Category Archives: Research

Reflecting on NAIDOC Week 2022

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close up of painting by Rhoda Tjitayi

I was thrilled this week to hang in my home an artwork from APY Art Centre Collective artist Rhoda Tjitayi, whose grandfather was from Nyapari and grandmother from Makiri, Tjala Ngura. Rhoda is a resident of the Pukatja community in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands in South Australia. Her magnificent paintings depict her grandmother’s story, the ancestral creation story Piltati Tjukurpa. I was taught to paint when I was six years old, and my first degree in Fine Art, but this is the first painting I have purchased. It is an incredibly powerful piece, which now helps me to remember my own grandmother.

In Australia we are privileged to be home to one of the oldest continuous cultures on earth, with incredible connections to country, community and story. This week is NAIDOC (National Aboriginal and Islanders Day Observance Committee) Week in Australia, a week in which Australians celebrate the history, culture, and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This year’s theme—‘Get Up! Stand Up! Show Up!’—reverberates with the protest beginnings of NAIDOC Week, and calls to non-Indigenous Australians to engage with First Nations people and communities, and to move beyond acknowledgement, bystanding, and lip service, to action.

This NAIDOC Week I have been reflecting on the wonderful opportunities I have had to collaborate with and learn from inspiring First Nations educators. The following chapters in books I have edited continue to reverberate for me and influence my work and thinking.

episode artwork – The Edu Salon podcast

This year, I’ve also had the pleasure of speaking with Dr Marnee Shay on The Edu Salon podcast in this episode. During our conversation, Marnee reflected on this year’s theme for National Reconciliation week (‘Be Brave. Make Change’), saying,

“Our people haven’t had the luxury of being brave; our people have been surviving and navigating a whole range of things that are unjust, unfair, and through no fault of our own … We don’t need to be brave any more, we just need to do it.”

Marnee points out that organisations and individuals can choose to invest in and engage with Indigenous voices, research, books, people and communities. I can highly recommend the book Indigenous Education in Australia, edited by Marnee and Professor Rhonda Oliver, and its associated podcast.

While it is yet to be released, Tell Me Again, an in-press memoir by Dr Amy Thunig, looks like a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the lived experiences of Indigenous Australians. Amy’s PhD thesis Sovereign Women: Why Academia? also looks to be a crucial piece of research; this piece for IndigenousX provides a taster.

As this year’s NAIDOC theme attests, non-Indigenous Australians need to seek to understand, to learn, to address biases, to engage First Nations businesses, and to invest time in meaningful partnerships with local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledges and communities. Closing the Gap, Reconciliation, and ‘getting up, standing up, and showing up’, encompass complex and important work that needs to move beyond good intentions to prioritised, positive action by all Australians in our various families, workplaces, and communities.

Who cares about pracademia?

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Today I was part of an Educational Leadership Special Interest Group panel at the Australian Association of Education Research (AARE) 2021 conference, entitled, ‘Do we need pracademics?’ Fiona Longmuir was the moderator, and guest panellists were Scott Eacott, Virginia Moller, Dorothy Andrews and me.

The panel addressed questions such as:

  • Do we need pracademics?
  • Is labelling people ‘pracademics’ divisive and reductive, or full of productive possibility?
  • Do we care about pracademia?
  • To what extent might pracademia develop or dilute the rigour of scholarship and practice?
  • What role might pracademia play in the field of educational leadership specifically?

There was general agreement that the terms ‘pracademia’ and ‘pracademic’ require definitional clarity, and that a conversation about pracademia is worth having and worth continuing.

Scott challenged the motivations of those who might self-identify as pracademics, and suggested a focus on the inclusion of voices.

I explored the work I have done with Trista Hollweck and Paul Campbell (Hollweck et al., 2021, as our most thorough example) in defining and exploring the space of pracademia and the notion of an individual as a pracademic. For me, pracademia is about doing good work and about valuable networks and constructive collaboration between educators across and between education spaces.

Virginia described her role as ambiguous, complex and frowned upon, and explained that she was trying the identity of ‘pracademic’ on for size, to see if it fits. This notion of identity work, outsider-ness, and the nature of pracademic community is something I have heard from others who feel that their boundary spanning work is not valued or acknowledged in their professional contexts.

