Teaching for Tomorrow Today

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Contributions from a Brazilian autonomous community of teacher-researchers. Luiz Sanchez Neto, Alan Ovens & Cheryl Craig. From: Teaching for tomorrow ...
Chapter  13   Teacher networks as professional knowledge communities: Contributions from a Brazilian autonomous community of teacher-researchers Luiz Sanchez Neto, Alan Ovens & Cheryl Craig

Teaching for Tomorrow Today Edited by Dawn Garbett & Alan Ovens

From: Teaching for tomorrow today Dawn Garbett & Alan Ovens (Eds) 2015, 559 pages, Soft cover ISBN 9780473329068 Publications details and purchasing information available from: www.ISATT.org or www.edify.co.nz

International Study Association of Teachers and Teaching

Teaching for tomorrow today is a theme that acknowledges teaching is a living practice that continually evolves, adapts and responds to the opportunities, promises and challenges of being in modern times. Our aim has been to edit a publication that contributes to an on-going discussion of emerging possibilities for teachers and teaching that the 17th Biennial ISATT conference provided. We hope that teachers find it an enriching, supportive and engaging community to be a part of, and that this book endures as a record of the work that was shared in Auckland, New Zealand.

To cite this chapter: Sanchez Neto, L., Ovens, A., & Craig, C. (2015). Teacher networks as professional knowledge communities: Contributions from a Brazilian autonomous community of teacherresearchers, In D. Garbett and A. Ovens (Eds), Teaching for tomorrow today (pp. 105-114). Auckland, NZ: Edify

13 Teacher networks as professional knowledge communities: Contributions from a Brazilian autonomous community of teacherresearchers 15 Luiz Sanches Neto1, Alan Ovens2 & Cheryl Craig3 State University of São Paulo 2 The University of Auckland 3 University of Houston 1

Teaching is a complex activity that is dynamic, unpredictable and open to many interpretive possibilities (Davis & Sumara, 2006; Mason, 2008). What works in one context may not necessarily work in another, or even a second time in the same context. For this reason it is difficult to solve the unique and situational problems that emerge in teaching with generic forms of professional knowledge. In fact, often teachers become frustrated when educational theory fails to accommodate the highly contextualized and personal nature of teaching (Bore & Wright, 2009). This is not meant to suggest that teachers do not seek to use theory in their teaching. Rather, it suggests a need to better explore the networks and work cultures that support and validate teachers’ ways of knowing. What we need is an enhanced path to understand how professional knowledge is developed when teachers work together in communities or networks of professional learning. In this chapter we report on how one community of teacher-researchers formed a support network for physical education teachers in São Paulo, Brazil. We demonstrate how the narratives, produced by the teachers within this autonomous group, point to shared possibilities of inquiry on their teaching practices and professional learning process.

Author Contact: [email protected] This project has been developed in collaboration with ISATT senior researchers since the Biennial Conference held in Ghent, Belgium (2013). Recently, it became a Post-Doctoral research project. 1

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Context The focus in this study is on the shared processes within a group of teachers who worked in a self-organised and autonomous way without any formal institutional affiliation or support. Initially, four physical education teachers formed the group in 2005 when they began to contact each other on a regular basis by telephone, e-mail exchanges and occasional meetings. One of the coauthors 16 is a member and co-founder of the group. As other teachers expressed an interest in joining the group, they decided regular meetings were an effective way to foster discussion and reflection. Eventually, as the size of the group grew, there was a need to explore other ways to work as a collective and this lead to creating a website in 2006. Currently, the group has 267 members, including teachers from all Brazilian regions and faculty from other areas and different levels of basic and higher education, although the website originally targeted physical education teachers working in basic education. One way of conceptualizing the work of a group like this is to see it as a kind of “knowledge community” (Craig, 1995a, 1995b) with a form of collaborative partnership existing among its participants. For Craig (1995a), the definition of knowledge community derives from the interpretive necessity of producing meaning. There is a narrative act allowing the mediation – emerging from collaborative conversations that enables each teacher’s knowledge to be visible – of a particular context for understanding and making sense of it. Then, a knowledge community is an interactive space or locus where teachers negotiate meanings for their experiences, because they work in professional knowledge contexts and they come to know professional context knowledge in situations.

