The knowledge that teachers possess is an essential element in improving educational practice. There has been much research on the multiple types of knowledge that teachers can and should hold, for example, arguments have been made about content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, personal practical knowledge, and teachers’ emotional intelligence, to list but a few. The interplay between these bodies of knowledge highlights ‘the exceedingly complex intellectual, personal, and physical environment for teachers’ work’ (Connelly, Clandinin, & He, 1997, p. 673).
My PhD research offers an alternate approach to understanding educational development and change. The detailed analysis of individual case studies offers a glimpse into the complexity of teaching, and thus into the limitations of a one-size-fits-all solution to improving practice. The findings of this research add to the body of literature which argues that teaching is substantially a complex endeavour, and this complexity needs to be recognised and addressed if sustained improvement in practice and student learning is to be better realised.
The findings suggest the potential value of narrative video as a way of accessing the dynamic and complex interplay of elements which comprise teaching. By exploring teaching in this way, the data showed that the use of the video supported participants in recognizing and responding to multiple influences which shape their knowledge and practice. Participant teachers came to see that their teaching was partly influenced by themselves (their experiences, values, personalities, background, etc.), the context in which they operated (the school, the parents, location, etc.), and the demands of the learners they teach (content, pedagogical approaches, and the learners themselves with different social, ethnic, intellectual backgrounds).
Researchers such as Lowyck, Clark, & Halkes (1986) stressed that teaching behaviour can only be understood when the original context of the specific teaching behaviour is included in the interpretation. This amalgam of the influences of the school context, the learners’ context and the teachers’ own personal context, suggests a sophisticated reliance on a teacher’s capacity to be actively mindful and aware of these influences concurrently, and in such a way as to be able to choose teaching strategies and procedures which progress students’ learning. The significance of greater self-understanding according is that teachers are able to make choices that are more conscious and deliberate in relation to their students, their own self influences and their own further professional development (Kelchtermans & Vandenberghe, 1994). Indeed Mason (2002) is of the view that what matters most within professional learning is not necessarily technical functionality, but rather, the development of awareness.
Whilst there is currently considerable interest in the idea of “high impact teaching strategies” (Hattie, 2015), the data in this research indicate that the functional strategies within the “doing of teaching” are mediated by the contextual elements (human, social and technical) of the teaching and learning environment. As a consequence, this research points towards a more sophisticated approach to understanding quality teaching, where expertise is apparent when teachers are able to demonstrate why they choose particular teaching procedures at particular times for particular reasons (their pedagogical reasoning). They do so because they have come to develop and know, through experience, what impacts student learning in productive ways in that context (Loughran, et al., 2012).
In the search for quick and measurable outcomes of teacher improvement, a common prevailing approach tends to frame teacher learning within a simple and linear “cause-effect” model, thus reducing the professional practice of teachers to a model of technical rationality. A key issue within the technical rationality model of teacher learning is the assumption that teachers take an uncritical view of their own practice, separate from the individual and specific contextual factors inherent in their local school and class context. Teacher reflection has been well recognized as offering a way for teachers to step out from their automatic routines and operate more within the present and critical state of their current context. This research explores the challenge of finding different and deeper routes into teacher practice and learning through the prompt of a narrative-based education video such that more contextualised and relevant teaching responses might be achieved.
The study aimed to explore: how participants responded to viewing narrative-based video; the features of the narrative-based video which influenced participant responses; and, how the narrative features prompted changes to teacher thinking and practice. In-depth case studies of teachers were developed in order to systematically explore the impact of a narrative-based video on teacher thinking and practice. The results identified and classified particular elements of narrative video, namely the features and sub-features within narrative elements of character and plot, and in particular a sub-theme of humanness, which influenced the thinking and practice of participating teachers.
The results suggested that the video’s influence affirmed the importance of integrated approaches to the professional learning of teachers which prompt critical reflection upon, and utilise teachers’ personal, social and technical contexts. The findings from this study situate the practice of teaching and teacher change as complex and sophisticated and contributes new knowledge to how and why narrative-based education video supports teacher practice. The study therefore has implications for the theory and practice of teacher professional learning.
Teaching Wisdom 