Nicole Mockler

Beyond ‘what works’: understanding teacher identity as a practical and political tool

Drawing on previous research that focused upon the formation and mediation of teacher professional identity, this paper develops a model for conceptualising teacher professional identity. Increasingly, technical-rational understandings of teachers’ work and ‘role’ are privileged in policy and public discourse over more nuanced and holistic approaches that seek to understand teacher professional identity – what it is to ‘be’ a teacher. This article seeks to offer an alternative view, presenting the idea that an understanding of the processes by which teacher professional identity is formed and mediated is central to understanding the professional learning and development needs of teachers and advancing a richer, more transformative vision for education. I argue that instrumentalist notions of teachers’ work embedded in neo-liberal educational agendas such as those currently being advanced in many western countries offer an impoverished view of the teaching profession and education more broadly, and suggest that the concept of teacher professional identity holds the potential to work as a practical tool for the teaching profession and those who work to support them in the development of a more generative educational agenda.

Trans/forming teachers: new professional learning and transformative teacher professionalism

Abstract This article focuses upon the development of transformative teacher professionalism. It explores issues of teacher professional identity and the ways in which this is contributed to by teacher responsiveness to the changing and demanding educational environments in which they find themselves. It includes a review of significant literature within the field and suggests ways in which professional learning can support the development of a transformative teaching profession. Finally, it points to a number of conditions under which such a profession might emerge.

Ethics in Practitioner Research: An Issue of Quality.

This contribution is set in the context of the burgeoning of practitioner inquiry in Australia, taking account also of various European and North American initiatives, against the background of the notion of action research as an emancipatory project. Practitioner inquiry, under these conditions, requires that the work move beyond a utilitarian function, important as that may be in terms of enhancing practice, and that it develops a greater capacity to critique underlying policies. It will argue that if those engaged in practitioner inquiry, in particular in education, and those who support and sponsor them, are to move beyond a celebratory mode, then it is critical that a set of criteria are developed that may be used to govern quality; both in terms of the quality of the research and the quality of the policies at the local and state levels. The case will be made for developing such a platform founded upon principles of ethicality in the interests of all stakeholders, including consequential stakeholders, that is the students themselves, and will clearly have implications for policy and practice. For us, however, the matter of ethicality transcends stakeholder interests and is a central validation issue. Thus, the contribution will draw attention to the ways in which quality is not only determined by sound research practices but also must be such that ethical principles are manifested in the structures and processes of practitioner inquiry. In this sense ethical research practice is of a substantive rather than procedural kind.

Reporting the ‘education revolution’: MySchool.edu.au in the print media

Launched in January 2010, the MySchool.edu.au website, which ranks and compares schools on the basis of standardised literacy and numeracy tests, has been the subject of intense media coverage. This article examines 34 editorials focused on MySchool, published from October 2009 to August 2010, and identifies three key narratives in operation, those of distrust, choice and performance. It argues that these narratives work together to reinforce and promote neoliberal educational discourses at the heart of what Michael Apple has termed the ‘conservative modernisation’ of education and other social services. Together, the dominant narratives position MySchool and the ensuing newspaper-generated and published league tables as the solution to problems of poor performance, ‘bad’ schools and ‘bad’ teachers in the face of times characterised by self-interested teachers and governments keen to shirk their responsibility in the education arena.

Teacher Professional Learning in an Age of Compliance

PART I: Present, past and future. 1. Introduction: Current Problematics in Teacher Professional Learning. 2. How Did we Get Here? Historical Perspectives on Inquiry-based Professional Learning. 3. Developing courage. PART II: Professional Knowledge Building: Tenets and tools. 4. Mode 3 Knowledge: What it is and why we need it. 5. Inquiry as a framework for professional learning: Interrupting the dominant discourse. 6. Reclaiming Quality. PART III: Tensions, contradictions, competing agendas,- 7. Whats at stake and whats at risk? 8. Who pays the piper? Agendas, Priorities and Accountabilities. 9. What Learning Community? A Knotty Problem. PART IV: Closing the gap,- 10. Case Study: The Higher Degree. 11. The Coalition of Knowledge Building Schools. 12. Closing the Gap - Conclusion.