Dorothy challenged us to consider we needed to ‘just get over it’, and—as David Gurr suggested in the chat bar—do good work regardless of in what sphere someone works or what professional label is attached to them.

I asked the question about whether our systems and structures might be reimagined to allow for the valuing of work in multiple spaces.

Virginia and Scott discussed the notion of co-design between those in the academe and those in practice spaces. I mentioned the gap that Trista, Paul and I have noted around the need for policy to be explored more fully in the space of pracademia.

As in the other pracademia-focused conference panels and symposia of which I have been a part, the discussion was rich, energising, and resulted in calls from panellists and the audience for further exploration.

I will leave you with an excerpt from the final paragraph of our paper for the Journal of Professional Capacity and Community Special Issue (‘Pracademia: Exploring the possibilities, power and politics of boundary-spanners straddling the worlds of practice and scholarship’) we co-edited, that is mostly available via EarlyCite:

“The pandemic showed the possibilities of what collaboration between and working across multiple spaces in a field can accomplish. The concept of pracademia, and of working as a pracademic across and between spaces, suggests that we may be able to reimagine boundaries, fields, and roles in education and in other fields. For the work of pracademia to be sustainable, the space between practice and academia needs to be valued in terms of legitimacy, credibility, and even paid work. … Embracing the concept of pracademia may go some way to dissolving traditional dualisms of spaces that educators operate within, and increasingly across. It may be part of liquefying boundaries, so that rather than boundary spanning or boundary crossing, educators move back and forth along the Möbius-strip-style  continuum  comprising  the  multiplicities  of  research, practice, and policy. It may be engaging in multiple modes, spaces, and communities that open up learning, knowledge exchange, and mobilization of ideas and practices. It may be structural affordances from schools, universities, and policy bodies such as time, resources, avenues for recognition, and institutional support. For we authors, exploring and embedding ourselves in the identities and communities of pracademia is about making a positive difference in education; advocating for empowerment beyond the often-rigid structures, expectations and silos; and encouraging a valuing of alternate networks, contributions, and influences.” (Hollweck, Netolicky, & Campbell, 2021)

Evidence-based practice for sustainable school change

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Graphic representation of my keynote presentation, drawn live by Pat Grant

Yesterday I presented the final keynote at the Association of Independent Schools NSW Evidence Institute’s two-day Education Research Symposium: Wrong way go back: A wayfinding approach to evidence-based practice for sustainable school change.

The keynote was based in the current context in which schools are operating; one of relentless global uncertainty, disruption, and disunity. Teachers and school leaders are tasked with working towards change within schools that is meaningful, sustainable, and best serves the current and future needs of our students and communities. So I sought to draw theory and practice together to articulate how I approach school change that sticks, energises, engages critically with evidence, brings the community along, and improves education for the betterment of students.

My keynote explored the metaphor of wayfinding—a purposeful, directive process of determining and adjusting our route between an origin and a destination—as a framework for guiding evidence-based educators. This metaphor is one co-author Claire Golledge and I explored in our recent chapter ‘Wayfinding: Navigating multiple identities for sustainable school leadership’, in the book Future Alternatives for Educational Leadership: Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Democracy. While anchoring ourselves in where we are and what previous research can tell us gives us a starting point for our work in schools, change that is meaningful and sustainable needs to also engage in futures thinking and wayfinding practices so that we might navigate the complexities and tensions of the current education landscape.

This presentation provided insights into what it means to be an evidence-informed educator and the definitions, possibilities, and pitfalls of evidence-based practice in education. I recommended Gary Jones’ excellent, sense-making book Evidence-based school leadership and management: A practical guide. I explored how a wayfinding approach to evidence-based practice can allow educators to act with a balance of systematisation and responsiveness, drawing together research and evidence with practice, futures thinking, and deep knowledge of context.

It was wonderful to be part of a line-up of speakers including Christine Grice, Mark Rickinson, Connie Cirkony, Jenny Donovan, Mary Ryan, Pasi Sahlberg, Jim Tognolini and Amy Graham.

My slides are below.

What might ‘taking action’ for Reconciliation look like?

