Learning experiences – Perspective from John Loughran
Gillian:
I’m sort of interested to know what you were hoping to achieve. What was your purpose in having that conversation after your workshop with her?
Barbara:
I was certainly hoping to challenge Fran in regards to where she found herself – the conflict she found herself in – in relation to her role as an RT:LB and that whole idea of her wanting to maintain the relationship with the principal. So yes, that was probably the area that I was wanting to focus on.
Gillian:
So tell me about challenging. Why did you want to challenge her? What was the significance of that?
Barbara:
In my role as an adviser, I think it’s really important to look at being that critical friend, to actually help them to consider where they might need to look to their actions and help them to move forward in their thinking.
Gillian:
So what does challenge actually do?
Barbara:
By challenging, or creating that dissonance, you can allow for thinking to happen, certainly allow for building on that thinking and into unpacking some new learning – and leading into hopefully some action which will be useful for a particular situation, whether it’s a problem or a concern/issue of practice.
Gillian:
So I guess what you’re saying here, then, is that challenge creates dissonance, that sort of thing where people start asking themselves questions about their behaviour. And that that’s when the new learning actually occurs. And hopefully that shift in thinking will lead to a change in practice – that’s basically what you’re on about there?
Barbara:
Absolutely. And I think for me, that’s been a real light-bulb moment since the beginning of last year. I didn’t realise just how important that creating of dissonance was and how powerful it could be to actually create those shifts.
John:
Working as a critical friend requires a sense both of being in the situation and of being able to stand back and question what is happening while it is happening. This skill is very important in helping others see into their own practice in meaningful ways. In opening the discussion with Barbara, Gillian illustrates well the importance of seeking Barbara’s perspective on the situation and doing so in a non-judgmental way. As the beginning of this discussion illustrates, Gillian works towards Barbara’s understanding of what she was doing – and how and why she was doing it – to arrive at an important point in the conversation: the challenge of creating a sense of dissonance. This is an important stepping-off point in the conversation because it is at the heart of Barbara’s purpose in working as a critical friend. A question that no doubt arises for Gillian then is how well this challenging is happening and whether or not it is working in a productive way.
In terms of the work of many involved in self-study of teaching and teacher education practices (for example, Hamilton et al.,1998; LaBoskey, 2004), dissonance or challenge is a crucial starting point in being confronted by ourself as a “living contradiction” (Whitehead, 1993) or, in terms of reflective practice, in coming to recognise a problem (a curious, interesting or puzzling situation that causes a reconsideration; see Dewey, 1933; Schön, 1983).
In recognising a problem, or seeing ourself as a “living contradiction”, better ways of understanding the situation begin to emerge and can be enhanced by encouraging reframing (Schön, 1983) such that alternative perspectives can actively be sought. Recognising a problem is a genuine starting point for inquiring into practice and an important point of engagement when working as a critical friend.
Gillian:
That’s wonderful. And, I just, I suppose when we think back to the video and you were wanting to challenge Fran, what did you actually see was happening in terms of your practice?
John:
Gillian demonstrates the importance of “getting into” the situation through her affirmation and subsequent invitation to describe what “was actually happening” from Barbara’s perspective.
Barbara:
I gave her solutions. I actually did the problem solving.
Gillian:
OK. That’s what I observed too, actually. And I just wondered what you were thinking when you, when you made that decision to problem-solve. Because I know that you’ve got a deep understanding of the whole issue around challenging. So what were the thoughts that were going through your mind when you decided to problem-solve for her?
John:
Immediately Barbara recognises a difficulty she created in her work with Fran. In “giving solutions”, Barbara may have diminished Fran’s ability to see into her own practice; at the same time, Gillian is being very careful not to do the same herself with Barbara. She affirms and seeks Barbara’s understanding of the situation. By being non-judgmental, she is able to open up a deeper level of discussion; she can highlight the situation in a way that Barbara might learn from in a productive and meaningful manner because Barbara is more likely to “own” the problem.
Barbara:
I suspect it was definitely my emotions coming in there. It was very much around me not wanting to rock the boat on the professional relationship, certainly not wanting to put any fear into Fran about what she did do. So, yeah, I was compromising my beliefs.
John:
An important, honest response is “placed on the table”. By acknowledging the problem, Barbara is more likely to learn from the situation and to recognise aspects of her practice that she might wish to concentrate more on in the future. Gillian is modelling approaches to those aspects of practice in her questioning and probing of the situation.
Gillian:
Right. So there was a real conflict there between your beliefs and your actual …
Barbara:
Practice.
Gillian:
… practice …
Barbara:
Absolutely.
Gillian:
… in that instance.
Barbara:
Yes.
Gillian:
Yeah. I’m wondering whether perhaps you might be making a few assumptions about Fran, in terms of how she might react if she was challenged?
John:
At this point in the discussion, Gillian offers an opportunity to check her understanding of the situation, and her invitation creates an opportunity for Barbara to respond without feeling judged. However, at the heart of this discussion now is the importance of recognising the problem and owning it so that genuine progress in the work of being a critical friend might be realised.
