This chapter of the thesis was first conceptualised as a description of the Western Melbourne Roundtable focused on structure and context. However, it soon became clear that structure was not a static framework and context was not a fixed
environment—in reality each was actively produced over time. Therefore this chapter begins the examination of Roundtable practice through an exploration of contextual action. Each section of this chapter combines to build an argument that the
Roundtable achieved contextual democracy by including many contextual threads, creating new spaces for learning, adopting an inclusive attitude and aiming for a connective kind of engagement.
To support this argument the discussion first turns to the multiple contexts which were revealed by members of the Roundtable both through their writing and in subsequent interviews. They provided a wealth of information to describe how they saw the context in which the Roundtable emerged. Official documents, such as the initial team proposals and final reports, gave a strong picture of school and university culture, revealing the values, policies and priorities which helped to shape each Link team’s project and activities. These documents also revealed both a personal dimension and an understanding of the broader context in which Roundtable work was located. Detail in the records of meetings, cases, commentaries and Roundtable publications reinforced this picture and deepened the understanding of the Roundtable work over time. Finally, the transcripts of interviews conducted during this study supported and expanded the picture by providing both individual and group perspectives and reflections on the Roundtable work in context. Within these collected documents members of the Roundtable conveyed information about the multiple and intersecting contexts that impacted on their world and their work. This data was used by the researcher to create the 6 team profiles and mini biographies that made up Chapter 4 and the discussion in this chapter is based on these profiles and the extended portraits referred to in Chapter 319.
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For an example of an extended portrait see Appendix 3: A portrait of ILP at Eagle Secondary College, p391.
Contextual threads
Context can be understood in different ways. Habermas (1984; 1987), for instance, distinguishes between systems and lifeworld and argues that lifeworld incorporates a personal, cultural and societal dimension. Niemi and Kemmis (1999) draw on
Habermas’s work and stress the importance of exploring the tensions between systems and lifeworld as a precursor to taking action across the lifeworld ‘horizon’. The Western Melbourne Roundtable adopted an open and inclusive attitude to its work by incorporating many contextual threads and the following section examines the various contexts which combined to form the Roundtable ‘horizon’.
Personal contexts
Roundtable participants brought their personal contexts to the Roundtable landscape. As noted at the end of Chapter 4, the profiles and mini biographies show that they came with knowledge, assumptions, expectations, interests and needs which were connected to their specific situation. These personal contexts impacted on the establishment and conduct of the Roundtable and also shaped the distinctiveness of Roundtable work.
Individual educators were at different stages in their careers, undertook different roles in their workplaces, taught different age groups and curriculum areas, enjoyed a variety of pre-existing and developing relationships, thought uniquely about their skills, interests and needs and had varying perceptions about the beginning of the Roundtable. During the individual interviews participants talked about their personal contexts by describing themselves, telling stories about their personal experiences in the Roundtable and talking about their motivations, expectations and needs. Over 60 individuals participated in the initial six Roundtable teams and each Roundtable member contributed to the complexity of the Roundtable landscape and added richness to this study. The nineteen mini biographies included in Chapter 4, describe different yet connected personal contexts and give life to the scale of the body. Each biography reveals something about ‘personal space’ and experience as well as information about ideas, feelings, perceptions and expectations. In some instances connections are made between participants’ working and personal lives and often broader contextual observations are made about this period. The diversity of voices
creates the plurality which Arendt argues is a necessary condition for action (Arendt, 1958:8).
Demonstrating how stage in career can impact the nature of engagement Eleni and Dora described themselves as excited and listening beginners. Ian at the other end of his career gleefully presented as a ‘close to retirement type’ and Rosita described how she was looking to gather ideas from across the 10 year span of her career. Giving an insight into the range of issues connected to school leadership, Frida identified her concern for balancing administration and teaching; Janine brought a principal’s perspective; and Laila expressed the concerns of a curriculum coordinator.
On a personal level, acting contextually demanded an awareness of people’s feelings and the identification of a plan which allowed for an emotional response. The school profiles and portraits reveal a range of emotions which initiated and influenced Roundtable activities. People expressed anger and frustration about aspects of their work—Anna’s anger about the unequal status of teachers in schools and universities, Olga’s dissatisfaction with the Tinkler program, Steve’s frustration with the privilege accorded to knowledge generated by academics and Oliver’s struggle to benefit the students through the English program. Others expressed doubt—Rosita’s feelings of having lost her way, Terese’s reticence about joining the group, Eleni’s nervousness about the value of her contribution and Robyn’s reluctance to add another thing to her plate. However the prospect of the Roundtable produced optimistic and enthusiastic responses—Frank’s pride in his school and the prospect of sharing it with others, the unfolding of Laila’s awareness and her desire to be involved, Bill’s hopes for
encountering mysteries together with his colleagues, Inge’s and Dora’s enthusiasm and readiness for change, Janine’s determination to lead through involvement and Helen’s wish for valuable professional development through revealing teachers’ work in classrooms. There could be no doubt that acting contextually drew on people’s emotional responses to contextual challenges and therefore generated a heartfelt engagement in seeking change.