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This week is National Reconciliation Week in Australia (27 May-3 June), a week that challenges all Australians to work towards a reconciled relationship between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non-Indigenous peoples, for a unified, just and equitable Australia for all Australians.

It was only in 1962 that Indigenous Australians were granted the right to vote. And it was only in 1967, via referendum, that Australia’s First Nations peoples were recognised by the government as people. Previous to that, the Australian constitution stated that “in reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives should not be counted”. In 2008, then- Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued a formal apology to Indigenous Australians for the Stolen Generations—children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent who were removed from their families under parliamentary authority. The 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart calls for the ancient sovereignty of First Nations Australians to be recognised through structural reform including constitutional change and a ‘Voice to Parliament’.

This year’s National Reconciliation Week theme is:

“More than a word. Reconciliation takes action.”

Reflecting on what reconciliation action looks like for me, it’s the macro and micro actions we take.

In my school our actions include a Reconciliation Action Plan working group who meet to consider what Reconciliation can look like in our school, and to plan how to bring our Reconciliation intentions to action. It’s building a meaningful relationship and mutually beneficial partnership of listening, seeking to understand identities and realities, and positive action with a remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community school. It is acknowledging Country in ways that are respectful, embedded and that show awareness of and respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, cultures and heritage. For my school, that means acknowledging the Whadjuk people of the Noongar nation as the traditional custodians of the land on which we learn and work, recognising their continuing connection and contribution to land, waters and community, and paying our respects to them, their culture, and to Elders past, present and emerging. It means providing students and staff with opportunities to increase understanding, value and recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, histories, knowledges and rights. It means celebrating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander days of significance. It means always working to improve the ways in which we and our community engage with the ideas and actions of Reconciliation, and with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

This year in my classroom, engaging with Reconciliation includes studying the poetry of Australian poet Samuel Wagan Watson who encourages his readers to consider the lasting impacts and trauma of Australia’s colonial past, land dispossession, historic and continuing violence towards Indigenous Australians, and the erosion, appropriation and commercialisation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, language, identity and mythology.

In my academic writing, my actions include citing Indigenous authors and seeking out Indigenous ways of knowing, researching and communicating. In my editing, actions include inviting Indigenous authors to write for books and journal special issues. I can highly recommend engaging with the work of ‘Deadly’ Australian scholars Tracey Bunda, Melitta Hogarth, Marnee Shay and Janet Mooney. In the conclusion of the upcoming edited book Future Alternatives for Educational Leadership, I call for those in educational leadership to openly engage with complex issues and uncomfortable debates, and to make space for the perspectives and knowledge systems of Indigenous and culturally marginalised groups.

During this week’s Q&A program on the ABC, Marnie Omeragic asked:

“It is Reconciliation Week. Is Australia ready to hear its truth? Are we brave enough to learn the atrocities of our past and our present? Deaths in custody, children being removed- it is happening at a faster rate today. The gap is not closing. How will Australia find its heart?”

The panel’s responses can be watched here from the 34-minute mark. The challenge remains for all Australians to consider how our thoughts, language and actions contribute to the aim of a reconciled, just, equitable and unified Australia.

Deepening the discussion of pracademia in education

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I have previously asked whether pracademia is worth exploring, and it is a discussion into which I find myself repeatedly drawn. At last year’s (in person!) International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) conference, I was part of a symposium on pracademia with Trista Hollweck, Paul Campbell, Leyton Schnellert, and Danette Parsley. That symposium resulted in plenty of stories shared from individuals, and ongoing discussions about the what, how, and why of pracademia. This year, during the 2021 ICSEI virtual conference, I was part of another symposium on pracademia with Trista Hollweck, Paul Campbell, Sharon Friesen, Rania Sawalhi, and Carol Campbell.

In our symposium presentation–‘Pracademia in education: Identity, community and engagement’–Trista Hollweck, Paul Campbell, and I explored some of our thinking around the notion of pracademia. You can watch the 14 minute video of our single presentation above. We begin with Derek Walker’s (2010) definition of pracademics as “boundary spanners who live in the thinking world of observing, reflection, questioning, criticism, and seeking clarity while also living in the action world of pragmatic practice, doing, experiencing, and coping”, and go on to articulate our own definition of pracademia as space between and across practice and academia. A pracademic is someone simultaneously active in the worlds of practice (e.g. work in schools or policy making) and the academy (e.g. university membership and active scholarship).