Using narratives to research education Narratives have become an effective way of studying the complexity of educational phenomena (Craig, Yo & Oh, 2012). In the Brazilian context, narrative research has been used to research teachers’ educative practices (Bragança & Maurício, 2008), to understand the relationships between higher education professors and basic education teachers (Fiorentini, 2009), and for exploring school physical education (Molina Neto, Bossle, Silva, & Sanchotene, 2009; Diehl & Silva, 2010). Using narratives as a research tool acknowledges that linguistic forms mediate and organise our perceptions of the world and transform them into knowledge and experience. On the basis of this constructed experience we understand the world and ourselves as well as give meaning and purpose to our actions (Ricœur, 1991). Narratives contain traces of both the individual’s identity and the mechanisms used to make sense of and represent the world. It is in their potential to reveal the mechanisms through which professional knowledge is constructed, validated and communicated that such narratives become valuable resources for research in physical education (Ovens, 2007).

We refer to coauthors in respect to the supervisors and the international collaborators (ISATT senior researchers), because this research project has been conceived as a collective and collaborative one.

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Narratives are a core tool for (auto)biographical research. According to Bragança and Maurício (2008), (auto)biography consists in a written production by one person on her/himself, with reference to her/his existential trajectory, focusing on the life broadly, without addressing fragments, but seeking the expression of the totality or the essentials of life. When dealing with an investigative community of practice, composed by teachers and professors teaching mathematics in basic and higher education, Fiorentini (2009) provides a detailed life narrative about a group of teachers (on their “know-how” to do) that only addresses who is participating in the collective process that the author describes and interprets. In a similar way, Silva and Diehl (2010) use narrative methodology to create opportunities for teachers to reflect on their actions and foster their work, contributing to the process of permanent education. According to Suárez (2008), narratives can also be a strategy of pedagogical action-research. For this, narratives should be structured from the establishment of horizontal relationships and opportunities for collaboration between academic researchers and teachers who recount their experiences. The ultimate intention would constitute investigative communities (or of “mutual care”). The narrative documentation of teaching experience falls within the field of educational research as a particular form of interpretive research that aims to reconstruct, document, question and make critical the senses and pedagogical understandings that teachers construct, reconstruct and negotiate when they write, read, reflect and talk to colleagues about their own educative practices (Suárez, 2008, p.112).

Research Design The research design is based on an (auto)biographical examination of participants’ experiences using a narrative inquiry methodology (Craig, 2013; Craig et al., 2012, Ovens, 2007). (Auto)Biography allows participants to investigate teaching problems “from inside”, as well as the resources (social, cultural, technical and curricular) they employ to solve such problems. In particular, their narratives can provide insights into the networks of relationships that teachers form in professional environments and that constitute knowledge communities to guide their process of pedagogical decision making. The narratives are an individual introspective record written by each teacher to access the highly personal contingents of teaching. According to Nóvoa (2007), the (auto)biographical experiences in the educational field illustrate the amalgam of wills to produce another kind of knowledge, closest to the teachers’ everyday life, valuing individuals as subjects 17, the quality and the living experience at the expense of structures, systems, and the quantity of what is already established.

The term “subject” (often used in Portuguese and other Latin languages) is connected with the perspective of subjectivity of an individual, emphasizing their idiosyncrasies and existential standpoint. This notion has been explored in Brazilian physical education curriculum making from Merleau-Ponty’s and Freire’s theoretical benchmarks (Betti, Knijnik, Venâncio & Sanches Neto, 2015). 17

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Participants The participants were three women who teach physical education in schools located in the metropolitan region of São Paulo, and who have met regularly with other teachers to discuss their teaching practices for at least four years. The three participants worked in kindergarten, elementary, secondary and/or high school. When enrolled in academic programs, they also accumulated the faculty function as assistants in higher education. However, the discussion about their narratives occurred at distance from their workplaces, through the group website and in public spaces in various regions of São Paulo. In the Figure 1, the participants express their own “worldview”. Carla Master and Doctoral student of school psychology (USP, São Paulo). Working since 1998 in kindergarten and elementary school in the private network of the city of São Paulo. I have teaching experience in higher education. I am married with a daughter, white of Polish ethnicity, heterosexual, Catholic and believe in the spirituality of the universe ruled by energies. My beliefs are based on the principles: love, faith and sincerity. Luciana Post-Doctoral student of education (UFS, Aracaju), Doctor of education, Master and Specialist of school physical education. Working since 1996 in public elementary and high school in the city of São Paulo. I have teaching experience in higher education. I am married without children, black, Catholic Christian. My beliefs are based on the principles: hope, courage and joy. Tiemi Master of physical education (USP, São Paulo). Working since 2006 in public elementary and high school of the State network in the city of São Paulo. I have teaching experience in higher education. I am married with two children, of Japanese ethnicity, heterosexual, Catholic Apostolic Roman. My beliefs are based on the principles: God, love of neighbor, family, friends, work, professional achievement and teaching.