Cultural contexts
At a cultural level, the Roundtable comprised teams of teachers from five schools— Rosella, Kingfisher and Honeyeater Primary Schools and Eagle and Finch Secondary
Colleges.20 Each team worked in partnership with one or more university colleagues from the sixth Roundtable team formed at the local university. The six teams might be thought of as six different places or six cultural contexts.
The university
The Department of Education at the university could be recognised as a distinctive place because of the people who worked there, the culture of the group and its broader societal connections. Each person had a different background and brought particular interests to the university team. Some identified as educational psychologists and others as sociologists. They were inspired by an eclectic group of writers including Sandra Acker21, Jerome Bruner, Seymor Papert and Lawrence Stenhouse.22 Despite their different orientations and personal interests the university team shared a desire to develop skills in the application of the case method for documenting classroom and school-based narratives. They believed this would support collaborative research between university and school-based researchers.
On the one hand it could be argued that the establishment of the Western Melbourne Roundtable was a serendipitous intersection of funding possibilities, new ideas and events; however Steve believed that the Roundtable was formed through a series of purposeful connections and decisions. At the time he explained to his colleagues:
…(the Innovative Links Project) offers us an opportunity to apply the
strategies in our CRG project in a funded activity…The CRG and ILP should
not be confused however. Each has a specific agenda: in the case of the CRG, the goal is research training. The next phase in the CRG is the establishment of collaborative teams of teacher researchers and university researchers in schools. We can connect the CRG and ILP however, so that the teachers with whom we work in the CRG are drawn from those schools involved in the ILP. (Collaborative Research Group Progress Report No 3, 2/5/94)
20
All school names are fictitious. 21
In preparation for working with school teams, the university team identified goals which they hoped might guide their collaborative work.
Whether it was enough, or we made things clear I have no idea. We were really flying by the seat of our pants at the time. We wanted to make certain that our colleagues in schools knew as much as we did and were able to participate in the Roundtable activities as equal partners so that it wasn’t the university driving what was going on. That was certainly our intention, certainly my intention anyway, with incredible help from colleagues. My recollection is that…as much as you could expect the relations were democratic. I have no idea what went on in other schools, and I’ve got no idea how other people see what we did. That was our goal.
In line with the process outlined in the funding submission, Steve took responsibility for facilitating the formation of the Western Melbourne Roundtable. The schools were selected by an Interim Roundtable Steering Committee which had the responsibility for ensuring that the selection process resulted in representation from primary and secondary schools and the government and non-government education sectors.23 While other Roundtable Steering Committees issued a general invitation to schools to express interest in participating in roundtables, the Western Melbourne Roundtable Interim Steering Committee decided to target schools and invite them to submit a proposal describing their intentions within the guidelines of the Innovative Links Project. Reflecting on the process Steve recalled:
There was a discussion at the Interim Steering Committee about which schools would participate…the NSN representative was really keen that Eagle Secondary College would come on board because it was powering ahead with the Team Small Group stuff and deserved
23
The membership of the Interim Steering Committee overlapped with the Victorian National Schools Network Steering Committee. It comprised representatives from the Department of Education at the university (two including the acting Head of School), the Directorate of School Education, the Catholic Education Office, the National Schools Network, and the teacher unions (the Australian Education Union and Victorian Independent Education Union).
additional support, it was really doing interesting things and it would be great to have documentation about that. I think…the union
representative sought schools in the western region and came up with Rosella Primary School. The CEO representative nominated Kingfisher Primary School. We (at the university) had strong relations at that time with Honeyeater Primary School through teacher education, they seemed to have progressive relations and some of their teachers had been involved in some of our professional development programs. And Finch Secondary College, how did it come on board? I can’t recall, it got nominated.
While acknowledging that the committee process could be questioned on democratic grounds, Steve believed that it had been an open and negotiated process and was designed to facilitate a speedy start to the project.
It is clear that the university team played a central role in initiating and establishing the Western Melbourne Roundtable and as the Roundtable began its work the team continued to play a key role. The university team:
recognised the need to improve school–university relationships recognised the university pressure to build a research culture
wanted to work in an action research way with teachers in schools rather than conduct research on teachers and schools
recognised the impact of the broader education agenda especially in relation to self-management and the pressure for improved student learning outcomes recognised the importance of being sensitive to school culture around issues of time and local politics
wanted to establish democratic working relationships
The schools
The five schools which joined the Roundtable were different kinds of places from the university. The schools shared characteristics which distinguished them from the university. In most instances:
there was a heightened awareness about the pressure of external expectations articulated by education systems
there was a practical, rather than a research interest in focusing on workplace concerns
research was not an expected or integrated aspect of work practice there were few connections beyond the local context
there was a wariness about working with educators from university.
