Professional Learning and the Unfinalizable: English Educators Writing and Telling Stories Together

Abstract

Standards-based education reforms and intensified accountability regimes are now a feature of most countries' agendas to improve the quality of their teaching workforces. One of the direct consequences of these reforms is a requirement that teachers demonstrate their ongoing participation in forms of professional development or professional learning throughout their careers. Along with this, there has been a narrowing of what is acknowledged by standards-based accountability regimes as discipline-based professional knowledge and 'valuable' professional development. This essay is a dialogic, reflexive account of a professional learning and writing project for English teachers and teacher educators in Australia, begun in 2013, called the stella2.0 project. The project builds on the groundbreaking work of the STELLA project in Australia from the turn of the century, and some other models of teacher writing projects across the world. Drawing on Cavarero, we critically scrutinize writing and storytelling in the dialogic professional community of the stella2.0 project, and in the process 'speak back' to standards-based reform policies that undermine English educators' agency and professionalism.

English Teachers and Teacher Educators in Writing-Based Professional Learning Communities

“…Other national writing projects in the United Kingdom (Smith and Wrigley 2015) and New Zealand (Locke et al 2013) operate quite differently in some respects, but research has endorsed them in familiar ways. More recently, smaller writing-based professional learning communities have operated in other countries, such as the "stella2.0" project in Australia (Parr and Bulfin 2015) and the "Writing for the Development of Learning and Thinking (WDLT)" project in Israel (Aharonian 2017).…”

“…In other places, we have described and analyzed in detail how writing can be a powerful medium for teachers and teacher educators to collaborate in a hybrid learning community and how it enables educators to learn from and with each other and in the process to develop as professionals and academics (e.g., Parr and Bulfin 2015). In this entry, we explain how the workshops encouraged participants to experiment with narrative writing as part of their exploration of English teaching knowledge and identity.…”

More than Standardisation: Teacher’s Professional Literacy Learning in Australia?

“…Empirical research across a range of settings in Australia suggests that primary, secondary and pre-service teachers value participatory opportunities to reflect with peers on diverse professional responses to their own and others' learning needs (Groundwater-Smith, Mitchell & Mockler, 2016;Kostogriz & Doecke, 2013;Parr & Bulfin, 2015). However, other research evidence points to the circumvention of such dialogue, by policies aimed to standardise pre-service and teacher professional learning (Cormack & Comber, 2013;Hardy, 2015;Klenowski, 2014;Lewis & Hardy, 2014).…”

“…The espoused mission of this portfolio is to review, monitor and improve teacher 'quality' in relation to standardised curriculum, standards-aligned professional learning, and associated 'back to basics' approaches to teaching and learning. Related policies such as the National Professional Standards for Teachers (Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, AITSL, 2014), likewise promote print-oriented focuses for literacy teaching and learning, in accordance with policy-driven standardised test emphases (Groundwater-Smith, Mitchell & Mockler, 2016;Parr, Bellis & Bulfin, 2013;Parr & Bulfin, 2015). For instance, AITSL's web-based professional learning videos almost exclusively showcase 'back to basics' literacy content.…”

Editorial

“…Many of these programs/projects have been focused on innovative pedagogy related to the teaching practicum, such as the integration of inquiry-based research within the practicum. Some programs/projects have developed dialogic writing communities where teacher educators join with English teachers to advocate for pre-service teachers and the English teaching profession more widely (Parr and Bulfin, 2015;Whitney et al, 2014). While politicians and attention-seeking commentators typically denigrate current teacher education in mainstream news media, many of today's early career English teachers are demonstrating their faith in their teacher education mentors and institutions through ongoing commitment to professional learning collaborations and/ or school-university partnerships Heilbronn and Yandell, 2010).…”