Patchworks of professional practices: Teacher collaboration in innovative learning environments

ABSTRACT

In Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, the impetus to create open learning spaces that afford spatial and pedagogical flexibility have disrupted the nature of teachers’ work. In redesigned education facilities, teachers engage in sophisticated processes of collaboration and ongoing teacher professional learning. Moving from traditional classroom designs brings with it a shift in how knowledge is transmitted, co-produced and engaging with aspirational pedagogy and attending to the power dynamics of students and teachers and teachers as co-collaborators. Using a patchwork metaphor to frame our methodological approach, examples from research projects into teachers’ work from across Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia addresses the question: What is involved in high-quality teacher collaboration in Innovative Learning Environments? This patchwork of practice is intended to support the work of those charged with researching, reviewing and enhancing collaboration in ILEs. Specifically, dimensions of alignment, acculturation, adaptation, aspiration and agency can inform teacher professional learning and development. By examining the complex conditions of ILEs in a range of projects, where teachers are no longer alone in teaching but contribute to both short-lived and sustained collaborations, we identify examples from research that illustrate new teaching realities in ILEs, and frame possibilities for action.

KEYWORDS:

• Innovative learning environments
• teacher collaboration
• new generation learning environments

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

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Notes on contributors

Jennifer Charteris

Associate Professor Jennifer Charteris is Head of the Learning, Teaching and Inclusive Education Department in the School of Education at the University of New England,Armidale, Australia. She conducts research associated with the politics of teacher and student learning and identity formation. Critical and poststructural theories inform much of her work. She researches in collaboration with educational leaders, teachers and students. 

Noeline Wright

Dr Noeline Wright is Senior Research Officer and Senior Lecturer at the University of Waikato. Dr Wright is a teacher educator whose work centres on the secondary school sector. Her research interests span digital technologies in secondary school settings, secondary schools as modern learning environments, and possibilities for integrated learning for students. She has published on pedagogy and digital technologies, social media in initial teacher education, and on new schools as modern learning environments.

Suzanne Trask

Dr Suzanne Trask a science educator, teacher educator, and education researcher. She has extensive experience working with teachers in professional learning roles as well as expertise in collaborative classroom-based studies. She has led collaborative Liggins Institute/ University of Auckland curriculum development and PLD for the secondary science education sector. Suzanne’s doctoral thesis examined how affordances in the national curriculum and high stakes New Zealand national qualification might support diverse and personalized pathways for senior high school science inquiry learning in innovative learning environments.

Elaine Khoo

Dr Elaine Khoo is a senior research fellow at the Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research (WMIER) at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. Her research interests include teaching and learning with information and communication technologies (ICTs), effective online pedagogies, online learning communities, participatory learning cultures, collaborative research. One of her key life aspirations is to encourage teachers and learners to see the potential of different ICTs for enhancing teaching and learning and how they can realistically adopt ICTs to transform their teaching and learning practices

Angela Page

Dr Angela Page is a registered educational psychologist and works as a lecturer in Inclusive and Special Education at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She has worked as a secondary and specialist education teacher and advisor in New Zealand and the Pacific. Angela’s research interests are in the areas of health and wellbeing for young people including mental health, and the development of positive relationships.

Joanna Anderson

Dr Joanna Anderson is Lecturer in Learning, Teaching Inclusive Education in the School of Education at the University of New England, Armidale, Australia. She has more than 20 years’ experience in schools, where she worked as both a classroom teacher and school leader across in the primary, secondary and special education sectors. Joanna has a growing body of work in the area of inclusive education, as a researcher, teacher and consultant.

Bronwen Cowie

Professor Bronwen Cowie’s research is focussed on classroom interactions and learning, with an emphasis on Assessment for Learning in science and technology classrooms and culturally responsive pedagogy in science education. This aspect of her research is underpinned by a sociocultural view of learning. She has explored the affordances of information and communication technologies in and for primary science and in the provision of feedback in writing. Student teacher learning about assessment is another of her interests. Her research is carried out in collaboration with colleagues and teachers and she values the depth of understanding and insight that collaboration brings.