Figure 1. Brief (auto)biography by the participating teachers. As a reflexive method, each participant inquired into their own teaching and capacity to “make” the worlds they were experiencing (Ovens, 2014), based on ongoing collective questioning and discussion of the stories they shared about those experiences. The participants have not chosen anonymity and opted to share personal information.

Writing process and analysis of the narratives We have considered documentary sources generated by the participants, in which we have highlighted their (auto)biographical narratives. We also conducted focus groups meetings and individual semi-structured interviews. The narratives were written by the teachers within the scope of their own discussions and collectively agreed interests, without any specific request by

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the researcher for the purposes of this investigation. Before the production of the narratives, the teachers discussed the nature of (auto)biographical methods and considered that their shared experience could be re-signified if they write about it. Then, the teachers tried to identify, in the choices made in their own lives, how they became the teachers that they are. While the writing of the (auto)biographies was not initiated as part of this research, each participant was invited to contribute their biography for analysis. This meant that there was no prior standardization of how to write the narratives and that the themes identified through the analysis emerged after the writing process. We have used the strategy of triangulation for interpretive analysis (Alves-Mazzotti & Gewandsznajder, 1998) of the narratives, establishing relationships between the themes and the personal perspectives inferred from the interviews and focus groups.

Results and discussion By revisiting their history through the narratives, the participants sought a deeper understanding of their teaching. They worried about generating empirical data from their practices and used the narratives to share and refract their life stories. In this way they were able to generate knowledge on themselves. It was a necessary step in the organization of the career paths that each teacher elaborated, while reflecting on their professional development and the reasons for joining and staying in the group. This activity was related to the planning of their teaching career, with two senses: the (auto)biography would be their trajectory until the present and the career planning would be their projection for the future. Through such activities, the participants stepped into spaces for reflection on the professional identity as teachers, what relates to the notion of professionalism in contemporary educational theories (Contreras Domingo, 2001). The participants associated the coherence of their practices to the notion of autonomy, exercising it in the group and enlarging it in the interactive and collective decision-making space of school work. For example, Carla shared how her desire to explore new ideas in her teaching linked with and was supported by the original formation of the group: I start considering the students as co-participants in the teaching-learning process. […] We (Tiemi, Luciana, Luiz and I) started to meet to discuss our school physical education practices and, then, we formed the teacher-researchers group (Carla on students’ autonomy and the reasoning to create the group) 18. The opportunity to discuss issues with others in the group acted as a process of “negotiation”, that allowed some participants to overcome the limits to their sense of autonomy in each situated context in which they work.

Quotes from the participants have been translated from Portuguese into English. Where necessary, the translations have been edited to improve grammar and maintain their original meaning.

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They shared issues and through a systematic process of reflection, they reframed their understanding being teachers. Their narratives have shown five themes on important relationships as arranged in the Figure 2.

Figure 2. Themes of the narratives. The (auto)biographical records reveal a web of connections to the academic, school, family, sociocultural and labor contexts. The predominant themes were “family” and “academic” relationships, indicating that, on the one hand, the formative experiences were crucial to the process of professional development of teachers. On the other hand, living with the family also had a decisive influence on the career planning of teachers. Supported by Gauthier et al. (1998), we understand that teachers’ knowledge has a unique social nature and helps determine the relationships teachers form, considering temporal (viewed across the life of each teacher) and relational perspectives (evidenced in family and academic connections). According to Gauthier et al., knowledge of the pedagogical act legitimized by research is currently the less developed type of knowledge in the set of teaching knowledge (also composed of disciplinary, curricular, academic, experiential and pedagogical tradition knowledge). Paradoxically, Gauthier et al. (1998) point out that knowledge of the pedagogical act is the most necessary to the professionalization of teaching, being endowed with epistemological and political dimensions. Some aspects of the participants’ professional learning and career progression were also shared in the narratives. One participant mentioned the relationship of her career to action-

