Partnerships in learning and teaching



GRADUATE DIPLOMA IN SECONDARY EDUCATION

PRAXIS

&

INQUIRY

TOOL BOX

PRAXIS & INQUIRY

Research has shown that effective educators are reflective teachers, who ask questions about how students are learning and seek informed explanations about socially just learning and life outcomes for all students.

As noted in the VIT Standards professional reflection is a vital part of effective teaching. During this year you will be given many opportunities to reflect on your partnership, community and professional learning experience from a number of perspectives. This praxis inquiry tool box will assist you to keep a record

of your practice throughout the year.

Your research begins with questioning learning & life outcomes for students

• How is it that different students do differently at school?

• How do we as professional educators explain this?

• How do we make a difference?

Praxis Inquiry

Cherednichenko, B., & Kruger, T. (2005, July) have written:

…what the Praxis Inquiry Protocol does is to transfer to the practitioners – student teachers, teachers and teacher educators – the power to ask the questions that they regard are personally and professionally significant. That is, social justice will be evident in teacher education if and when the agents of education ask questions with morally informed content about their practices and of the schools and systems in which they are embedded. … The focus on personal teacher agency in the Praxis Inquiry Protocol has presented opportunities for teacher education at Victoria University to have what we would claim is an authentic social content in our work, in the way articulated by Cochran-Smith and Lytle about the development of inquiry communities (2001: 53-54). However implicated in the institutional power of schools and universities, the Praxis Inquiry Protocol can support student teachers, teachers and teacher educators as they

… engage in joint construction of knowledge through conversation and other forms of collaborative analysis and interpretation. Through talking and writing, they make their tacit knowledge more visible, call into question assumptions about common practices, and generate data that make possible the consideration of alternatives. Part of the culture of inquiry communities is that rich descriptive talk and writing help make visible and accessible the day-to-day events, norms, and practices of teaching and learning and the ways different teachers, students, administrators, and families understand them. In this way, participants conjointly uncover relationships between concrete cases and more general issues and constructs …

When inquiry is a stance on teaching, learning, and schooling, there is an activist aspect to teacher leadership. From this perspective, inquiry communities exist to make consequential changes in the lives of teachers and, just as importantly, in the lives of students and in the social and intellectual climate of schools and schooling.

Cherednichenko, B., & Kruger, T. (2005, July). Social justice and teacher education: Re-defining the curriculum. Paper presented at the 12th International Conference on Learning, Granada, Spain.(p. 15)

Partnerships in learning and teaching

Questions, questions, questions

Students, teachers, parents, researchers are commenting on secondary education ….

My Questions about Secondary

Schooling

| |

Just as the mirage of a mass higher education system is quickly dispelled when social access to university is examined, so the mass secondary school system, when analysed for equity in learning outcomes and transition, readily proves to be far from a democratic system. But to sustain an emphasis on quality, which must always be renewed, there is no deeper source than the ideal of equity. (Teese and Polesel, 2003, p. 228)

Standards of Professional Practice for Full Registration

Statement of Principle

A statement of purpose and vision for the teaching profession in the State of Victoria.

“Teachers in Victoria are committed to the learning and wellbeing of the students they teach and make a significant contribution to the communities in which they work. They respect the individuality, capacity and backgrounds of their students and maintain high expectations for student learning.

Teachers are committed to the continuous development of their professional knowledge and practice. They work collaboratively, using research and evidence derived from theory and practice, to improve education and build effective communities of learners.

Teachers share an essential and privileged responsibility with parents and communities to care for all young people, and to discover and develop their potential to learn independently and critically throughout their lives. Victorian teachers make a difference.”

Victorian Institute of Teaching, 2003.

"In a completely rational society the best of us would aspire to be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilisation along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honour and highest responsibility anyone could have." Lee Lacocca

Victorian Institute of Teaching

PO Box 531

Collins Street West

Victoria 8007

Level 13, 589 Collins Street

Melbourne 3000

Telephone: 1300 888 067

Facsimile: (03) 9616 0856

Email: forum@vit.vic.edu.au

Website: vit.vic.edu.au

This list of characteristics provides a guide to effective teaching practices that all new teachers should seek to understand, strive to develop and demonstrate over time.

These characteristics are not a checklist of competencies for beginning teachers to master by the end of their first year.