From data source to co-researchers? Tracing the shift from ‘student voice’ to student–teacher partnerships in Educational Action Research

This article provides a review of the concept of student voice as it has been represented in Educational Action Research from the 1990s to the present day. Contextualised within an exploration of the challenges posed by educational action research that incorporates student voice in the current age of accountability as reflected and understood in academia, we explore issues of power and authority, issues of process and issues of ownership as they emerge in the literature. We note ways in which these challenges are manifest in primary and secondary schooling and in tertiary education. Finally, we survey some recent representations of student voice in Educational Action Research, observing something of a shift from earlier conceptualisations of students as a ‘data source’ to a more active involvement as co-researchers and joint constructors of knowledge, progressing toward more active student–teacher partnerships.

Seeking for the unwelcome truths: beyond celebration in inquiry-based teacher professional learning

This paper seeks to interrupt the dominant discourse of action research that emphasises the celebration of achievements, paying less attention to the ‘unwelcome truths’ that can sometimes be revealed. Building on our work in supporting inservice teacher professional learning thorough practitioner research in contexts such as the Coalition of Knowledge Building Schools, we examine the capacity of practitioner inquiry and student voice to contribute to teachers’ broader professional knowledge base. Welcoming ‘unwelcome truths’ requires a robustness on the part of teachers, an openness to the professional learning and growth that can ensue from genuine critique and reflection. Among other things, asking questions of young people in schools can sometimes yield new and challenging insights into school and learning. We draw on examples from our work with schools and teachers to consider what might be done to make these ‘unwelcome truths’ the basis for the reconceptualisation of practice and catalysts for the ongoing formation of teacher professional identity.

When ‘research ethics’ become ‘everyday ethics’: the intersection of inquiry and practice in practitioner research

The act of engaging in sound and ethical practitioner research, regardless of context, encourages and indeed demands an alignment between the ethical framework employed in the research enterprise and the ‘everyday ethics’ of practice. This paper explores the ethical dimensions of what Cochran-Smith and Lytle have termed the dialectic of practitioner inquiry. The paper argues that the reflexive nature of the theory/practice dynamic means that, in the context of sustained practitioner inquiry, the ethics of research and the ethics of practice both hold the potential to be shaped by and to shape the other. Elsewhere in discussions of the issue of quality in practitioner and other practice-based research, Groundwater-Smith and Mockler have argued that ethical professionalism can and does work as a platform for quality, pushing practitioner inquiry ‘beyond celebration’. This paper builds on these ideas and, in exploring the intersection of inquiry and practice in practitioner research, examines the implications of issues relating to: informed consent; ‘voice’ and ownership; transparency and negotiation; confidentiality, anonymity and trust; and deliberative action in the context of both practitioner inquiry and classroom practice.

The Slippery Slope to Efficiency? An Australian Perspective on School/University Partnerships for Teacher Professional Learning.

Large-scale school/university partnerships for the enhancement of teacher professionalism and teacher professional learning have been part of the teacher development landscape in Australia for the past two decades. This paper takes a historical perspective on Australian school/university partnerships through detailing three national projects over a 15-year period, arguing that regimes of increased compliance and accountability that have characterised education policy in Australia over the past decade in particular, have impacted upon the way that school/university partnerships for professional learning have been conceptualised and framed. The kinds of transformative and emancipatory approaches described and advocated by scholars such as Stenhouse, and Carr and Kemmis, in the 1980s, which visibly guided earlier iterations of national projects, are largely absent from their successors. Increasingly, projects have been guided by instrumentalist approaches that emphasise efficiency, such that university-based partners are positioned more as ‘providers’ of professional development than learning partners, and relationships are conceived of as short-term and funding-dependent. Finally, the paper explores the capacity of school/university partnerships to overcome this trajectory, meeting the accountability demands of the current age of compliance while also working into the more transformative domain of teacher development. It suggests conditions under which such partnerships might flourish and concludes with a challenge to both school- and university-based practitioners to reclaim this generative edge in their partnership work, regardless of the policy framework within which it is enacted.

Becoming and ‘Being’ a Teacher: Understanding Teacher Professional Identity

This chapter explores the notion of teacher professional identity, reporting on a three-year study that sought to understand the formation and mediation of professional identity for secondary school teachers. It highlights the domains of personal experience, professional context and external political environment in the ever-emerging construction of teacher professional identity and suggests that ‘identity anchors’ work to fix teachers’ professional identities at particular points in their careers, providing a connection point between the essential identity question of ‘Who am I in this context?’ and broader questions of moral and educational purpose.