Crossing boundaries and disrupting
binaries: teacher professional learning
in and out of the workplace
Professor Olwen McNamara, University of Manchester
1
The Importance of Teaching
‘what really matters is how we’re doing compared with our
international competitors. That is what will define our economic
growth and our country’s future. The truth is, at the moment we
are standing still while others race past. In the most recent
OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development] PISA [Programme for International Student
Assessment] survey in 2006 we fell from 4th in the world in the
2000 survey to 14th in science, 7th to 17th in literacy, and 8th to
24th in mathematics. The only way we can catch up, and
have the world-class schools our children deserve, is by
learning the lessons of other countries’ success.’
(Cameron and Clegg, DfE, 2010: 3)
McKinsey Report
The experiences of top school systems suggest that three things
matter most:
 getting the right people to become teachers;
 developing them into effective instructors; and
 ensuring the system is able to deliver the best possible
instruction for every child.
These systems demonstrate that the best practice for achieving these
three things work irrespective of the culture in which they are applied.
They demonstrate that substantial improvements in outcomes is
possible in a short period of time and that applying these best practices
universally could have enormous impact in improving failing school
systems, wherever they might be located. (McKinsey 2007: 5)
Brief history of Initial Teacher Education
1850s Pupil-teacher (national) scheme and emergent (denominational)
Colleges of Education to train elementary teachers
1870
Education Act sets the age for compulsory schooling to 10
(raised to 13 in 1899 and 14 in 1918) in England & Wales
1890s Day Training Colleges established in academic settings
offer professional liberal education for teachers.
to
1920s University Training Departments increasingly focus on
year secondary elite and independent sectors
one
1950s Training expansion in Colleges of Education follows school
leaving age increase (to 15) and post war baby boom
1973
Demographic contraction leads to institutional mergers and
facilitates mandatory training for all teachers
1984
Introduction of accreditation through CATE
1994
Establishment of OFSTED and TTA (to replace CATE)
Day Training Colleges
Trainee teachers studied standard academic subjects alongside
professional subjects such as the history and philosophy of
education and educational administration. DTC staff were keen
that training should include a significant amount of classroom
teaching. Manchester’s School Board proved supportive, opening
its elementary schools to students, but there was an emerging
consensus among educationists that the best experience was
gained at so-called “demonstration schools”. These schools,
usually administered directly or indirectly by the training colleges,
were specially designed for trainee teachers to allow them to
engage critically with the theories they had learnt in the lecture
rooms through practical experience of teaching children. This
concept had proved successful in Germany and the U.S.A, but
Owens College, fearful of the administrative and financial
burdens of running such a school, initially proved resistant to the
idea. (http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb133-fed.txt)
TTA Annual Lecture
There is no agreed knowledge-base for teachers, so they
largely lack a shared technical language…. It was once hoped
that the so called foundation disciplines of education psychology, sociology, philosophy, and history - would provide
the knowledge-base …. Unfortunately, very few successful
practising teachers themselves had this knowledge-base or
thought it important for practice. It remains true that teachers
are able to be effective in their work in almost total ignorance of
this infrastructure. … the disciplines of education are seen to
consist of “theory” which is strongly separated from practice.
Trainee teachers soon spot the yawning gap between theory
and practice and the low value of research as a guide to the
solution of practical problems’ (Hargreaves, 1996:2).
To Review
 The politicisation of teacher education resulted in an increasing lack
of professional control for training providers and left the sector
subject to short-termism and the vagaries of political ideology.
 The intrusiveness of policy requirements, regulation and
accountability restricted the levels of professional engagement,
engendered a technical–rational approach and created a culture of
compliance
 The proliferation of reductionist and task-focused partnership
arrangements endemic across the sector as a whole (Childs et al,
2014).
 Demographic downturn in secondary phase and non-ITE related
factors threaten sustainability of Education Departments and mean
the sector is unable to contribute its full potential to teacher learning
and school improvement.
Teaching Schools
Teaching Schools are part of the government’s drive to give schools more
freedom and to enable them to take increasing responsibility for managing the
education system. They are tasked to lead a wider ‘Alliance’ of schools to:
 Plan and lead a high-quality school-based initial teacher education provision.
 Plan and lead a high-quality professional and leadership development.
 Identify local succession planning strategies & develop leadership potential.
 Provide support for other schools and plan for and meet school improvement
needs identified locally.
 Recruit, manage and quality assure specialist leaders of education.
 Develop evidence-informed practices and school improvement strategies by
engaging in and with research.
The Blob
There are millions of talented young people being denied the opportunity to succeed
as they deserve. Far too many are having their potential thwarted by a new set of
Enemies of Promise… politically motivated individuals who have been actively trying
to prevent millions of our poorest children getting the education they need … they
are all academics who have helped run the university departments of education
responsible for developing curricula and teacher training courses”. “The Blob – the
network of educational gurus in and around our universities who praised each
others’ research, sat on committees that drafted politically correct curricula, drew
gifted young teachers away from their vocation and instead directed them towards
ideologically driven theory… In the past The Blob tended to operate by stealth, using
its influence to control the quangos and committees which shaped policy. But The
Blob has broken cover in the letters pages of the broadsheets because this
Government is taking it on…We have abolished the quangos they controlled. We
have given a majority of secondary schools academy status so they are free from
the influence of The Blob’s allies in local government. We are moving teacher
training away from university departments and into our best schools. And we are
reforming our curriculum and exams to restore the rigour they abandoned.
(Gove, Mail on Sunday, March 24th 2013)
21st century workplace
 Role of the teacher
 work alongside paraprofessional, with multi-professional and
multi-agency teams
 Work as hybrid educators across school boundaries and
between schools and universities
 Learning context
 Disparate curricular and assessment practices
 Organisational space
 Deregulation of pay & condition of service and requirement for
teacher certification
 Boundaries blurred by different designations of schools
 Complex and diverse governance arrangements
Apprenticeship: training for a 21st century
workforce?
