Clip 1: Problem of practice

Catherine:

The couple of times I’ve worked with Jack there were just little small things I’ve picked up on – like in staff meetings, he was either not engaging, or saying little funny snippy things. And I thought, "This is not the sign of a person who is really engaging in the learning". And then in a couple of observations, I was seeing that he was paying lip service to some of the things we talked about.

My problem of practice was that I needed to communicate better with this person. And you always know when you're in that situation. So what I normally do is come straight back to the office and talk about it with someone.

Michael:

So when Catherine came to me with that problem of practice, I had two reactions really, and they were both of delight – one, that she felt able to come and talk with me about issues that were troubling her; and the second was that that also indicated that she was focused on being effective. And both of those things I think are crucial if we are going to be useful to schools – useful to teachers as inservice teacher educators.