Rather, the list illustrates the practices through which teachers demonstrate the quality and complexity of their professional work.

THE FRAMEWORK

Teachers use a range of teaching practices and resources to engage students in effective learning. The Standards of Professional Practice for Full Registration seek to describe the elements of practice which define teachers’ professional work, and which are expected of all members of the profession.

The framework consists of a statement of principle, three clear domains, eight standards and elaborated descriptions of the characteristics of effective teaching.

Standards of Professional Practice for Full Registration

|Professional Knowledge | |Professional Practice | |Professional Engagement |

| | | | | |

|1 Teachers know |2 Teachers know |3 Teachers know | |4 Teachers plan |5 Teachers create|6 Teachers use a| |7Teachers |8 Teachers are |

|how students |the content they |their students. | |and assess for |and maintain safe|range of | |reflect on, |active members |

|learn and how to |teach. | | |effective |and challenging |teaching | |evaluate and |of their |

|teach them | | | |learning. |learning |practices and | |improve their |profession. |

|effectively | | | | |environments |resources to | |professional | |

| | | | | | |engage students | |knowledge and | |

| | | | | | |in effective | |practice. | |

| | | | | | |learning. | | | |

Standards of Professional Practice for Full Registration

Statement of Principle

a statement of purpose and vision for the teaching profession in the State of Victoria.

“Teachers in Victoria are committed to the learning and wellbeing of the students they teach and make a significant contribution to the communities in which they work. They respect the individuality, capacity and backgrounds of their students and maintain high expectations for student learning.

Teachers are committed to the continuous development of their professional knowledge and practice. They work collaboratively, using research and evidence derived from theory and practice, to improve education and build effective communities of learners.

Teachers share an essential and privileged responsibility with parents and communities to care for all young people, and to discover and develop their potential to learn independently and critically throughout their lives. Victorian teachers make a difference.”

Professional Knowledge

1. Teachers know how students learn and how to teach them effectively.

• Teachers draw on the body of knowledge about learning and contemporary research into teaching and learning to support their practice;

• Teachers know the importance of prior knowledge and language for learning, and the impact of discussion, group interaction and reflection in the learning process;

• Teachers know how to engage students in active learning;

• Teachers know how classroom and program design, use of materials and resources and the structure of activities impact on learning.

2. Teachers know the content they teach.

• Teachers have a sound, critical understanding of the content, processes and skills they teach;

• Teachers can articulate the key features and relevance of their content to their students and others, and can demonstrate how it is applied;

• Teachers know the methodologies, resources and technologies which support learning of the content, processes and skills they teach;

• Teachers are familiar with curriculum statements, policies, materials and programs associated with the content they teach.

3. Teachers know their students

• Teachers know the learning strengths and weaknesses of their students and are aware of the factors that influence their learning;

• Teachers are aware of the social, cultural, and religious backgrounds of the students they teach, and treat students equitably;

• Teachers develop an understanding and respect for their students as individuals, and are sensitive to their social needs and the way they interact with others;

• Teachers know the importance of working with and communicating regularly with students’ families to support their learning.

Professional Practice

4. Teachers plan and assess for effective learning.

• Teachers use their knowledge of students, content and pedagogy to establish clear and achievable learning goals for their students;

• Teachers plan for the use of a range of activities, resources and materials to provide meaningful learning opportunities for all their students;

• Teachers monitor student engagement in learning and maintain records of their learning progress;

• Teachers select assessment strategies to evaluate student learning, to provide feedback to students and their parents/guardians and to inform further planning of teaching and learning.

5. Teachers create and maintain safe and challenging learning environments.

• Teachers develop a positive learning environment where respect for individuals is fostered and where learning is the focus;

• Teachers provide a learning environment that engages and challenges their students and encourages them to take responsibility for their own learning;

• Teachers use and manage the materials, resources and physical space of their classroom to create a stimulating and safe environment for learning;

• Teachers establish and maintain clear and consistent expectations for students as learners and for their behaviour in the classroom.

6. Teachers use a range of teaching practices and resources to engage students in effective learning.

• Teachers communicate effectively with students to make their learning programs explicit, to build rapport, and to support their learning;

• Teachers provide and manage opportunities for students to explore ideas and develop knowledge and skills, through discussion and group activities.