During the symposium, Hannah Bidjlsma  asked where pracademics are employed (or as Trista paraphrased: ‘Where do pracademics live?’). Often the pracademic has their primary employment in one of these spaces, and either works voluntarily or in a smaller-scale capacity in the other space. For example, Trista, Paul, and I are active in school, university, and advisory board spaces, but much of our boundary spanning work is unpaid work that we do because we are driven by moral purpose, professional meaning, and our sense of belongingness and community. To explain what this can look and feel like, in my speech at the 2020 ICSEI conference, I said:

My voice comes from within the education system, yet as a pracademic, I am bestride both the practitioner world of schools, and the scholarly world of research. Alongside my full-time school day job, I am an adjunct at a university. My dual roles inform one another and give me a perspective quite different from those who advise from the sidelines. I am firmly embedded in what it feels like to be a cog in the school reform wheel. What I do every day in my lessons, meetings, professional conversations, and operational and strategic work, influences how I interpret education research. And the research I read and undertake influences my understanding of my daily work at school. In these ways I operate as a bridge betwixt and between research and practice.

An interesting development has recently been that two of we presenters have recently won awards for our scholarship, despite our primary roles being in schools. Paul won the 2021 Innovation Award (International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement and the Journal of Professional Capital and Community) for his study ‘Reconceptualising Collaboration in the context of Crisis Response and Systemic Improvement’. I won the 2021 American Educational Research Association Educational Change Emerging Scholar Award and the 2021 Michael Fullan Emerging Scholar in Professional Capital and Community Award. These awards indicate that those who work between and across the fields of practice and academia can potentially have meaningful impact on and across spaces.

Identity is as a key part of considering pracademia. During our recent symposium, Sharon Friesen talked about the pracademic as estranged ‘trickster’ who operates in the liminal space, between scholarship and practice, and who also questions and challenges both spaces. Rania Sawalhi shared in her presentation that her research found pracademics saw themselves as the ‘missing link’ between practice and scholarship. In our symposium presentation, Trista, Paul, and I explore pracademia as bridge, as mobius strip, and as the process of ‘breaking the wheel’. These metaphors reflect a few emerging themes – that pracademia is a complex space of the transitional, the chameleonic, the in-between, and the critical. Words that continue to emerge for me are duality, multiplicity, fluidity, and liminality.

In our paper for the Special Issue that Trista, Paul, and I are editing for the Journal of Professional Capital and Community—‘Pracademia: Exploring the possibilities, power and politics of boundary-spanners straddling the worlds of practice and scholarship’—we develop our thinking further as we conceptualise pracademia, especially for the field of education. The more we explore it ourselves, and the more people reach out to us to talk about their own experiences, thinking, and research data, the more I see pracademia is as an emerging concept, space, and identity in education, with the potential to knit together the varied values, languages, reward systems, identities, and work of educators in policy, in schools, in universities, and across systems and spaces.

‘Pracademic’: Just another made-up edu-word?

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IPDA conference virtual presentation – with Trista Holloweck and Paul Campbell

While the idea of the scholar-practitioner is not new, and the term ‘pracademic’ has been smattered in research literature across various fields, the concept of the pracademic is only recently beginning to gain traction in the education community. It remains scarcely documented and has not yet been comprehensively theorised. So, is the term ‘pracademic’ just another made-up edu-word, a senseless attempt to label and divide educators along research-practice lines, or a concept worthy of inquiry and elaboration?

In my view, the notions of pracademic and pracademia are worthy of exploration. In some ways, all educators are pracademics, whether that be scholars who engage practitioners in their research, or practitioners who engage with research and those working in the academe. It can include the myriad of collaborations and interactions between those operating mostly in schools and those operating mostly in universities. Yet, much scholarship still fails to make it to those working in schools, and the expertise and wisdom of practitioners is still often missing from research and policy conversations about education.

Pracademia might be seen as a space or spaces; or as a stance, a deliberate situatedness in the grey, messy in-between space. It encompasses a way of being that embraces the bridging or knotting together of research and practice in ways that engage with multiple stakeholders or influence in multiple directions.