In many ways, this is a very strong example of the value of skilfully bringing someone to a position of seeing. Such an approach is crucial, for it would not be so positive if the problem was initially stated by another. Gillian has helped Barbara acknowledge a sense of dissonance that can be productively developed to build new understandings of working as a critical friend.
Barbara:
Yes. Yes, I can see that, too. And probably I need to go back to Fran to actually talk through that … and maybe even try and identify with her what my role as a critical friend is about, and perhaps negotiate that role …
Gillian:
Yeah, yeah.
Barbara:
… unpack my beliefs about what I think is important …
Gillian:
Right.
Barbara:
… and allowing me to perhaps move forward and to actually carry out that practice the way I think it should be carried out.
John:
This part of the discussion is very instructive. Barbara sets out what she will do and why so that it’s clear that she wants to address the situation. She wants to share the responsibility with Fran and to work in a way that does not dismiss her previous actions but helps her to learn from them.
In making these suggestions, Barbara illustrates the open-mindedness and responsibility that are at the heart of what Dewey (1933) describes as attitudes that are the precursor to reflective thought. By displaying these attitudes, Barbara shows she is willing to reframe the situation and to see into it in ways that are not always so easy when we are actually “in the moment”. Gillian has also illustrated this willingness by helping to bring the conversation to this point.
Gillian:
OK. That sounds like a really good strategy to me and some really good thinking about how you can overcome that sort of emotional fear that I think everybody feels. Certainly, I know personally, and from lots of advisers and RT:LBs I’ve talked to, that conflict between wanting to have the supportive relationship, the good relationship, and how do you challenge without creating tension? It’s a real dilemma and conflict for people. So that sounds like a good strategy: to negotiate the relationship right at the beginning.
I guess that one of the other things that’s quite interesting to think in that situation where you shifted into that problem-solving mode instead of doing what you really wanted to was thinking about who actually benefits in that situation.
John:
In this part of the conversation, Gillian’s role as a critical friend is highlighted very powerfully. She helps to illustrate for Barbara that what has happened is “normal” and that it takes a skilful critical friend to help us recognise and respond to such a situation because the underlying emotions and tensions inevitably impact on how we feel and respond. Gillian therefore pushes the challenge to another level with Barbara by affirming the situation and linking it to her own responses in such situations, yet at the same time making it clear that moving beyond such behaviours is important if Barbara is to be more helpful to Fran.
This is a very good example of how a skilful critical friend can be both “in the situation” and “observing the situation” at the same time in order to offer helpful advice without appearing to “tell” someone what they should know and do.
Barbara:
And I think that was yet again another “aha” moment on the video. I looked and I thought, “Neither of us benefited”. And I doubt whether the people that Fran was serving would have benefited either. And that I problem … or tried to problem-solve for Fran, and how do I know that’s going to meet her needs? And certainly I didn’t benefit because I compromised my beliefs. And it was really clear on the video – what I did. And I probably put myself sort of more into that expert role instead of the collaborative role that I really believe is important.
Gillian:
Right.
John:
The recognition of an “aha” moment is a strong message to Gillian that Barbara has seen into her practice in a way that will surely shape what she will see and how she might act in the future.
Perhaps the next step after this conversation might be to rehearse or role-play such a situation so that Barbara can “feel” what it will be like to act as she hopes to next time around. Another extension, or point of consolidation, could be for Gillian and Barbara to debrief on their own conversation, so that what has been implicit in Gillian’s work as a critical friend might be made explicit and available for Barbara to draw on in reshaping how she works with Fran.
This modelling by Gillian is a very good way of teaching about how to think and operate as a critical friend without setting out rules and guidelines that, by their very nature, tend to diminish the skills essential to such expertise. It fits well with the notion of modelling as argued in pre-service teacher education by Berry (see Berry and Loughran, 2002; Loughran and Berry, 2005).
References
Berry, A. and Loughran, J. J. (2002). “Developing an Understanding of Learning to Teach in Teacher Education”. In Improving Teacher Education Practices through Self-study, ed. John Loughran and Tom Russell. London: Routledge.
Dewey, J. (1933). How We Think. Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath.
Hamilton, M. L., ed. (1998). Reconceptualizing Teaching Practice: Self-study in Teacher Education. London: Falmer Press.
LaBoskey, V. K. (2004). “The Methodology of Self-study and its Theoretical Underpinnings”. In The International Handbook of Self-study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices, ed. J. Loughran, M. L. Hamilton, V. K. LaBoskey and T. Russell, vol. 2, pp. 817–869. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
Loughran, J. and Berry, A. (2005). “Modelling by Teacher Educators”. Teaching and Teacher Education, vol. 21 no. 2, pp. 193–203.
Schön, D. A. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books.
Whitehead, J. (1993). The Growth of Educational Knowledge: Creating Your Own Living Educational Theories. Bournemouth: Hyde.