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research, sometimes linked to work planning, to the structuring of the career or to her research projects in collaboration. I started a more in-depth reflection regarding my own pedagogical practice, the work developed in school physical education, and discussed with the autonomous group of teacher-researchers. At that moment, then, I retake the interest with the action-research referential (Luciana on action-research). According to Elliott (1994), this may be an indication that the teachers took action-research as their method of work, which is a crucial feature in the understanding of Elliott about being a “teacher-researcher”. Contreras Domingo (2001) contributes to the understanding of the teachers’ career path, since it is located towards the enhancement of the professional practice. The participants faced, lived and confronted issues pertaining to professionalism and professionalization as their careers progressed. They also encountered professional uncertainty and conflicts, as suggested in the narratives of two participants. I have participated in several formative meetings as speaker or mediator […] due to the experience within the group of teacher-researchers and for participating in the team responsible for writing the physical education curriculum proposal for the entire State network. […] After twelve years as teacher, I asked for clearance to enroll in the Doctorate (Luciana on her career as teacher, curriculum-maker and researcher). I entered the Master’s with great interest to study theoretical knowledge to teach at school level […]. When I finished my research, I was invited to teach in one university, the same one I teach at today. But my colleagues from the teacher-researchers group supported to enter the State network and teach physical education at school (Tiemi on teaching concomitantly at school and higher education). We identified other themes geared to the teachers’ work underpinning the (auto)biographical narratives: autonomy, authoring and teacher education. All participants in their narratives presented notions of planning for their careers in order to enhance the teaching autonomy and authorship of their own pedagogical work, and analyzed the processes of teacher education and professional development as educational workers. However, we noticed that the challenges to collectively perform the work still appear as challenges to the participants, either by questions that refer to the professionalism of teachers, or structural issues of Brazilian school systems, as the contexts faced in public and private networks of schools located in the metropolitan region of São Paulo. The participants seemed committed and concerned to resolve such challenges together, supported by the group, when they questioned the quality, rigor and excellence of their work and discussed possibilities for intervention. Since 2006, I teach elementary school physical education based on the contents and themes discussed with the group of teacher-researchers. But during 2009, I asked for clearance to work in another school, at high school level, to put into practice the State curriculum

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proposal and the theoretical contents from the earlier systematization by the group (Tiemi on her teaching challenges). Controversially, the most incisive actions by the participants requested their removal from the working places; either searching the emerging problems of their daily lives and qualifying in Graduate programs, or working for the preparation of new teachers in higher education, or coordinating the efforts of peers in administrative and bureaucratic positions, or developing curriculum proposals to subsidize public policies guided by concrete teaching practices.

Conclusion We conclude that the teachers’ narratives reveal mutual influence of academic and family issues. But for the three co-founders, there is predominance of family background as the most important aspect in their trajectory. On the one hand, the academic experiences were remarkable in the process of professional development for the participants. On the other hand, daily routines experienced with family were also decisive in career planning by the teachers. We realize that such characteristics permeated the professional identity (sense of professionalism) assumed by the participants in their arguments. The narratives have allowed participants to investigate their teaching “from inside” and the group works as a “knowledge community” (Craig, 1995a, 1995b) with collaborative partnerships existing among its participants. The narratives allowed to access the life trajectory of the participants in their own reflections, according to their “own words”. We also noticed that the writing of the narratives had been associated with the career planning of each teacher. Towards our next step, and as suggestion for future investigation, we intend to discuss more and summarize what was learned about this particular knowledge community. Our main conclusion is that narratives (preferably combined with other research strategies) contribute to understand the participants position as a non-linear stance, referring complexity thinking in respect to teaching being situated and contingent activity (Ovens, Hopper & Butler, 2013), rather than stable and generalized practice.

