reflecting on the nature of teacher work

Reflecting on theNature of TeacherWork

Phil WoodSchool of EducationUniversity of Leicester

• Some initial thinking and ideas

• Based on several areas of work from the last few years

• Complexity theory• Lesson Study• Curriculum Design and programme development• Action research projects

• Emergent process

Current policy and cultural environments in education

• Teaching as business capital (Hargreaves and Fullan, 2012)

• Teaching as a ‘complicated’ activity (= reductionism and hence predictability)

• Focus on ‘measurable’ leading to fixation with numeric data

• Grading of teacher work, ever more elaborate accountability structures, central position of testing within the system

Considering an alternative view

• Teaching as an activity is meaningless unless it is considered in conjunction with:

• Learning• Curriculum• Assessment

• If we take any one of these elements, they are each made up of a large number of elements.

• They are complex adaptive systems – in this case interpenetrating complex adaptive systems

Cilliers (1998) characterised CASs has having:

• a large number of elements with many interactions;

• interactions which are non-linear, i.e. large-scale causes can have small-scale impacts and vice versa;

• interactions which lead to feedback loops, both negative and positive;

• an ‘open’ system, having interactions with elements in external environments beyond the immediate system;

• elements which interact with their environment making the identification of boundaries difficult;

• a system which is far from equilibrium and therefore needs a constant energy flow for it to operate;

• the importance of history, past processes playing a role in forming the present, often unpredictably;

• each element only acting on local information rather than information from the whole system.

Pedagogy defined as the interpenetration of these complex adaptive systems and their interact with teacher and students

But faced by such huge complexity, how can teachers’ work be experienced as a coherent process?

• We build schema which help to scaffold and structure our understanding and practice of pedagogy.

• Such schema emerge over time, developed through practice, experience, engagement with educational debates

• Influenced by prior experiences and values/ethics

• Help in complexity reduction (Biesta, 2010)

In the classroom, we also reduce the immediate complexity through the use of heuristics:

‘A heuristic is a strategy that ignores part of the information, with the goal of making decisions more quickly, frugally, and/or accurately than more complex methods.’

(Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier, 2011: 454)

‘[Simple heuristics]..are indispensable to social intelligence.’

‘…complex social problems with ill-defined rules…lie far beyond the reach of optimization. Complexity makes simple heuristics indispensable.’

(Hertwig et al, 2013: 16-17)

Examples of heuristics

• Imitate the successful heuristic - Determine the most successful individual in a given context and imitate their behaviour

• Representativeness heuristic – using past experience of events. To what extent does this event fit with similar events/known processes I have come across before?

• Availability heuristic – the probability of an event is estimated by how many like events can be immediately called to mind

• Familiarity heuristic – where the familiar is preferred over the novel, and linked to the availability heuristic

Heuristics

Schema

But….

• Heuristics are linked to various fallacies due to their frugal nature.

• Schema and heuristics are simplifications and therefore will always be approximations.

• Reflective practice is concerned with identifying fallacies/approximations and opening up areas of complexity to consider and change practice – amending heuristics and schema.

• Research is the same process, but extends evidence concerning the complexity and useful possible practice changes in a given context.

• Complex pragmatism – knowledge and understanding of complexity through action

• Theory-practice gap dissolves as theories are only schema/heuristics in a sense.

Some initial insights

• Teachers develop over time by creating and amending schema and heuristics which provide the basis for judgement and practice

• Reflective practice (and research) help create better schema and heuristics

• The emergence of ‘wise judgement’ (Biesta, 2014) the continued grappling with these processes

• When helping new teachers develop practice, or supporting those in trouble, we need to help them develop a structured understanding of their emerging practice, and support reflective/reflexive practice.