The schools were also different, one from another—they varied in size, they were organised differently, could be distinguished by their policies, programs and priorities and they brought their unique histories and cultures to the Roundtable. In their
proposals to join the Roundtable they identified different problems and questions which would underpin their action and reflection. Despite these differences they were all committed to working together over time to rethink teachers’ work so as to
improve student learning outcomes.
As with their university colleagues, the teachers in schools drew on a variety of thinkers and ideas. When it came to big picture thinking about education, teachers talked about people and ideas from beyond the workplace, mentioning the following: Fullan and Hargreaves’s ‘What’s Worth Fighting for?’, the Coalition of Essential Schools, Ted Sizer’s ideas in Horace’s School and Horace’s Dilemma, Elly Whittington and the Foxfire work from Kentucky. They also referred to the ideas expressed by Van Davey, Bob Lingard, Anna Ratzki and Viv White in various National Schools Network forums.
There was a shared interest in incorporating thinking skills into the classroom; sources of inspiration included Gardner’s ideas about multiple intelligences, Bloom’s
taxonomy and Socratic dialogue. Teachers also referred to Edward De Bono’s ‘thinking hats’. At Honeyeater Primary School Frank observed that teachers were
…dying to get to De Bono in-services, or Lane Clarke, we’ve had a lot of that stuff on here. And they are breaking their necks to do it and they don’t worry about time after work or anything else. They are willing to do it…
Another group of ideas focused on alternate processes and strategies for classroom organisation. Kingfisher Primary School were moving away from Tinkler’s thematic framework and other schools were drawing inspiration from Kath Murdoch’s writing about learning through an inquiry process and integrated curriculum units, the work of Anne Ratzki and the Koln-Holweide School in developing the concept of Team– Small–Group–Plan and James Beane’s and Barbara Brodhagen’s ideas about
negotiating the curriculum. Other participants focused on understanding the dynamics of working relationships and referred to disparate sources, including Myers-Briggs ideas about personality typing, which was used in the formation of teaching teams, and Joan Dalton’s work on cooperative learning which was applied in the classroom.
Societal contexts
The impact of the world’s reality upon human existence is felt and received as a conditioning force (Arendt, 1958:9).
The broader context of school education was referred to in many of the Roundtable documents. There were references to national and state government initiatives and connections were often made between the broader context and local concerns. Members of the Roundtable indicated a practical awareness of the centralisation which has been described and analysed by Blackmore (1999a) and Smyth (1993; 1994). Referring to the ‘official’ reform movement in Victoria—the ‘Schools of the Future’ policy—Rosita observed how there were ‘volatile changes in education, sometimes politically motivated and often beyond our control’ noting that one of her colleagues saw it as never-ending. Oliver also alluded to a feeling of powerlessness when he talked about change and the circulars that were issued ‘from above’ which meant that ‘all of a sudden…(you had to) do something’. These observations about
repercussions, and contrasting state trends with the work in Links schools. Steve observed that as the Links project began its collaborative, reflective practice, it was an ‘horrific’ time when ‘the greatest damage you could imagine was being done to the fabric of relationships in government schools’. Teachers were forced to leave the teaching service and ‘over entitlement’ teachers were consolidated in ‘hard-to-staff schools’. This was particularly evident at Eagle Secondary College which was a new school.
Giddens’s (1999:13) observed that centralisation or pulling upwards was also
accompanied by a pushing downwards which created new pressures to introduce local autonomy; Janine, the Principal at Eagle Secondary College, felt some of these
pressures. She noted that while an abysmal process was applied to the introduction of the Schools of the Future policy it did seem to provide greater freedom and flexibility at the local level and she supported the shift of resources closer to the chalkface. While the 1980s had been a time of curriculum innovation within broad policy guidelines, the strongest development in curriculum during the 1990s was the introduction of centrally determined curriculum frameworks (Smyth, 1993, 1994; Blackmore, 1999a). A grid of curriculum outcomes and indicators, divided into seven levels across eight key learning areas, was used for defining, measuring and reporting student learning outcomes. Nationally these were developed as statements and profiles and in Victoria as the Curriculum and Standards Framework (CSF). The CSF was coupled with the Learning Assessment Project (LAP), a program of statewide testing in primary schools. At Rosella Primary School the staff, who were unhappy about these system initiatives, decided to direct their energy towards a parallel initiative involving student self-assessment rather than focus on the introduction of the Learning Assessment Project. Their work demonstrated the conjunction of systemsworld and lifeworld; the parallel education movements sat side by side. Another example relates to the systemic priority given to literacy and the associated mushrooming of federal and state funding as incentive to improve literacy standards and outcomes. The Victorian Early Years Literacy Project was an example of this momentum and increasingly became associated with the pressure to introduce multiage classes in the early years of primary education. This systemic focus on literacy standards coupled with the introduction of multiage grades created the
impetus for inquiry at Honeyeater Primary School. The teachers argued that they could not cater adequately for students with such diverse needs and so designed an inquiry process to examine and document the teachers’, students’ and parents’ experiences and perceptions about multiage groupings. The inquiry process was