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Pedagogic literacy – a framework for understanding the growth of teacher professionalism in a complex era

Phil Wood & Wasyl CajklerLesson Study Research GroupSchool of EducationUniversity of Leicester

Outline

• Current Trends

• Problems Relating to Changing Professionalism

• Foundations of an Alternative View

• Underlying Principles of Pedagogic Literacy

• Some Initial Reflections

• Outlining Pedagogic Literacy

Current Trends

• Education as economic tool

• Development of the ‘need’ to control education

• Global competition in education (e.g. PISA)

• Change in teacher work from professional autonomy to ‘quantification of value’ (Stevenson & Wood, 2013)

Problems relating to changing professionalism

• Rise of performativity (Ball, 2003)

Ryan and Bourke (2013:412) make the case that, ‘…. Professional values are substituted by organisational values. Bureaucratic, hierarchical and managerial controls replace cultures of collaboration: there are competencies and licenses rather than trust.’

• Loss of trust, leading to narrow view of teacher work through quantifiable standardisation and accountability

Foundations of an alternative view• Professional vs Business Capital (Hargreaves and Fullan, 2012)

• Business capital – hard, but essentially easy work. Can become expert relatively quickly through hard work and use of quantitative data.

• Alternative is Professional Capital

Professional Capital = Human Capital + Social Capital + Decisional Capital

Underlying principles of Pedagogic Literacy (1)

• Pedagogic Literacy is an emerging concept from our work on Lesson Study

• Theory and practice, action and reflection are inseparable

• The notion of ‘professional growth’ as holistic change is a wide area of research but is to a degree dispersed across many subfields

Underlying principles of Pedagogic Literacy (2)

• Teaching is part of what it means to be human

• Teachers’ expertise comes form a conscious and long-term engagement with pedagogy

• Importance of reflection, collaboration and professional autonomy

• Pedagogic literacy is holistic and grows over a whole career

Some initial reflectionsBiesta (2014: 129-130) states, ‘because education is multi-dimensional, teachers constantly need to make judgements about how to balance the different dimensions; they need to set priorities - which can never be set in general but always need to be set in concrete situations with regards to concrete students - and they need to be able to handle tensions and conflicts and should be able to see and utilize possibilities for synergy.’

• Pedagogic literacy is an emergent process

• A holistic process which is focused on generating ‘wise educational judgement’.

• Professional trust (and autonomy) and responsibility are central

Outlining Pedagogic Literacy

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