Implications for ISTE practice

The ideas discussed in this chapter suggest that effective professional development does more than deliver state-of-the-art knowledge-for-practice in order to influence learning and practice. It involves professional learning, an “internal process through which individuals create professional knowledge” (Timperley et al., 2007, page 3) to build knowledge-of-practice. Professional development must provide opportunities for its participants to reflect upon, critique, modify, or replace aspects of the knowledge base and theories from which they make decisions about their practice. It should involve new kinds of collaboration that can result in “consequential changes in the lives of teachers and, as important, in the lives of students and in the social and intellectual climate of schools and schooling” (Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 1999, page 295). We would add that the changes may be equally profound in the lives of researchers, policy makers, and ISTEs.

Educators who take responsibility for building their knowledge-of-practice through ongoing and systematic inquiry across their professional lifespan understand that all knowledge and theories are contestable and that it is important to establish whether what they are learning is worth knowing (Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 1999). ISTEs need to ensure this understanding underpins their own learning and that of the teachers and school leaders they work with. Wherever possible, they should seek empirical evidence to decide whether the new information and theories they are considering are likely to have a positive effect on students and whether that effect is significant enough to justify the time and effort put into the learning process. As Timperley et al. (2007) suggest, when considering the content of professional learning, the key question is: “What do we need to know in order to deepen our professional understandings and extend our skills so as to have a positive impact on student outcomes?” This critical perspective is implicit in the inquiry cycle presented in the Conducting Inquiry chapter.

As described above (page 97), Timperley et al. (2007) coin the term “provider pedagogical content knowledge” to refer to the knowledge and skills that providers of teacher education need if they are to make a difference to students. These include knowledge of the pedagogical changes teachers need to make in order to improve their practice as well as knowledge of how to make the content meaningful to teachers and manageable within the context of teaching practice. Similarly, John Loughran (2006) calls for a pedagogy of teacher education that goes beyond the transmission of information about teaching. He states:

Teaching about teaching demands a great deal from teacher educators. There is a continual need for teacher educators to be conscious of not only what they are teaching, but also the manner in which that teaching is conducted … the complexity of teacher educators’ work hinges around recognizing, responding [to] and managing the dual roles of teaching and teaching about teaching concurrently.

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The ideas discussed in this chapter reflect the complexity of both teacher and teacher educator pedagogy. They have the following implications for ISTE practice.

First, we can conceptualise ISTEs as brokers who help to create connections between different communities of practice, using deliberate acts of facilitation to introduce new knowledge from research and to help uncover the knowledge that already exists in schools to build knowledge-of-practice. Such acts parallel teachers’ use of “deliberate acts of teaching” that focus learning to meet a particular purpose (Ministry of Education, 2003).

Second, it is vital that ISTEs draw from a wide knowledge base that includes a range of theoretical frameworks and have the judgment to know what to use with a particular set of learners, in a particular context, and in response to a particular problem of practice.

Third, it is crucial that ISTEs establish mutually trusting and respectful learning partnerships with members of the communities of practice with whom they work so that they can collaborate to make sense of the current situation and to agree on a shared purpose. This means being explicit – explaining what they are doing and why they are doing it so that their thought processes are available for discussion and reflection. And it means valuing the knowledge that teachers bring, understanding the sense-making processes that they use, and working together to create new knowledge.

Fourth, the process of inquiry must begin by deconstructing an authentic “problem of practice” within a particular context and making the participants’ knowledge and theories explicit. In this way, both ISTEs and teachers can identify the gaps and inconsistencies in their knowledge and theories of practice. ISTEs need to know how to use the dissonance that this creates to help motivate the ongoing inquiry, stimulate critical reflection, and generate new knowledge-of-practice.

Fifth, all participants need to acknowledge that all knowledge and theories are contestable and to agree that the main criterion for evaluating their efficacy will be their impact on student outcomes. One consequence of this is that teachers have the same right to query aspects of ISTE practice as ISTEs do to query theirs. It also makes teachers more open to the possibility that they will have to let go of some of their previous beliefs and assumptions in order to make sense of the new knowledge they are building.

The model of professional learning as a partnership between ISTEs and teachers that values the contributions of both researchers and practitioners brings with it inherent challenges. Putnam and Borko (2000) describe what happened in the professional development programmes they examined:

New kinds of discourse communities for teachers, while potentially powerful tools for improving pedagogical practice, also may introduce new tensions into the professional development experience. For example, the university teams in all three projects struggled with the question of how much guidance and structure to bring to the conversations, seeking an appropriate balance between presenting information and facilitating teachers’ construction of new practices.

…The university teams in all three projects addressed these issues of balance by avoiding the extremes of either viewing teachers as merely implementing someone else’s pedagogical approach or attempting to empower them without introducing new pedagogical ideas. Instead, they drew upon the unique sets of knowledge and skills offered by researchers and teachers. As a result, the ideas that emerged in the discourse communities created within the projects were “joint productions” that furthered the understanding of all participants. Researchers, as well as teachers, came away with new insights about teaching and learning.

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ISTEs work with school communities of practice to build knowledge-of-practice and enable new learning that has the potential to bring about fundamental change in the practices of all those involved. This involves the development of relationships characterised by “interactive professionalism”, as described in the chapter on Communication and Relationships.

The ideas discussed in this chapter also suggest the need for members of ISTE communities of practice to develop mechanisms to surface, record, and share the new and amended knowledge and theories that emerge in the course of their work. Within that process they need to find ways to collaboratively reflect on their knowledge, theories, and practice that value and respect the diversity of their backgrounds and the contexts in which they work.

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