The need to discuss complex concepts: transformation

As reader of Professional Development in Education (PDiE) you may not always be aware of the ongoing discussion within the editorial board about the future course of the journal. These discussions take place during our regular meetings and during specially organised internal conferences. They are academically satisfying meetings in which the main focus is not on seeking consensus, but on generating interesting and challenging ideas and opening up new perspectives. Two concepts are central to our discussions about the future of PDiE: ‘critical reflection’ and ‘transformative education’ (especially transformative teacher education and transformative professional learning). These concepts are now essential in the thinking of critical researchers and practitioners at all levels of education. Although the concept of ‘transformative education’ may not be very new, I have come across it more and more often in recent years in articles and in conference contributions¹. This year the editorial board of PDiE will run a panel session at the ECER conference on this theme and articles in this journal have inspired me to think about the concept of ‘transformative education’ and look critically at what the term means in practice.

As with all complex concepts, ‘transformative education’ has different meanings in different national, cultural and educational contexts. I experience these differences quite strongly in the PDiE editorial board discussions because I am the only non-native speaker of English within the board, but it is certainly not the case that all native English speakers naturally give the same meaning to the same concepts. The differences between the educational cultures of England and Scotland, Australia and the USA or Wales and Ireland are in themselves considerable and give rise to interesting and different interpretations of what it means to be ‘transformative’.

I am interested in the concept of ‘transformative education’ as it seems to be a state of education that is desirable. It seems to me that ‘transformative’ has replaced the more moderate ‘change’. It seems there is a need in thinking about education to emphasise the need for ideals and social values and as such ‘transformative education’ is projected as a desirable state of education. This is evident from the work of Aileen Kennedy (2005). She describes three goals of professional learning in which teachers have increasing agency: transmission, transition and transformation. According to Kennedy characteristic of transformative models of professional learning are professional autonomy and awareness of power issues on all levels. She argues that transformative practices include transmission models, transition and action research that may in a well-balanced way support the transformation of teaching and education. In the literature, ‘transformative education’ is not only associated with concepts such as autonomy (Kennedy 2005), but also with sustainability (Wals 2011) and social justice (Biren et al. 2003). In short: the concept of ‘transformative education’ seems to be used primarily in progressive and idealistic educational discourses, at least in some educational cultures.

In the Netherlands, the context that I know best, the word transformative is less used in the sense of ‘transformative education’ as described by Kennedy. The term ‘transformative’ in international literature is mainly related to education in two ways: transformative learning (eg. Bolhuis 2016) or transformative leadership (eg. Imants 2010). It does not mean that teachers, educational researchers or even politicians do not strive towards education with more autonomy for teachers and students, more visible and acknowledged diversity and greater sustainability. It means that the words that are used have their specific meaning within their national, cultural and educational contexts and that we need to be aware of this when we write for an international audience and when we read articles from cultures different to our own.

We see in this volume a diverse collection of articles. The students’ levels range from kindergarten to higher education, the subjects from mathematics to pedagogy and the authors come from all corners of the world. It is therefore inevitable that the changes, the transformations, advocated by the authors and the innovation they propose are embedded in their own cultural, historical and social context. That makes the articles in this issue very different, while at the same time they are all aimed at improving education through the improvement of professional development activities and by contributing to the scientific knowledge base of professional learning.

The summary of the first article in this volume ‘A whole new world opened up: The impact of place and space-based professional development on one rural south Africa primary school starts with “Project Partnerships Achieve Literacy (PAL) South Africa was designed to transform teachers’ pedagogical practices (…)”. The authors describe a study to improve literacy education in schools with limited resources and with teachers who were familiar with only traditional pedagogies. In the project space- and place-based, generative and relational pedagogies were introduced to the teachers to use in their classrooms. The outcomes of the study show that teachers’ literacy pedagogy and the literacy of the students improved. The article is of significance for all who are interested in pedagogies of professional development that go beyond mere transmission systems.

Towards an empirically substantiated professional development programme to train lead teachers to support curriculum innovation is written by Dutch authors S. E. A. Groothuijsen, G. T. Prins & A. M. W. Bulte who also describe professional development of a specific subject area, in this case Chemistry at secondary level. The ultimate goal of their project is to improve chemistry education in secondary schools through the work of lead teachers. The participants in their project and research are not the teachers themselves but lead teachers who play an informal leading role in improving the curriculum. For the development of the course, the researchers use the CIMO-logic (Context, Intervention, Mechanism and Outcome) approach. The focus of the research is on the outcomes which are defined in terms of subject expertise, ability to facilitate learning community and personal dispositions. The lead teachers-in-training report an increase in their knowledge, skills and dispositions, but not all feel that they are competent and confident enough to be lead teachers. The designed programme seems to be a good means to educate lead teachers in this instance but it obviously raises questions about sustainability and whether such an approach could be replicated elsewhere.

In their article Investigating the role of the faculty advisor in doctoral students’ career trajectories, Komi T. German, Kate Sweeny and Megan L. Robbins studied yet another group of educationalists as the title reveals. As the system of doctoral studies in the Netherlands is quite different form that in the USA I needed to read the article carefully to understand what a faculty advisor is – not the research supervisor, but another advisor who has an important role in guiding the student in their studies and later professional career. However, like other readers I can easily understand how important the relation between the faculty student and doctoral student is. From the results of the study we learn that advisors who act as mentors and talk with their students about the job market may facilitate the successful pursuit of tenure-track positions. The researchers also found that the satisfaction of students depends on career outcomes.

