What's happening in primary schools where schoolwide changes to teacher practice are possible?

Abstract

Primary school teachers are increasingly expected to operate as reflective practitioners, using research to inform and improve their practice, while school leaders, with limited budgets for professional development, provide more in-house training to support them. But what mediating factors within a school can influence in-service primary teachers’ attempts to improve their practice? And what provisions can school leaders make to support their professional learning? This paper presents key findings from a mixed methods study into the dissemination of a resource designed to help teachers improve their assessment practice. It draws upon scholarship from inter-related fields of communication theory (Harris and Nelson, 2008), workplace learning (Hodkinson and Hodkinson, 2005) and knowledge transfer (Aalbers et al., 2014) to demonstrate: the interactive nature of communication that supports change; the importance of informal contacts between colleagues in the transfer of new knowledge; and the overarching workplace characteristics which facilitate schoolwide changes to practice. It is concluded that changing teachers’ practice is a complex, ongoing and interactive social learning process, enabled or inhibited by the expansive nature of the workplace. Recommendations are made for school leaders to facilitate professional learning