Generative Leadership Rescripting the Promise of Action Research

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• This book is about the generative nature of leading practices when teachers, as learners, participate in long term action research projects for the purpose of professional development. In this book we will show how practices of professional learning and practices of leading can be understood as related (and developed) in ecologies of practices; we will show how these are explicitly connected. Our findings direct us to the connectivity between professional learning and leading practices that over time - after participating in long term action research programs - emerged as ‘significant’ yet ‘unexpected’ outcomes. We will present work from international empirical research which has been conducted in Australia and Sweden since 2000. This extensive research has primarily involved studying the effects of programs of long term action research on education practices in schools in Australia and Sweden. As researchers, we were involved in both the implementation and the study of action research projects in our own countries which uniquely positioned us as participants, participant observers and researchers. Our data firstly tracks participants and the changing or transformative nature of their practices since the early 2000s with accounts of how their participation in their respective professional learning programs influenced their learning and leading practices after they completed the year long action research course, and specifically reflected how they perceived the conditions which enabled and constrained practices. Common among our participants was that they had participated in a 12 month action research project and continued on after their initial teacher learning project in roles as teacher leaders facilitating teacher learning in their own sites (in schools, municipalities or district). They had become ‘drivers’ of system change and continued to lead teacher learning in local contexts often in preference to taking on more formal leadership positions (e.g. principal or other specific leadership roles) even if sought after. Participants drew directly upon their own experiences both in the program as a learner, and since the program completion as a teacher leader facilitating professional learning in their own contexts (schools, municipalities or districts). There was widespread agreement among participants about the conditions which enabled and constrained the conduct of their practices and practice development - in both learning and leading- and what constitutes ‘sustainability’ in professional learning programs. Secondly, and distinctively, it will present a more fine-grained analysis of these action research sessions as they unfold as action and interaction. The research draws on a range of qualitative methods including taped observations of implementation sessions, field notes, interviews, participant mind maps and conversation analysis. Expectedly, results build on established literature describing professional learning which customarily describes the characteristics, conditions and outcomes of effective professional development programs. While this literature typically identifies professional learning as a means of stimulating change in classroom practice and pedagogy, improvement in student learning outcomes and sometimes connected to the benefits of teacher’s collective learning, it is rare for it to be attributed to the development of teacher leading. This is the distinctive focus of the book we are proposing. It centres not on ‘leadership’, in and of itself, but rather how teacher learning is ecologically connected to teacher leading. Our research has shown how this emerges when teachers are involved in programs of professional learning over time when both external and internal conditions are supportive and nourished in practice sites. Broadly, we will show readers how practices (like professional learning) which exist in real situations shape other practices (like teaching and leading) when each creates enabling and constraining conditions for the others; they are mutually sustaining when together they form an ecology of practices existing in a dynamic ecological balance. Specifically, our findings add a new dimension to the descriptions of the influences and accomplishments of professional learning, that being the development of teacher leading capacities.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogiskt arbete (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogical Work (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

action research

generative leading

theory of practice architectures

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