From South Africa to the Netherlands to the USA we now arrive at a contribution from China with the title Constraints preventing Chinese EFL teachers from putting their stated beliefs into teaching practice. The focus of the research is on changes in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ beliefs about effective writing pedagogy and actual teaching practices. During the professional development activities the workshop leaders introduced genre-based pedagogy. The instructional model of this approach is the teaching–learning cycle comprising three

processes of modelling, joint negotiation of text, and independent construction of text. Interestingly, the study shows a growth in knowledge of genre theories and the participating teachers valued the approach. The authors also conclude that the expressed beliefs of the teachers were not consistent with what they actually did in their teaching practice. Teachers seem to experience many constraints which keep them from transforming their own practice.

Moving to Australia, we meet yet another group of participants in professional development activity and research, that of early years teachers in The role of cultural tools and motive objects in early childhood teachers’ curriculum decision-making about digital and popular culture play. The article is written by Joce Nuttall, Susan Edwards, Sue Grieshaber, Elizabeth Wood, Ana Mantilla, Timothy Chepkwesi Katiba and Jacinta Bartlett. As revealed in the title, the authors use the perspective of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and they designed and introduced a new cultural tool: the web-map. In their own words: ‘The web-map was therefor designed to re-mediate teachers’ approach to curriculum provision in preschools by supporting them to think about the relationship between traditional play and digital technologies, media, and popular culture in ways that do not reject outright the field’s longstanding commitment to practices of play-based learning’. Their research also reveals that tools like web-maps are useful for teachers to introduce digital technologies in pre-schools, but these tools have to meet with the needs and objectives of the teachers to truly transform their practice.

The following article is also written by an international authorship W. James Jacob, Weiyan Xiong, Huiyuan Ye, Shuo Wang and Xueshuang Wang and addresses the Strategic best practices of Flagship University professional development centres. The idea of Flagship Universities originated in the USA, but on the list of Flagship Universities that the authors present we find universities from many parts of the world. The focus of the article is specifically on professional development in Higher education, in teaching as well as research. Best practices at these universities are strategic initiatives to facilitate the quality of teaching and research of their faculty members and graduate students, consisting of professional development centres offering customised programmes and workshops with an outcome-oriented focus, building a comprehensive rewards structure, establishing a research orientation, and strengthening external connections. These are important practices for all our universities.

Harmen Schaap, Monika Louws, Jacobiene Meirink, Helma Oolbekkink-Marchand, Anna van der Want, Itzél Zuiker, Rosanne Zwart and Paulien Meijer are another Dutch group of authors.

They studied The tensions experienced by teachers when participating in a professional learning community. Like working with lead teachers, Professional Learning communities (PLCs) are regarded in the Netherlands as a good way to organise professional learning that is situated in or close to the workplace. The researchers interviewed 18 teachers who participated in PLCs to investigate their tensions. From the research we learn that 15 out of 18 teachers experience one or more tensions, most commonly those relating to high work pressure and a lack of shared learning. Interestingly, the tensions are often caused by negatively perceived learning cultures in schools.

Tim Fletcher, Déirdre Ní Chróinín and Mary O’Sullivan write about Developing deep understanding of teacher education practice through accessing and responding to pre-service teacher engagement with their learning. It is a self-study of teacher education practice (S-Step) about meaningful physical teacher education. The authors use LAMPE (explained in the article) as an approach that focuses on allowing teacher educators to more intentionally and systematically support pre-service teachers’ learning about meaningful physical education. In this study, they tried to build a bridge between the ways they enacted teacher education practices using LAMPE and how their students experienced those practices, which they studied from accessing and responding to their engagement. They conclude that they made some progress in being intentional about seeking and incorporating students’ perspectives. They are also critical about the progress they made (an essential aspect of credible education research) and in this way these researchers act as models for being reflective and insightful of our own teaching.

For me the last article The professional development of higher education based teacher educators: Needs and realities is of personal interest as the development of teacher educators’ identity and profession is my research area. The article is written by Ann MacPhail, Marit Ulvik, Ainat Guberman, Gerry Czerniawski, Helma Oolbekkink-Marchand and Yvonne Bain, European authors from different jurisdictions. Their research is based on a European project called InFO-TED (International Forum for Teacher Educator Development. The authors interviewed 61 teacher educators about their professional development and their needs. It is always interesting, or indeed, shocking, to read that professional development for teacher educators is left to the individual initiative of teacher educators and it seems that in many cases little progress has been made since the publication of our own special issue on The Professional Development of Teacher Educators in 2010. I hope this research and project may contribute to changing this. The authors also found that teacher educators seek professional development activities that fit expert learners: collaboration with peers and colleagues, looking for opportunities to improve teacher education practices and the need to improve research skills. If we want to transform teacher education there is a need for more projects like InFO-TED and more leadership in the field of professional development for teacher educators.

Notes

1. I even used ‘transformation’ in the title of a recent chapter I co-authored with David Powell.