Developing a shared understanding within a community of practice

An ISTE describes how she used a social constructivist approach, along with a set of processes developed by Julia Atkin, to help members of a school community of practice to surface and examine their values, beliefs, and understandings. This process enabled them to develop and extend a shared knowledge-of-practice.

I have been working with the staff of a small rural school of five teachers, one of whom is a teaching principal. The previous year, the school had gone through a tumultuous time including bad publicity, a polarised community, a negative ERO report, disharmony among the staff, a high number of student stand-downs for a primary school this size, and finally the resignation of the principal.

Apart from the acting principal, all the staff are new to the school this year. In consultation with the community, it was decided to move forward by focusing on rebuilding relationships at all levels of the school. The school signed up to be part of the Ministry-funded Student Well-being Contract, and my role was as their facilitator for this contract.

I wanted to see how adopting a social constructivist approach to facilitation might enable the teachers to use similar strategies to make shifts in their classrooms. Social constructivism recognises that learning is a social act in which people are encouraged to question their own and others’ understandings and to deconstruct and reconstruct their ideas. Working within this theory could provide us with the framework for critical thinking, challenging assumptions and beliefs, creating cognitive dissonance, and co-constructed problem-solving. Having used this approach in the past, I was reasonably confident that it would enable the teachers to engage in individual learning and to also work creatively and interactively to make the desired shifts with the whole school.

I suggested we begin with a whole-day workshop based on this approach. In designing the workshop, my thinking was both at a cognitive level and at a more practical level. At the cognitive level, I was challenged to deepen my own understandings of social constructivism. What should this truly look like in my facilitation, and how could I support the teachers to make links between the theory and their everyday practice? I also realised how important it was to acknowledge that I too would be learning as I worked alongside the teachers during the workshop. One example of this from the workshop was rediscovering the importance of all of us sharing examples of our prior learning and experiences. On reflection, I realised how critical this stage was to the development of supportive collegial relationships, as it led to each teacher volunteering areas of expertise that the rest of us had not been aware of.

In the practical area of facilitation, I was challenged from the onset when I realised from baseline data that the levels of understanding of the five teachers varied enormously. This meant that I had to be flexible and consider how the teacher who had very little understanding could be supported by the others while ensuring that everyone was learning something new. Using Julia Atkin’s (1996) approach from "From Values and Beliefs about Learning to Principles and Practice" allowed the teachers to set individual goals and to develop at their own pace.

The workshop began with teachers examining their values, beliefs, and attitudes; how these influence the principles that inform their work; and how they put them into practice in their classroom. This process encouraged the development of shared understandings and provided opportunities for clarifying and challenging our own and each other’s beliefs.

We also spent time unpacking a reading on social constructivist pedagogy and exploring the links between this pedagogy and the learning process we were engaged in. We discussed its application for the teachers in their own classrooms, and they then worked collaboratively to set goals for themselves to enhance their practice.

The workshop appears to have established a valuable foundation for our work together. In subsequent interviews, teachers have commented that they have learned a lot more about themselves and each other – for example:

• the acting principal has reflected on how collaborating to make links between theory and practice has enabled her to support teachers more effectively in improving their practice;

• a teacher has described how he now places more importance on understanding and knowing his students and on being a real person to them:

  “You made us think more collaboratively. We are planning units together and discussing what others are doing. By encouraging us to share our stories and beliefs, you made me aware of how important it is to bring more of myself to the table to engage students.”

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