1. Professional Competence and Reflective Practice
Teachers as lead intellectuals! ‘the lad/lass o pairts’

2. Dimensions of Development Evidenced by
greater complexity in teaching e.g. in handling mixed-ability classes, reluctant learners, classes marked by significant diversity, or inter-disciplinary work;
the deployment of a wider range of teaching strategies;
the ability to adduce evidence of one’s effectiveness;
basing teaching on a wider range of evidence, reading and research; and

3. A pronounced capacity for self-criticism and self-improvement; the ability to impact on colleagues through mentoring and coaching, modelling good practice, contributing to the literature on teaching and learning and public discussion of professional issues, leading staff development , all based on the capacity to theorise about policy and practice.

4. A confluence of three ideas
Problem Solving
Research Lesson Study
Communities of Practice

5. Problem solving and the nature of knowledge
Karl Popper
Problem solving and the nature of knowledge

6. P1 TS EE P2

7. Knowledge as problem solving
Retrograde Motion

8. Sharpe, R. (2004)
Professional Knowledge is no longer viewed as just consisting of a standardised, explicit and fixed knowledge base. It is now seen as knowledge which exists as knowledge in use, is ethical in its use and is changed by experience. The distinctive nature of professional knowledge lies in the interplay between its construction and use. When teachers use their knowledge, use changes what knowledge is.

9. Research Lesson Study (RLS)

10. TS1
P TS EE P2
TSn

11. Professional Communities
Community as normative prescription or empirical description
Gemeinschaft or Gesellschaft?

12. A Definition
Communities of practice are groups of people informally bound together by shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise.

13. They are not new:
e.g.1 corporations of metal workers, potters, and masons in Classical Greece
e.g.2 Craft Guilds in the Middle Ages

14. How they compare with other groups.
A Snapshot Comparison
Communities of practice, formal work groups, teams and informal networks are useful in complementary ways. Below is a summary of their characteristics.
What’s the purpose?
Who belongs?
What holds it together?
How long does it last?
Community of practice
To develop members’ capabilities; to build and exchange knowledge
Members who select themselves
Passion, commitment, and identification with the group’s expertise
As long as there is interest in maintaining the group
Formal work group
To deliver a product or service
Everyone who reports to the group’s manager
Job requirements and common goals
Until the next reorganisation
Project team
To accomplish a specified task
Employees assigned by senior management
The project’s milestones and goals
Until the project has been completed
Informal network
To collect and pass on business information
Friends and business acquaintances
Mutual needs
As long as people have a reason to connect

15. negotiated enterprise
mutual accountability
interpretations
rhythms
local response
joint enterprise
mutual engagement
shared repertoire
engaged diversity
doing things together
relationships
social complexity
community
maintenance
stories
styles artefacts
actions tools
historical events
discourses
concepts
Dimensions of practice as the property of a community
Mutual engagement
A joint enterprise
A shared repertoire ‘Communities of practice’
Learning, Meaning and Identity
Etienne Wenger 2006

16. They don’t replace existing structures but complement them and radically galvanise knowledge sharing, learning and change
However, the organic, spontaneous and informal nature of communities of practice makes them resistant to supervision and interference!

17. Successful managers cannot mandate communities of practice they can only hope to create them together by:
providing an infrastructure to nurture them; and
bringing the right people together.

18. Competent membership of a community of practice
The ability to engage with other members and respond to their actions;
The ability to establish relationships as a basis for participation;
The ability to understand the work of the community deeply enough to take some responsibility for it; and
The ability to make use of the repertoire of practice to engage in the history of practice and to make this history newly meaningful.

19. Communities of Practice: the Organisational Frontier
Communities of Practice: the Organisational Frontier? & Organisational Challenges

20. Burns and Stalker -The Management of Innovation
Ideal types (after Weber)
Mechanistic organisations V
Organic organisations

21. A Practical example
The Problem (P1) Pupils in key stage 3 don’t work well in groups

22. TLRP findings (1) Blatchford et al (2001-2004)
Group work can be made to work with benefits to attainment, motivation and behaviour.
Group work skills need to be approached developmentally: social skills first, then communication skills, then problem-solving. 

23. TLRP findings (2) McGuinness and Sheehy (2001-2004)
Developing pupils’ capacity to learn takes time and special attention needs to be paid to those with poorer cognitive and social resources.
This in turn requires teachers to develop both their practices and their beliefs about learners.

24. TLRP findings (3) Hughes et al and Brookes
Attention needs to be given to the creation of positive classroom climates characterized by respect, trust and mutual exchange of dignity.
The most fundamental form of education – the process of becoming a person – requires as much careful consideration as the acquisition of knowledge and skills.
Personalized provision in schools should build on an understanding of the development of these strategic biographies, and respond to the social, cultural and material experiences of different groups of learners

25. Tentative solution
Plan a lesson which approaches group work from a development perspective. What social and communication skills do we need to explicitly factor into our lesson plan? How can we build a positive classroom climate which facilitates pupils working in groups?

26. RLS (1) and (EE)
RLS(2) and (EE)
RLS (n) and (EE)

27. Modified problem 1 or new problem 2
Process begins anew

28. Professional competence
leading to
Ontological security