interrogate socially just (inclusive) practices in the domain of the professional advocacy of the community. The paper reflects upon the practices of leading-for-inclusion (in the context of change management) and the development of more inclusive school cultures.

Practising in Betwixt Oppression and Subversion: Plantation Pedagogy as a Legacy of Plantation Economy in Trinidad and Tobago

The practice of the twentieth-century teacher has been entrenched within a rigorous concern for the manner in which her/his practice is being reshaped and imprisoned by neoliberal initiatives of accountability, governance and programmed performances. This article continues and extends this current debate by highlighting the historical antecedents of a teaching practice which simultaneously operates within the Trinbagonian educational context as a practice of oppression and a practice of intellectual subversion. In doing so, it introduces the notion of plantation pedagogy as an inherited educational practice which, in the practice of the teacher, can be manifested as a practice of hopelessness (oppression) and hope (subversion). Within the scope of this article teaching as an action of hopelessness, and teaching as an action of hope, can be constructed as practices of teacher anti-agency and agency. Data collected within an extended focus group session with 10 primary school teachers revealed that the practice of the teacher in the primary school can be constituted within and by two levels of agency. These agencies can be characterised as opposing views of plantation pedagogy, both of which emerge out of a process in which teaching is constructed as labour in service to a plantation society.

Socialising Principals: Early Career Primary School Principals in Trinidad and Tobago.

This paper utilises an interpretivist framework and recent developments in practice theory to examine the conditions which influence practices of socialising into the role of school principal in Trinidad and Tobago. The results indicate that for the 11 early career primary school principals, role socialisation occurs within complex practice landscapes, where the practices of preparing classroom teachers for the principalship materialise within a context of contest. There is conflict between historical antecedents and the expectations and practices of socialising institutions such as the church, the school, the community and the Ministry of Education. This small-scale study has implications for leadership preparation practices and highlights principal socialisation as a challenge of context and history.

Praxis, Educational Development and the University Sector in Australia.

Abstract In this article, we utilise recent theorising on praxis and educational development to explore how academics in universities can foster public, institutional and more personal development, even as they are challenged by what are sometimes described as more ‘managerial’ and ‘neoliberal’ conditions. The research draws upon a variety of sources of data, including publicly available correspondence on the university sector in Australia, interviews with colleagues, and personal reflective journals. These data reflect three instances of educational praxis development in the Australian university context, and at three scales/levels: nationally; unit-wide (university/faculty/institute); and sub-unit/individually. The findings reveal such development in the form of: academics using mainstream media to inform the general public about the nature of university industrial relations and funding at a national level; junior and senior academics collaborating and engaging in mentoring practices to build institutional research capacity at a university/institutional level; and, individual academics meeting to develop individual teaching practice. Through explicating the characteristics and value of educational development for and as praxis, we provide resources for hope for better understanding how the work of universities, including their broader mission to inform the public, might be enacted more educationally.

Articulating the Practice Architectures of Collaborative Research Practice

This chapter explores a collaborative practice of comparative data analysis through the researching activities of four researchers from Australia and Finland. We interrogate the ontological and empirical reality we experienced while engaged in a practice of analysing narrative data on mentoring. In this chapter, we are not reporting on the outcomes of our analysis of mentoring practice; instead we focus on our collaborative engagement, articulating the practice architectures of our research practice. This collaborative research practice was pre-figured by: (1) philosophical traditions instituted through a theory of practice architectures; and (2) normalised practices of researching mentoring, narrative data analysis, and research collaborations. By examining these preconditions we are attempting to understand the multifaceted space of research collaboration and the practice architectures of our collaborative research practice.

In the Shadow/From the Shadow The Principal as a Reflective Practitioner in Trinidad and Tobago

This case highlights a school principal’s leading practice as she worked to transform the social and educational status of students, teachers, and community in a small urban primary school. We employ shadowing, a technique popularized in work-based education and photography, as reflective and research tools. Teaching notes provide insight into the implications of shadowing for leadership development and leading learning particularly in the absence of systematic and strategic professional learning for school leaders in Trinidad and Tobago. The literature used here considers understandings of the relationship between the practice architectures of school leading, the reflective practitioner, and school transformation.

Praxis, Practice and Practice Architectures

In this chapter, a view of praxis and practice is outlined that allows us to re-imagine the work of teaching, learning and leading. It does so, first, by reconnecting with a lifeworld perspective on practice as a human and social activity with indissoluble moral, political and historical dimensions. Practice always forms and transforms the one who practices, along with those who are also involved in and affected by the practice. On a second meaning of praxis, praxis is always ‘history making action’ that transforms the world in which the practice is carried out. The chapter introduces our theory of practice and practice architectures, showing how the sayings, doings and relatings that constitute practices are made possible by (respectively) cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements found in or brought to the sites where practices are carried out. Taken together, these arrangements—the preconditions for practices—are the practice architectures that enable and constrain practices. Finally, the chapter shows how the theory of practice architectures offers a way of theorising education. By doing so, it reconnects practice with individual and collective praxis as a way of expressing the double purpose of education: to help people live well in a world worth living in.

Academic Life-support: The Self Study of a Transnational Collaborative Mentoring Group

In this paper, we examined the collaborative mentoring processes of a transnational network. A narrative approach was employed to explore the mentoring practices and experiences of 19 women involved in the CURVE-Y-FRiENDs (C-Y-F) network. Their mentoring practices go beyond transnational, ethnic, discipline, and university borders. The processes employed in the network can be conceptualized as pathways to professional relationships. The narratives of C-Y-F members illustrated collaborative mentoring as an expression of the personal and professional dimensions of support, which must be part of academic life. Collaborative mentoring relationships and discourse provided a response to the current inconsistencies in faculty mentoring practices and have implications for the ways in which administrations and faculty in general initiate more empathetic structures and procedures that better meet the mentoring needs of women and minority faculty in academia.

‘Muddying the space’: social justice, action research and professional learning

This paper uses an auto-ethnographic approach to reflect upon two experiences of professional learning gained through action research. The first, from the Netherlands, explores the issue of diversity in the mainstream class and the ways in which action research is used to provide insight into the emerging dilemmas around social justice. The second, from Trinidad and Tobago, points to the ways in which inexperience and cultural assumptions for teaching work to excavate dangerous possibilities even while engaged in action research. Both cases highlight the possibilities and pitfalls that action research presents for practitioner-researchers concerned with the development of socially just strategies in the classroom, in schools and across educational systems. We tell a story of research and professional learning as processes constructed within competing claims for rightness. It is in the practice of action research that we learn as researchers and professionals what should be the composition of our interventions and who should be the focus of these interventions.