Renewing teacher professionalism through innovative links (original) (raw)

1997, Educational Action Research

In recent years a variety of teacher professional development activities have been implemented in Australia that had at their core the desire to revitalise teacher professionalism and improve practice through school-based inquiry and action research. In this article, the author uses the Innovative Links between Schools and Universities Project for Teacher Professional Development as an example of a successful project in which teacher inquiry provided participating teachers with a critical and analytical orientation to their practice which helped to contribute to a renewing of teacher professionalism. The article is organised around two questions: how can practitioner research contribute to teacher professionalism? and what contribution can school-university partnerships make to renewing teacher professionalism? We should be like Marco Polo whose sense of the marvellous never fails him, and who is always a traveller, a provisional guest, not a freeloader, conqueror or raider. (Edward Said, 1994, p. 44) Teachers in schools today are constantly confronted with change. They are being asked to contribute to increased economic productivity, nationalistic agendas, most of which seem to be as alien as the landscapes Marco Polo traversed. Teachers are being asked to change their practices, their beliefs about the purposes of education and how they are to be represented as professionals in society. This is expected to be done with grace and compliance because, in the politicians view, education must contribute to the economic good of the country. The vision of becoming, in the political rhetoric of previous governments 'The Clever Country', has had a profound impact on how teachers respond intellectually and professionally to their work. Teachers are recognising that they do have a responsibility to enhance their nation's human capital; but they equally see that they are concerned with their students wellbeing as fulfilled and self-managing citizens and to be recast themselves as learners. In response to these broader social and political conditions, during the 1990s a variety of teacher professional development activities were initiated INNOVATIVE LINKS

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