Reprofessionalising teaching: a university research institute engages teachers in creating dialogic space in schools ^[1]

Abstract

Policy-makers, governments, researchers and outside agencies can be harmful and hurtful to teachers, especially in the limited construals they hold of teaching. This article reports on the activities and experiences of a university research institute which adopted a style of ‘voiced research’ aimed at assisting schools to reprofessionalise themselves through the notion of the ‘dialogic school’. Issues of how to work with teachers to promote argument, contestation, debate and resistance around the concept of the socially just school were paramount. But, as the article also reports, these moves had to be accompanied by a need to significantly rethink what it means to be an educational researcher of teachers' work, and the changes that are required in order for this to occur.