In my book Transformational Professional Learning: Making a Difference on Schools
(2020), I explored my own positionality as a pracademic, after hearing myself labelled as such by Professors Andy Hargreaves and Christian van Nieuwerburgh. I wrote in the Introduction:

“The unique perspective I bring to the field of professional learning is one of boundary-spanning teacher-leader-researcher who works to bridge the gap between research and practice. In the structure and writing of this book I model the way that I bring the lens of practising teacher and school leader to research, and bring a research lens to my daily work. I connect the dots between scholarly and practical domains, to operate in the space (or as the bridge) between the world of education research and that of classroom and school. This bridging work brings a research lens to schools, where teachers and school leaders enact theory into practice, tempered by their wisdom of practice and the emotional and human elements of education that shape their behaviours each day.”

In the Foreword to that book, Andy Hargreaves also described the emerging pracademic voice in education:

“Deborah Netolicky is part of a new breed of thought leader in education known as the pracademic. My autocorrect function on my laptop sometimes translates this as paramedic!! In fact, the two words and the worlds they capture are not all that far apart. … Pracademics span the worlds of research and practice. … the pracademic is here to stay, and Deborah Netolicky is providing us with an excellent example of what we can uniquely learn from this new kind of voice that has come onto the modern educational landscape.”

Moving beyond that book, and those reflections, led to more conversations with other pracademics, and further conversation around pracademic spaces, identities and behaviours. At the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) conference in January, my ‘extreme speech’ on the main stage explored pracademic identity, and I was part of a symposium on pracademia—with Trista Hollweck, Paul Campbell, Leyton Schnellert and Danette Parsley as discussant—titled ‘Pracademics: Exploring the tensions and opportunities of boundary-spanners who straddle the worlds of academia and practice’.

Now, as these conversations continue, tensions and complexities around pracademia in eduction continue to bubble up. Trista, Paul and I are now editing a Special Issue of the Journal of Professional Capital and Community on ‘Pracademia: Exploring the possibilities, power and politics of boundary-spanners straddling the worlds of practice and scholarship’. Yesterday, we presented some of our thinking at the virtual International Professional Development Association conference. Questions with which we engaged include:

  • What is a pracademic and who decides?
  • What does it mean to be a pracademic in different educational spaces?
  • What issues and/or tensions arise in the complex negotiation of the dual worlds of practice and scholarship?
  • What role do identity and belonging play in pracademia?
  • What does pracademia offer the field of education? 
  • Is the term limiting or empowering, divisive or productive?

We also shared three metaphors we are playing with that represent the ways in which we are defining the concept of pracademia with all its plurality, complexity and multiplicity.

Watch this space as this work continues to grow.

Teacher research

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Set up for today’s presentation via Zoom

Today I had the pleasure of being the opening speaker, via Zoom from Perth, at the King’s Institute Research Symposium at The King’s School in Parramatta. In this blog I outline some of the thoughts I shared.

The pracademic

Those working in schools doing post-graduate study or action research, might be considered a pracademics. The word ‘pracademic’ is used to describe those in their field who simultaneously straddle the dual worlds of practice and scholarship, industry work and research. In education, these are the boundary-spanners who operate as the bridge between the worlds of education research and that of classroom and school. We bring a research lens to our work in schools, and we bring lived experience to our writing and research.

Pracademics have a crucial role to play in connecting the dots between scholarly and practical domains in ways that empower those working in schools to meaningfully engage with research and to contribute outwards to narratives about education. This is about speaking out as well as bringing in.

As I reflect on my own pracademia, I realise that since completing my PhD in 2016, while continuing to work full time in a school, I have produced:

  • 8 peer-reviewed papers in academic journals;
  • 6 academic book chapters;
  • 1 co-edited book – Flip the System Australia: What Matters in Education;
  • 1 monograph – Transformational Professional Learning: Making a Difference in Schools; and
  • blog posts and opinion pieces.

I have spoken regularly at conferences in Australia and overseas, on podcasts and in radio interviews. I also peer review papers for academic journals and write academic book reviews.

