Transformational Professional Learning: Making a Difference in Schools by Deborah Netolicky should be read by anyone who want to make a difference in education. For those of us who have chosen to stay in the classroom it is an antidote to what can only be described as generalised professional neglect. Redressing teacher professional learning and development in a thorough, and carefully considered manner, is the focus of this book. By asking teachers about their experiences of professional learning, and when they have professionally learned, it was found there were insights to be had beyond a survey, or the education sector’s standard requirements. The evidence in this book corresponds with my own experiences and thoughts when I reflect on twenty years of early childhood and primary teaching, which has been very challenging, while intellectually exciting, and equally, profoundly disappointing.
Too many experiences of perfunctory, and incompetent ‘leadership’, have been sources of discouragement. I suspect too many classroom teachers have never had the opportunity, or the encouragement to engage in considered professional discussions with school leaders and colleagues, certainly the desire to facilitate any dialogue about pedagogical practice is generally avoided. Netolicky is refreshingly honest and tackles these uncomfortable truths head-on. Acknowledging her research, she “reveals that professional learning and growth can be surprising, non-linear, and messy.” She also states that, “teacher collaborative learning is not a panacea,” especially so when it is “forced, insincere, and performative, rather than substantial.”
Teachers can evolve and adapt, and the profession develop, only when there is an open invitation for continuous learning. If quality systems and teachers are the objective, we need to be nurtured and not judged on our deficits. Every school should be able to articulate a vision for its community. We should not be wondering what a school leadership’s pedagogical practices and principles may be. At considerable personal expense and time, while a novice, I was enlivened by my engagement with professional learning provided by David Hornsby, Deb Sukarna, Di Snowball, and Dianne Siemon, to name a few, all recognised leaders and experts in their fields of literacy and numeracy, and inquiry learning. However, while I learnt a great deal, the absence of any collaboration within schools meant that I could not meaningfully develop my practice. Worse still, under such circumstances, we are left entrapped by methods recommended only by “ingrained habits”.
Fortunately, through my active engagement with the Victorian Association of Philosophy in Schools I had the opportunity to experience the power of developing practice through repetition and review, and the ongoing process of reflective practice provided by my self-selected mentor and collaborator, Janette Poulton. It was this context that supported me to be, in the author’s words, self-efficacious, empowered, and in control of my professional growth and development. I have never been successful in convincing school leaders of the value of a ‘community of enquirers’, where philosophical dialogue and associated processes for students and teachers provides the means for reciprocal metacognitive learning and growth.
Concerns about quality, and teaching outcomes, are too often dominated by party political debate. Conducted by politicians who have little or no grasp of what teachers in schools do, or how learning occurs, we need only recall past education minister Julia Gillard who reduced the process of learning to read to, C-A-T spells ‘cat’. Her introduction of NAPLAN was another problem solved as long we did what we were told by the experts. Instruction and training may be cheaper but it is not education, most certainly our practice as teachers is not developed or transformed. “Transformational learning shapes and re-forms the internal fabric of a person’s knowing, doing, being, and becoming”: if teachers are to learn and develop in communities there must be meaning and purpose, and a vision for their practice; we need to shift the focus away from “disseminating information to harnessing what is known about how people learn.”
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Critical Consciousness - Spirit of Paulo Friere 