Professional learning promoting agency in challenging practice contexts

ABSTRACT

This study promoted professional learning and agency through a pragmatic formative intervention. Participants sought to change professional practices in classrooms in response to critical reflection on pedagogic practices and wider social concerns. Australian researchers collaborated with teachers and teacher educators from Nepal, informed by cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). Change Laboratory methods identified a contradiction between heavy curriculum content and pedagogies that were regarded as educationally desirable and socially just. Participants developed eight principles to help teachers enact high-quality, inclusive pedagogies. One group linked this to the idea of MicroProjects, a solution for time-pressed teachers that could embody all eight principles. They worked with teachers in a nearby school to develop and implement MicroProjects across the Grade 1–12 curriculum. The paper traces a cycle of expansive learning actions, revealing how committed, activist research methods promoted teacher professional learning and agency in challenging contexts of the Global South, shifting from what is towards what ought to be.

KEYWORDS:

• Professional learning
• agency
• cultural-historical activity theory
• change laboratory
• school teaching

Acknowledgements

The study was funded by DFAT Australia Awards Fellowship (2017, Project No. R170003). The authors wish to acknowledge all UTS colleagues involved in the project, and the Australian Himalayan Foundation for their contribution to the workshops. We also thank other participants who joined the Sydney-based workshops from Kathmandu University, Tribhuvan University the Royal University of Bhutan, Taju Primary School, Khagnkhu Middle Secondary School, and the Sunrise Education Foundation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 2076 is the year in the Nepali calendar.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australian Government: [Grant Number R170003].