As someone who is employed in a school, this is a kind of moonlighting that occurs in volunteered time. These certainly aren’t things I would encourage all teachers to do, but engaging in or with research does meaningfully inform my practice in my school. My overlapping double roles inform one another. The hybridity of the pracademic provides credibility within the school environment, a  perspective that understands the realities of schools. Those of us engaging in research in our schools bring important contextual, relational and practical knowledge to research.

Teacher research is important

We are operating in an education world in which evidence-based practice is promoted and sometimes expected, and in which the field of medicine is seen as a benchmark against which education should measure itself. Schools, school leaders, and teachers are increasingly expected to be research literate, to be informed by research and evidence in our decisions and practices.

We are often presented with arguments that begin with sweeping and unsubstantiated statements like ‘the research says’. ‘Evidence-informed’, ‘research-based’ and ‘data driven’ are buzzwords. They appear in education reports, blogs, media, academic papers, speeches by consultants, books, in school staff rooms and in discussions on social media.

Teacher research and involvement with research is important, especially because so often education research knowledge remains separated from teaching practitioner knowledge. Much education scholarship is written in the structure and language of the academe. Often it resides behind a paywall (at USD$40 per article) or an expensive price tag (at upwards of $200 per book), making it inaccessible for many who work in schools.  Meanwhile, consultants and corporations promote often oversimplified, diluted or misleading solutions to education problems, while claiming that their solutions are based in research. However, as those of use working in schools know, context matters a lot. And the answer to ‘what works?’ is often ‘it depends’.

Teacher research helps us to:

  • make better decisions for our own contexts;
  • include student voice in school change;
  • listen to the voice and experiences of teachers;
  • engage teacher autonomy and agency; and
  • measure the impact of any changes we are making, setting our own success criteria, rather than relying on external metrics.

Teacher research seeks to understand and improve. It does not aim to provide prescriptions, mechanistic approaches, recipes, checklists or league tables. It is about engaging thoughtfully, critically and systematically with evidence, research, our own contexts and our own professional judgement.

Teachers engaging in research and research methodologies means we are applying these to our own contexts, and are also better placed to assess the relevance of other research and evidence we come across. We can make more meaningful sense of the research upon which advice and claims are based. It helps us to be careful of accepting simplified answers at face value. It gives us confidence in our own professional judgement and strengthens our willingness to interrogate claims of ‘the research says’.

Teacher research leads to better outcomes for students

Research cannot and should not tell teachers what to do, but research and other evidence has value in schools and can point us in directions worth pursuing. We improve our schools and our teaching when we integrate professional expertise with evidence and research. It is through practitioner research that we can marry the complex, human work of teaching with a critical, scientific mindset.

Teacher research can help those of us working in schools to make the best decisions for those in our classrooms and communities. It can help teachers and schools decide what is likely to be the best way to invest time and resources.

Practitioner research is an iterative, active, ongoing process that can hone our professional judgments and help to put us in a better position to bring about improved student learning and achievement, as well as other positive school-based results. It requires an ongoing, collaborative commitment to learning, understanding, critically examining what we think we know about what might work in schools to bring about the best outcomes for our students. That is ultimately what we are all here for.

Book cover design for ‘Transformational Professional Learning’

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Netolicky BOOK COVER

My book Transformational Professional Learning: Making a Difference in Schools has a cover design!

For me, the image on the cover speaks to transformation, collaboration, the interaction between the individual and the organisation, the fluidity of identities, the complexity of learning, the non-linearity of growth, and the humanity of education.

It is available for pre-order from the hyperlink above (due for release on 20 September), where you can also read the table of contents and the book’s first reviews.

It is also available for pre-order–in paperback, hard back and eBook versions–from other online booksellers like bookdepository and Amazon.

My editor and I have worked with the publisher to reduce the price of the book from AUD$60 to the more teacher friendly AUD$39.99 (already reduced further by some sites), although some sellers don’t yet have the updated price.

Sharing research in schools through a Research Report

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‘The research says’ is often an empty statement used as a basis for an argument for a particular education reform, approach or product. I encourage teachers to ask: What research? Whose interests are served by this claim? Where did the studied intervention work? For whom? Under what conditions? How many participants were in the study? From what school contexts? How were data generated? What were the ethical considerations and how were these dealt with? How relevant is this to our context?

