Interactive research as a strategy for practice-based learning
designing competence development and professional growth in local school practice
pp. 240-255
in: Stephen Billett (ed), Learning through practice, Berlin, Springer, 2010Abstrakt
This chapter focuses on the work of teachers and education administrators" use of interactional learning strategy. Instead of being guided by external experts, an interactive and dialogic approach is enacted between researchers and practitioners, in promoting the developmental needs and capacities of educational practitioners and generating responses to problems arising in practice settings . It is held that these problems and what constitutes effective and appropriate solutions may be unknown and unknowable to external experts, which limits their capacity to provide direct and effective guidance and recommendations. Instead, practice-based responses arising through interactions between practitioners and researchers are more likely to be generative of effective responses, whilst building capacity to resolve subsequent problems. Factors shaping the likely success of these strategies are premised upon the degree by which the practitioners are ready to and are confident in their capacity to progress these interactions. The pedagogic dimensions of these interactions were promoted by the use of specific strategies that included meetings and sharing of concerns and potential responses through a facilitated process ordered by the researchers as external agents. It is through these interventions that collective learning is secured and commitments to remake practice are emphasised.