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Bragança, I. F. S.; Maurício, L. V. (2008). Histórias de vida e práticas de formação. In M. C. Passeggi & E. C. Souza (Orgs.). (Auto)biografia: formação, territórios e saberes (pp. 253-271). Natal-RN: EdUFRN; São Paulo: Paulus. Cochran-Smith, M.; Lytle, S. L. (2009). Inquiry as stance: Practitioner research for the next generation. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Contreras Domingo, J. (2001). La autonomía del profesorado. Madrid: Morata. Craig, C. J. (1995a). Knowledge communities: A way of making sense of how beginning teachers come to know in their professional knowledge contexts. Curriculum Inquiry, 25(2), 151-175. Craig, C. J. (1995b). Coming to know on the professional knowledge landscape: Benita’s first year of teaching. In D. J. Clandinin & F. M. Connelly (Eds.), Teachers’ professional knowledge landscapes (pp.137-141). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Craig, C. J. (2013). Teaching and learning to teach: Roles, beliefs, attitudes, and interactions, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 19(5), 475-477. DOI: 10.1080/13540602.2013.827362 Craig, C. J.; Meijer, P. C.; Broeckmans, J. (2013). From teacher thinking to teachers and teaching: The evolution of a research community. London, UK: Emerald Insight. Craig, C. J.; You, J. A.; Oh, S. (2012). Why school-based narrative inquiry in physical education research? An international perspective. Asia-Pacific Journal of Education, 32(3), 271-284. DOI: 10.1080/02188791.2012.711295 Davis, B.; Sumara, D. (2006). Complexity and education: Inquiries into learning, teaching, and research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Day, C., Gu, Q. (2010). The new lives of teachers: Teacher quality and school development. London: Routledge. Elliott, J. (1994). Research on teachers' knowledge and action research. Educational Action Research, 2(1), 133-137. Fiorentini, D. (2009). Quando acadêmicos da universidade e professores da escola básica constituem uma comunidade de prática reflexiva e investigativa. In D. Fiorentini; R. C. Grando & R. G. S. Miskulin (Orgs.). Práticas de formação e de pesquisa de professores que ensinam matemática (pp. 233-255). Campinas-SP: Mercado de Letras. Gauthier, C.; Martineau, S.; Desbiens, J. F.; Malo, A.; Simard, D. (1998). Por uma teoria da pedagogia: pesquisas contemporâneas sobre o saber docente. Ijuí-RS: Unijuí. Huberman, M. (1993). The lives of teachers. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Mason, M. (2008). What is complexity theory and what are its implications for educational change? Educational Philosophy and Theory, 40(1), 35-47. Molina Neto, V.; Bossle, F.; Silva, L. O.; Sanchotene, M. U. (2009). Quem aprende? Pesquisa e formação em educação física escolar. Ijuí-RS: Unijuí. Nóvoa, A. (1992). O passado e o presente dos professores. In: A. Nóvoa (Org.). Profissão: professor (2ª ed.). (pp.13-34). Porto: Porto Editora. Nóvoa, A. (Org.). (2007). Vidas de professores. (2ª ed.). Porto: Porto Editora. Ovens, A. (2007) Telling stories about learning to teach. Journal of Physical Education New Zealand, 40(3), 11-14. Ovens, A. (2014) Disturbing practice in teacher education through peer-teaching. In: A. Ovens & T. Fletcher (Eds). Self-study in physical education: Exploring the interplay between scholarship and practice (pp. 87-98). London, UK: Springer. Ovens, A.; Godber, K. (2013). Affordance networks and the complexity of learning. In: A. Ovens, T. Hopper, & J. Butler (Eds.). Complexity thinking in physical education: Reframing curriculum, pedagogy and research (pp. 55-66). London: Routledge. Ovens, A.; Hopper, T.; Butler, J. (Eds.). (2013). Complexity thinking in physical education: Reframing curriculum, pedagogy and research. London: Routledge.

114 Chapter 13: Teacher networks Silva, L. O.; Diehl, V. R. (2010). Da construção dos procedimentos metodológicos à produção de conhecimentos: compartilhando experiências a partir da narrativa escrita. In: V. Molina Neto & F. Bossle (Orgs.). O ofício de ensinar e pesquisar na Educação Física escolar (pp. 94-122). Porto Alegre: Sulina. Suárez, D. H. (2008). A documentação narrativa de experiências pedagógicas como estratégias de pesquisa-ação-formação de docentes. In: M. C. Passeggi & T. M. N. Barbosa (Orgs.). Narrativas de formação e saberes biográficos (pp. 112-121). Natal: EDUFRN/São Paulo: Paulus.