A Learning Community of Reflective Teachers: From Whispers to Resonance

The internet has allowed for people in places across the globe to create interest-based communities. This book is an account of, and more importantly by, a small band of 14 school teachers from across India, initially strangers to each other, who came together online to share their ideas and much more. Meeting regularly over a period of two years, they evolved into a community of support, challenge and learning. During that time, each of these teachers evolved into a scholar, a confident action researcher, and quite literally a change-maker. Each chose an area of school where they saw something lacking, even troubling, and turned it into an opportunity to effect significant transformation. One set about addressing insensitivity in her students toward support staff at a residential school, and looks to extend this in the future: ‘To forge deep bonds between all the students, teachers and the local community. This is a long-term plan … ’ (189). Another discovered that increasing her students’ autonomy completely transformed the passive and uncooperative dynamic of her classroom: ‘Nowadays, I enter my class looking forward to what the students have planned for that day … ’ (170). A third was driven to address divisive interpersonal movements among her second graders, and used student autonomy as a possible path to reach there: ‘Children as autonomous learners and contributors were more well-behaved, empathetic towards each other and responsible’ (69). These and five more journeys are chronicled in the book, rigorously researched and documented by the participants themselves. The language of their papers is refreshingly non-technical, and yet it is abundantly clear that they engaged in a high degree of reading and conceptualisation during their experiences of research and writing.

Over two years, the teachers devised action research plans, and as they carried these out and later embarked on their writing, they stayed in ever-closer contact and were a great support to each other. They created a deeply collaborative space. They shared their difficulties and concerns freely, quite possibly because in real life they were not colleagues, and had no need to fear any workplace consequences to speaking with honesty! Ideas emerged from discussions expertly facilitated by Neeraja Raghavan, the editor of this volume, who spoke up or held back at just the right junctures, with sensitivity and care. There are several points in the book where a reader can feel Raghavan’s alert and sensitive approach, either raising a neglected point, or listening as a teacher solved a problem for herself. She was clearly seeking to trigger autonomous learning for her participants, but more importantly, she wanted them to mentor each other through the process of action research: ‘Surely there would be far more effective development if teachers learnt from each other’ (29). Gratifyingly, her approach was emulated by her participants, in the way they devolved responsibility to their own students or colleagues in the course of their projects, with exciting results. The creative energy of the group overflowed into their schools and classrooms!

The teacher-researchers come across as thoughtful and intelligent. What they care about are perennial values such as compassion, social equity, agency and true collaboration. Are they unusual in this regard? Notwithstanding the stereotype of the uncaring teacher, one for whom teaching is ‘just a job’, a significant number of teachers have come into the profession wanting to make a difference (see, for example, Bastin, 2000). In India in particular, teaching in the government school system can be a punishing job, and yet there are thousands of teachers who truly believe in their ability to make a difference (Behar, 2023; Giridhar, 2019). But the question is, do such teachers have the agency to do so, or does their vision get beaten out by the government school system?

Much ink has been spilled over the question of whether and how teachers can gain more agency in their work. The literature could roughly be classified as theory-based at one end (see, for example, Priestley et al., 2015) and, at the other end, collections of papers written by teachers-turned-action-researchers (Brindley and Crocco, 2009). Theory-building is conceptually enriching and exciting, and one hopes that useful discoveries and principles will eventually travel from those circles to practicing teachers. However, as a school teacher myself for nearly 30 years, I particularly appreciate the direct and immediate benefit of books such as Brindley and Crocco’s, and Raghavan’s new edited collection. What comes through loud and clear is that in order for agency to flower, there must be collaborative support among peers.

The book has three sections. Section 1 traces the genesis of the idea and the story of how it came about. It also summarises for readers what teacher development is and can be, and explores the area of teachers as change agents. There is an engaging literature survey of the fundamental concepts, with plenty of opportunity for the interested reader to explore more. Section 2 presents the eight accounts written by the teachers of what they tried in their schools and what ensued. Reading these papers, one realises the extent of learning on the part of the teachers. They imbibed skills and attitudes well beyond those directly related to their investigation and implementation, such as how to create a meaningful rubric, how to collect useful data and how to analyse both qualitative and quantitative data. These are realistic portrayals, showing all the steps and stumbles along the way. For example, one teacher explains how she kept reframing her central aim, showing how important it is to frame the problem properly; in her case, it was not about getting teachers to create better lesson plans, but instead about getting them to enjoy their planning and teaching.

In Section 3, Raghavan takes us through her journey in great detail, allowing us to see clearly what it takes from a mentor or instructor to make such a collaborative and agentic project succeed. She also explores what it takes for a teacher in such a group to be a true collaborator, and elaborates very usefully on the key element required, joint effort. I work in a teacher-run school where we regularly co-teach courses, and I can testify to the profound value of this practice. Raghavan also includes some fascinating analyses about the way networks of people in a community can be configured, in-person or online, supported by valuable literature reviews from diverse research areas. In many ways, section 3 helps us answer the question: who can replicate this and how? Small groups of people can do rewarding work more easily than large groups, and Raghavan’s project succeeded in part because of its manageable numbers. Yet we naturally want solutions to reach more schools and children. Clearly one need is for a large cadre of people like Raghavan, and a second need would be the funding that makes it possible for such people to take up projects like this one. Raghavan’s close rendering of the process from her point of view, with all the experience of learning along the way, allows us to see what can and cannot be replicated, and gives us the ingredients needed for future attempts of a similar kind. As she writes: ‘Can you imagine what would happen if such communities began to form all over the country?’ (218).

Who can take away what from this volume? Teachers and heads of schools can take away concrete ideas from section 2, and make similar attempts in their own settings. More importantly, they can adapt and reapply the methods and processes through which a question in their own mind can be tackled and solved in their own schools. Scholars in departments of education can take away this reassuring knowledge: teachers are capable of rigorous action research and can extract useful information from academic papers. Perhaps this will encourage scholars to recognise a teacher-reader as part of their audience for select academic papers. The broad move toward open-access for such papers holds promise as well. I think this book is of most value for teacher-educators, and educational organisations that run in-service training programmes. They can take away useful principles of how to trigger and facilitate autonomous learning for their teacher participants. I have run numerous workshops for teachers in India, and found myself working hard to overcome feelings of cynicism in the room. Teachers attended more to check a box than with any hope of learning something really useful, and I eventually concluded that it was not their fault – the whole premise and format was at fault. Given the amount of resource put into in-service training and workshops in India, the takeaways are disappointingly low. Raghavan’s model of smaller groups of teachers working together with the help of gentle expertise is definitely one way to go. One exciting possibility is that since this worked in an online format, such communities can even spring up across countries. What a wonderful way to bring this fractured world together!