 Training model (Apprenticeship): An adaptive model predicted
on induction into community of practice by learning about and
replicating teacher behaviours, activities and identities in
particular schools
 Training need: A developmental model based on reflection
and enquiry in order that teacher can develop and extend
their skill set to afford then mobility within the system.
‘a new generation of expertise, not based on supreme and supposedly
stable individual knowledge and ability, but on the capacity of working
communities to cross boundaries, negotiate and improvise’ Engeström
(2004, p. 145)
Disrupting binaries
 knowledge for practice (formal knowledge)
 knowledge in practice (practical knowledge)
 knowledge of practice (‘working within the contexts of inquiry
communities to theorise and construct their work and to
connect it to the larger social, cultural and political issues’) (p
250)
‘maintain the hegemony of university generated knowledge for
teaching… These implications serve to reify divisions that keep
“teachers in their place” – the separation of practitioners from
researcher, doers from thinkers, actors from analysts, and actions
from ideas’ ((Cochran-Smith and Lytle 1999: 289).
Metaphors for Teacher Learning
‘Learning as Acquisition’ (standard paradigm)
 ‘focus on mind’ (that positions learning as both the process of
acquisition and product acquired);
 ‘interiority’ (that positions learning as internal to the mind and
valuable in and of itself rather than seeing its value in its
applicability); and
 ‘transparency’ (that positions learning as clear and
unambiguous) (Hager, 2004: 243–44).
‘Learning as Participation’ (dominant metaphor in workplace
learning) (Sfard, 1998)
A senior resident, who is supervising Sarah, is working in the hospital but at the end of a phone,
and the specialist who is providing ‘cover’ to them both is doing so by telephone from home. It is
a busy shift, not least because Sarah has repeatedly been paged by the nursing staff on a
ward, where a patient who is not in command of his faculties has been abusing nurses. They
are demanding that ‘a doctor does something’ to calm the patient down. That would pose the
most experienced doctor, let alone Sarah, a practical and ethical challenge. Meanwhile, she is
called to see a patient in the emergency department who has diabetes and a sore on his foot.
She knows diabetic foot ulcers can ultimately lead to amputation if they are not handled quickly
and appropriately on occasions like this one. She tries to recall teaching she received as a
medical student. The action she must take is influenced by a judgment as to whether or not the
blood supply to the patient’s foot is seriously impaired but how, exactly, does one do that? She
must also get an X-ray of the foot to determine if the underlying bone is infected; how, she tries
to remember, will she make that judgment when she examines the X-ray. Should she call the
senior resident now, later or not at all? The senior resident she is reporting to today has a
reputation for making harsh judgments on juniors who ‘bottle out’ too quickly, but what will the
specialist covering them both say if Sarah shows herself unwilling to call for help when in
doubt? Should she go ‘over the head’ of the senior resident, or will that cause even more
trouble? Perhaps there is a doctor on call for the diabetes department; how does she find that
out? She should probably admit the patient to hospital, but should it be to a medical or surgical
ward? If a surgical ward, is it the local practice for such patients to go to a general surgical,
orthopedic, or vascular ward? She should start antibiotics to treat infection in the foot. Is there a
protocol that dictates which antibiotics are to be used in this hospital? There goes her pager
again from the ward with the abusive patient. You just don’t learn in medical school how to
manage patients with diabetic foot problems and you don’t learn to do so properly ‘on the job’
unless you do a diabetic job, which not everyone does. Even then, you find Dr X likes his
patients managed one way and Dr Y another. They don’t get on well with one another so you
get yelled at for making the wrong decision if you don’t first find out if the patient’s specialist is
Dr X or Dr Y. Why, oh why, did she have to get a diabetic foot, which she’s clueless about, at a
moment like this, rather than something straightforward like pneumonia? (Dornan & Morcke,
2014)
Early Career Learning
CONTEXT FACTORS
Allocation & structuring of work
 Minimal induction/transitional
LEARNING FACTORS
Challenge and value of work
 High levels of challenge requiring
arrangements
 ‘Pressure cooker’ environment
 Multiplicity of tasks/prioritisation
critical
 Competing imperatives
Relationships at work
 Contradictory demands from line
mangers
 Complex supervisory and other
relationships within teams
 Multiple brief contacts with other
professionals
Participation and expectation
 Overwork the norm
 Ultimate (sole) responsibility
 Transition/induction problems often
underestimated
evidence-based judgements as well
as technical skills
 Complex relationships with staff/othe
professionals/pupils
 High value for patients/pupils/parents
Feedback
 Supervision/mentoring/access to
training critical, often variable
 Learning culture critical and often
variable
 Emotional support critical and not
always forthcoming
Confidence and commitment
 Strong commitment to patients/
pupils
 Early loss of confidence
 Building resilience demands skilled
support
Derived from Eraut (2014)
To conclude
(1) Establishing an open and collegiate learning culture in which the status of
teachers as learners is endorsed and celebrated and different development
stages recognised;
(2) Creating ‘third’ space learning where new knowledge can be generated
through enquiry in a symbiotic relationship between the multiple discourses
about theory and practice and teaching and learning;
(3) Providing a well-planned, rich portfolio of expansive activities offering a
balance of organisational and individual needs;
(4) Making time and space available for quality learning opportunities and
experiences to occur and to be reflected upon;
(5) Nurturing a cadre of hybrid teaching colleagues to undertake the roles of
expert mentors/coaches to facilitate learning and support the development
of emotional and psychological resilience.