Dylan Wiliam has recently noted in a TES article that:

“classrooms are just too complicated for research ever to tell teachers what to do. Teachers need to know about research, to be sure, so that they can make smarter decisions about where to invest their time, but teachers, and school leaders need to become critical consumers of research – using research evidence where it is available and relevant, but also recognising that there are many things teachers need to make decisions about where there is no research evidence, and also realising that sometimes the research that is available may not be applicable in a particular context…. Evidence is important, of course, but what is more important is that we need to build teacher expertise and professionalism so that teachers can make better judgments about when, and how, to use research.”

I agree that teachers and school leaders need to become critical consumers of research. A number of us additionally participate in research degrees. While research can inform our decision making in classrooms and schools, the teaching profession is a profession of experts, who should be trusted to serve their students and respected for their expertise. Teachers can and should engage with research.

There are a number of ways via which schools can engage in research. I have written on this blog and in my upcoming book about what I call the ‘Research Report’ at my school. I introduced this Report in 2017 as one approach to developing a research culture in a school. It is a document that I regularly publish to the whole staff. This involves everyone—including administration and operations—in our core purpose of education. It illuminates current debates, incites corridor discussion about teaching, and provides bite-size, user-friendly resources for busy teachers and school leaders. I love getting bailed up by a member of the administration team, finance department, executive or teaching staff for a discussion about one of the references from the Report.

The Report is not a place for only long reads or complex academic papers, although these are included when relevant. Often, the research I share is easily accessible via links, and sometimes via podcasts and videos. The report is not a panacea or an echo chamber; I include controversial and sometimes conflicting resources to spark thinking and encourage dialogue.

My Research Report is one small attempt–among a suite of protocols, practices and collaborative structures–to engage staff with research findings, and with systematic and scientific ways of thinking. It is a cogitation and conversation starter, intended to develop a rich and robust professional culture.

While I began in 2017 with two reports per term, I found that this was too much for staff, so now each term I populate one Report that includes three Report sections with around three resources each. Foci are based around strategic priorities and/or current issues. For instance, to align with NAIDOC week, this term’s report included a section on intercultural understanding. I use PowerPoint to collate these together and publish ‘teaser’ quotes for each resource.

I have had some people ask me what these Research Reports look like, so below I have included an example slide deck with snippets of previous Reports. Let me know if it’s of use, or if your school does something similar.

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What do activism and power look like?

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Title slide for our AARE 2018 symposium

I have been thinking about a question from the audience during the AARE symposium I chaired and presented in yesterday. The symposium abstract (below) outlined the notion of flipping the education system as a thread connecting the five papers presented.

The education system, in Australia and around the world, has governments and policymakers at its apex, making decisions disconnected from those at the nadir: teachers and students. Schools in this system are highly bureaucratic institutional settings, and teachers are increasingly undervalued, constrained and de-professionalised. The individuals and groups that wield influence on education policy and practice operate bureaucratically are physically removed from schools. They construct narrow measures of the success of schooling, and these impact on teacher agency. This education policy environment was evident in the recent Gonski 2.0 report with its focus on PISA, NAPLAN, and rhetoric of ‘cruising schools’ failing generations of Australians. A focus on numbers and rankings contribute to the disconnect between bureaucracy and the profession, and to the tension between education’s vision for equity and the realities of competition, marketisation and a culture of performativity.

This symposium shares perspectives around the notion of ‘flipping’ the education system in ways that embrace human aspects of education, wrestle with the criticality of the task of schooling at the margins, and engage with multiple voices in education, especially those often side-lined in education discourse and education policy. This collection of diverse papers together makes a compelling case for change in education policy and practice by tackling: elevating the professional identities and voices of teachers and school leaders; teachers’ perceptions of commercialisation in Australian schools; discourses that silence Indigenous voices in education; authentic engagement between teachers and Indigenous families and communities; and empowering educators to reclaim narratives of schooling.