• Teachers use and manage a range of teaching and learning strategies, technologies, activities and resources;

• Teachers provide meaningful feedback to students and their parents/guardians about their developing knowledge and skills.

Professional Engagement

7. Teachers reflect on, evaluate and improve their professional knowledge and practice.

• Teachers regularly reflect on and critically evaluate their professional knowledge and the effectiveness of their teaching;

• Teachers work collaboratively with other members of the profession and engage in discussion of contemporary issues and research to improve professional practice;

• Teachers identify their own professional learning needs and plan for and engage in professional development activities;

• Teachers develop organisational and administrative skills to manage their non-teaching duties effectively.

8. Teachers are active members of their profession.

• Teachers contribute to the development of school communities that support the learning and wellbeing of both students and fellow teachers;

• Teachers work effectively with other professionals, parents/guardians and members of the broader community to provide effective learning for students;

• Teachers promote learning, the value of education and the profession of teaching in the wider community;

• Teachers understand and fulfil their legal responsibilities and share responsibility for the integrity of their profession.

What is Praxis Inquiry?

Praxis is an ancient Greek word, used by the great philosophers to refer to a particular kind of thinking. Praxis is practical understanding. It is what we do when we understand puzzling experiences and find that our understanding enables us to act knowledgeably. Another way of saying praxis is practice-theory, where theory does not mean ‘grand philosophy’ but rather an explanation for practice.

Of course, theorising practice means more than an understanding of driving successfully through an intersection with traffic lights, although successfully navigating our roads is no mean achievement! We can also apply the term practice to more complex and larger scale experiences – like economics and history: thus we have a theory of economics or a theory of history. Of course we have a theory of education – or more correctly theories of education.

What is distinctive about praxis is that we all do it – we all theorise or try to explain what happens in our lives. That does not mean one theory is as good as another. We can’t decide if a theory is valid or worthwhile until we have exposed it to critical evaluation in some way. Lawrence Stenhouse, one of the founders of the educational action research movement used the expression ‘systematic inquiry made public’ to explain what he meant by that kind of testing. It was his definition of research!

The Victoria University preservice education program is based on practice-theory ie praxis. A start from a practitioner’s experiences imparts a democratic basis to learning about teaching. But it also challenges the practitioner to take responsibility for generating personal theoretical perspectives on which to build morally sustainable and effective practice.

Praxis Inquiry names the process through which preservice teachers at Victoria University will learn about teaching from the standpoint of their own practice. Being in practice, however, is no guarantee that a practitioner has a well founded and convincing understanding of practice. To impart Stenhouse’s systematic and public qualities to the informing of practitioner understanding, the School of Education has developed a Praxis Inquiry Protocol to guide preservice teacher’s practical theory making.

The Praxis Inquiry Protocol is nothing more than a semi-structured questioning framework. In itself it does not show a preservice teacher how to teach. Its strength is likely to be found in its demand that preservice teachers present evidence for assertions about the best ways to teach from their own practice, justified by analysis of that practice and by support from the research and policy literature.

The following pages present the contents of the Praxis Inquiry Protocol, the basic protocol, an example of the protocol applied to a practical question raised by a preservice teacher and finally one person’s working out of a complete set of Protocol questions. None of the details are presented as ‘the’ correct way to follow the Protocol. Neither is there a claim for the Protocol being some kind of last word on inquiry in education. It’s just another step for the School of Education in doing teacher education in a way which puts students and teachers at the core of its work.

Want to read more?

A number of related literature fields stimulated the Praxis Inquiry Protocol: action research, reflective practice, teacher self-study, collaborative approaches to teacher professional development, narrative inquiry and the literature from what might be termed the social constructionist fraction of workplace learning.

At a more local level, the idea of Praxis Inquiry emerged from the reflective practice of a School of Education collaborative practitioner research team as it grappled with the relevance to practical theorising from such thinkers as Habermas, Dewey, Bourdieu and Giddens.

