Olwen McNamara

Framing Workplace Learning

This chapter sets the scene of teacher professional learning in England and its shifting context. It reflects on the politicisation of education and the increasingly radical agenda to pursue a more extensively workplace-based model of teacher pre-service and continuing professional learning, including a brief dalliance with the notion of teaching as a master’s level profession. The chapter then explains the genesis and structure of the book, reflecting upon its four themes: the social policy context and related tensions in England; policy and practice relating to teacher learning in UK home nations and internationally; learning theory and socio-cultural perspectives on learning; and, learning across the professions including medicine and educational psychology. Before exploring these themes the chapter presents three different analytical frames for considering workplace learning. First it disaggregates it into its constituent parts: work and place and learning. In doing this it highlights contemporary struggles around binary ways of thinking about knowledge and learning, and about the theory/practice dichotomy. This leads to a discussion of the possibilities offered by ‘third space’ thinking, which draws on hybridity theory, and situates binaries in productive dialogue. A third and final analytical move from third spaces to nomadic spaces is guided by the theoretical lens of Deleuze and Guattari.

Improving Workplace Learning in Teacher Education

Drawing on the multiple perspectives offered by earlier chapters, this final chapter looks specifically at how teacher learning in the workplace—across all career stages—might be improved. We identify some key principles which inform high quality workplace learning. These include: a collegiate learning culture within the workplace in which teachers’ achievements and contributions are valued; teacher learning which occurs both communally and individually, through participation in an accessible and well-planned variety of appropriately challenging tasks; the availability and protection of time and space allocated for teachers’ learning; learning which takes place both during and away from the ‘day job’; a school workplace which is sufficiently flexible to allow for informal learning to occur, alongside formal and planned programmes; and the space for teachers, as adult educators, to undertake often complex roles as facilitators of development within embedded learning cultures. We challenge some current assumptions around definitions of teacher learning, the knowledge bases on which such learning rests and the settings in which it occurs. We debate prevailing ideas that the school, as the immediate practice setting, is the only place in which relevant knowledge can be developed, and identify spaces within and beyond the school in which workplace learning is generated. These include universities, the settings for cross-professional practices, and established and emerging technologies, all of which offer important spaces for teacher learning. Finally, we return to the issue of how we might re-conceptualise teachers’ workplace learning in England’s rapidly changing educational landscapes, and highlight four case studies of good practice.

Research capacity-building with new technologies within new communities of practice: reflections on the first year of the Teacher Education Research Network

This article focuses on a virtual research environment (VRE) and how it facilitated the networking of teacher educators participating in an Economic and Social Research Council-funded research capacity-building project. Using the theoretical lenses of situated learning and socio-cultural approaches to literacy, participants’ ways of engaging with this technology are described, and the reasons why their existing technical expertise did not unproblematically transfer to the new technology are explored. We argue that three main factors affected the use of the VRE, and in particular its wiki tool: the individual’s motivation to learn and to engage with (more) new technologies; the emerging dynamics of each research group as they developed shared working practices; and the institutional climates, which supported or discouraged the individuals’ engagement with both the technology and a regional Teacher Education Research Network that used this technology. In conclusion, we suggest that successful engagement with new technologies in future academic communities of practice might well benefit from a shared commitment to agreed working practices across the group and the provision of brokerage and championing of the technology by key individuals who are in the position to inspire, motivate and support others.