During the symposium’s question time, an audience member suggested that if we were going to really ‘flip the system’ in education that there would need to be some sort of (Foucauldian) rupture, a traumatic breaking apart of the system in order to rebuild it. He told us that as presenters we were (too) measured and polite in our arguments, something he didn’t see as necessarily able to flip a system. Where was the rupturing, the eruption, the kapow of revolution?

I have wondered before about activism and the forms it takes. Who can be an activist? Is it only those with secure, late-career jobs? Can the early career teacher or researcher really challenge the system in which they work when that can put them at risk of unemployment or further precarity and uncertainty? Does an activist have to look, act and speak a certain way? Can an activist use the apparatuses of power in order to undermine that power, or does she need different tools?

donning the FEAS power dressing blazer

I also wonder what power looks like. This week at the AARE conference, I took part in the Feminist Educators Against Sexism (FEAS) power dressing project, which you can read more about here. Above are two photos a colleague took of me while I was wearing the FEAS symbolic power dressing blazer. In the first, I am laughing as I prepare for the photo, and in the second I am attempting a ‘power pose’. I like the first photo better. I love the symbolism and the gallery of images of the FEAS power dressing project, which show the range of ways women can appear powerful. What I am questioning here is my own discomfort with performing power in a way that might not be authentic. I wish I had worn my favourite red lipstick and laughed at the camera (although I did manage a sardonic raised eyebrow). Power doesn’t have to be a Rosie the Riveter bicep curl or a ferocious snarl. It doesn’t have to be loud, enraged or serious. It can be quiet, comfortable or joyful. Powerful women can and do smile, and enjoy the way they dress and the way they look, as well as their contributions to work and life.

my FEAS power dressing photo (credit: Linda Knight)

In the Flip the (education) System movement—explored in a variety of ways in yesterday’s symposium and in our new book Flip the System Australia: What Matters in Education—we believe that teaching, leading, researching and writing are political acts. In education, we are all activists. But activism does not have to be violent or deafening. Many of the arguments in the book and in yesterday’s symposium are measured and polite, as our audience member pointed out. Our intention is that a greater range of voices be invited to and heard at the decision making tables of bureaucracy and policymaking in education. In order to be invited in, we need to engage with system level decision makers in considered and convincing ways. We can do that with words and research, not just with placards and protests.

Our book chapters provide examples of resistance that is logical and beautifully articulated. In their chapter, Greg Thompson, David Rutkowski and Sam Sellar argue that international large scale assessments like PISA should not be dismissed. They have a place in the education landscape, but that teachers can be part of engaging with them in order to inform education systems. “Who,” the authors ask, “has better vantage point from which to shape the public debate about quality education than the educators who are constantly striving to deliver it in our schools?” (p. 62).

In her chapter, Rebecca Cody invites school leaders to abandon binary thinking that leads to schools embracing either performative accountabilities, or principles of holistic education. She argues that school leaders can and should ride both these ‘wild horses’ simultaneously.

Melitta Hogarth calls for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to “be more vocal and ‘stand on toes’”, to “unite in our concerns for our children’s futures, demanding a position at the table” (p. 113), but acknowledges the difficulties and complexities inherent in such a call.

These chapters reflect the point made by Nicole Mockler and Susan Groundwater-Smith in their new book, Questioning the language of improvement and reform in education: Reclaiming language, in which they suggest that it might not be fruitful to argue against concepts such as quality, standards and improvement, but that we can resist and reclaim the way these are used in education. We can focus on growth, collaboration, and professionalism, for instance, rather than using accountabilities as a stick with which to beat teachers and schools.

So, I have reflected on our audience member’s question about the need for a rupture in the system, in order to flip it, liquefy it, and democratise it. We speakers and writers are hyper aware that we are using the structures and language of the powerful in order to speak into this space. Book chapters written in fairly formal English and referencing academic texts could be seen to perpetuate the very system we are attempting to challenge. But we can work to change the system from the inside out.

Foucault, who was mentioned by our questioner, noted that there are occasional radical ruptures, but that more often there are smaller forces or moments of resistance. Those of us within the system can agitate in ways that are dramatic and fierce, but also be in ways that are eloquent and subtle. Revolution and power can come in the form of micro rebellions and the snowballing of a collective voice that is revolutionary in its strength in numbers, in its logic, and in its unwavering persistence to nudge the system towards positive change.