Praxis Inquiry Protocol

The Protocol is a staged process of practitioner inquiry or self-study. Its components, recognised as comprising the character of practitioner’s case writing, are.

|Practice described |The practitioner describes the actors and their social situation in sufficient detail to enable|

| |a reader to appreciate the action. Description will be in many forms: in conversation, case |

| |writing, photographs, video, work samples and portfolios of records of practice. |

|Practice explained |The practitioner, in describing practice, has adopted an explicit discourse or discourses for |

| |interpreting the action. The sources of possible explanations include personal reflection, |

| |colleagues’ insights and importantly the published research literature. |

|Practice theorised |Practitioners construct their personal theory of the practice |

|Practice changed |Theorised practice presents practitioners with opportunities to propose and trial new |

| |practices. |

The four stages should not be taken as presenting a formal procedure which must be followed at all costs. But the inclusion of the four aspects does ensure that the inquiring practitioner is able to avoid the dangers of assuming the nature of practice and to be able to present evidence and well-thought out arguments for decisions about curriculum and pedagogy.

The four stages of protocol are complemented by a questioning framework, whose intent is to bring to light the complexity of the simplest question about practice; here educational practice, but in reality practice in any setting.

|Ontological questions |Questions About actors, their experiences and their social situations. Such questions invite|

| |practitioners to raise and question their own value judgements and to express moral |

| |commitment in and about practice |

|Epistemological questions |Questions About the nature of knowledge valued and applied by actors in their social |

| |situations. These questions ask the practitioner to identify what knowledge stance they are |

| |bringing to the understanding of practice and to the construction of practice, in education |

| |represented most clearly in the school curriculum. |

|Technical questions |Questions About what practitioners judge ‘works’ and ‘doesn’t work’ in their social |

| |situations. These questions are cause and effect questions associated with practitioners’ |

| |interest in completing a task successfully. |

The Praxis Inquiry Protocol integrates the two frameworks. At this time (2005-2006) the Protocol is a ‘rough guide’ to practitioner inquiry and self-study. It may remain in that form; but more likely, as we employ the Protocol, it will develop in more user-friendly ways.

Please use the following pages as starting points for critical conversations and also to have a go at using the Protocol for your own inquiry and self-study.

The teacher’s questions are the starting point for Praxis Inquiry!

• Questions link the practice setting with university coursework

• Assessment tasks in the HGES will make the links explicit.

Graduate Diploma in Secondary Education Praxis Inquiry Protocol

| |Semi-structured Framework of Inquiry |

|Preservice Teachers’ |Phase of Inquiry |Experience, Understanding and Commitment |Knowledge and its Application |Effective Strategy and Technique |

|Initiating Questions | |(Ontological questions) |(Epistemological questions) |(Technical questions) |

| |Practice | | | |

|Initiating question |Described | | | |

| | | | | |

| | | | | |

|An initiating question | | | | |

|such as: | | | | |

| |Practice | | | |

| |Explained | | | |

|Why do some students | | | | |

|finding learning hard? | | | | |

| | | | | |

| | | | | |

| | | | | |

| |Practice | | | |

| |(personally) Theorised | | | |

| | | | | |

| | | | | |

| | | | | |

| | | | | |

| |Practice | | | |

| |Changed | | | |

References

Groundwater-Smith, S., Brennan, M., McFadden, M. and Mitchell, J. (2001) Secondary schooling in a changing world, Harcourt Australia, Marrickville, N.S.W.

Smyth, J. and Hattam, R. (2004) "Dropping out," drifting off, being excluded: Becoming somebody without school, Peter Lang, New York.

Teese, R. and Polesel, J. (2003) Undemocratic schooling: Equity and quality in mass secondary education in Australia, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic.

Wiseman, J. (1998) Global nation? Australia and the politics of globalisation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; Melbourne.

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How will I work with …

… Pre-service teacher colleagues/

… University colleagues/

… Partnership colleagues?

… Students?

In the Graduate Diploma in Secondary pre-service teachers:

• Develop increasingly sophisticated strategies for inquiring into, explaining and improving educational practice with a focus on young people and their learning.

• Recognise how the planning, management and policy context of schooling affect teacher' practices and student participation and student learning.

• Undertake extended Project Partnership in secondary settings through completion of an Applied Curriculum project and in classroom teaching with a specific focus on teaching in their discipline specializations.

• Be ready, at the completion of the year 3, to enter the profession.

What do you think?

7. Teachers reflect on, evaluate and improve their professional knowledge and practice.

• Teachers regularly reflect on and critically evaluate their professional knowledge and the effectiveness of their teaching;

• Teachers work collaboratively with other members of the profession and engage in discussion of contemporary issues and research to improve professional practice;

See the Information & Resources Section for a copy of the VIT Standards.

VIT Standards

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