It is important to consider the intrinsic fact that people are continuously engaged in learning processes (De Geus, 1988); and also that staff, in order to develop, must be engaged in an activity and, in order to be effective, this needs to take place during each time they engage in the activities, periodically (Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 2006). Therefore, we assume that experts have a broad professional knowledge base, meaning in other words, knowledge related to their work and their experience. According to cognitive and behaviourist theories, learning though practice is very positive; it
51 facilitates the accumulation and retention of relevant information, the ability to acquire more, and the ability to use this information (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990; Nutbrown and Clough, 2004).
Learning is associated with the development of personal identity, and as such is sometimes unplanned and unguided (Wald and Castleberry, 2010). It can be acquired without the direction of a teacher and can be self-instructed (by self-reflection on personal aims) (Epstein and Hundert, 2002). During this process, concepts, contents, values and frameworks are individually interpreted in relation to the surrounding culture and environment, and is also reflected on in relation to past and ongoing experience (Wringe, 2009). The origin of information processed by teachers comes from various different sources, such as individuals, groups, reading, policies, physical settings and tools (Alavi and Leidner, 2001).
Personal knowledge is defined as something “individuals bring to situations, enabling them to think, interact and perform in those situations”, namely something that somebody has as a resource (Eraut, 2007, p.406). Individuals try to put clear limits on their personal knowledge regarding what useful information is related to their profession (Dulipovici and Baskerville, 2007). The role of the teacher is described as that of a reflective learner in terms of understanding and responding to children’s developmental clues (Hull, Goldhaber and Capone., 2002; Lindon, 2012a; Belvis, et al., 2013) and a reflective practitioner when the staff are self-aware of their actions and feelings (Lindon, 2012b). The teacher role is also expected to be aware of socio-cultural aspects following the Vygotskian conception of knowledge development (Edwards, 2007; Wood, 2007). It is also expected that staff working with children with SEN, task different strategies, understand the disability itself and know how to adapt the intervention to the child’s unique needs (Guldberg, 2010).
Through evidence, staff should be able to monitor their students’ learning process and the effect it has on the content that children learn. This could be done in the form of an individual task, encouraged by the school leaders and other school staff who could externally support the interpretation of the evidence (Timperley, 2010). During the last decade, the responsibilities of school staff have been more complex than ever. Now it is expected that staff should understand, teach and cater to a very diverse population and, as mentioned in the previous chapter, more children with severe disabilities and complex needs are included in mainstream centres.
52 As a result, it has been highlighted that the relevance of teaching as a research based profession and, in general terms, becoming a reflective practitioner became a synonym for teachers’ professional development (Tse, 2007). Cohen (2008) stated that although educational staff have a professional identity as experts in education or knowledge production, and as agents of change are usually engaged in critical analysis to plan action, there is limited published research (Hargreaves, 2000b) about individual or collective good practices produced from their own learning (Borko, 2004). For this reason, it is recognised that this should be considered part of their job and not as an additional extra (Ballet, et al., 2006). De Roos, et al. (2010) indicated that staff have evaluated their own performances and oriented their responses toward the desirable. The author concluded that it is recommended that the interactions of staff and children should also be observed and compared with their self-evaluations. In conclusion, procedures reflecting on their own teaching, maintaining accurate records, communicating with families, participating in professional communities, growing and developing professionally and recognising it, are defined as components of the professional responsibilities of a teacher (Danielson, 2007).
Eraut (2000) has identified that two individual learning processes are involved in the acquisition of professional knowledge. The first relates to the experience that can be obtained from situations in which all the participants are co-learners. The second is a reflective process, in which the participants make individual sense of the situations (Eraut, 2000). It is assumed that understanding the tacit knowledge involved is very difficult, as this would require a complete analysis of participants’ thoughts and knowledge base, but still, it is worthwhile trying to understand why professionals perform in a certain manner and how they obtain their knowledge (Eraut, 2000). According to Mezirow (1990), the major learning experience in adulthood involves critical self-reflection, reassessing the way we face and deal with problems, and reassessing our own orientation to perceiving, knowing, believing, feeling and acting. In this regard, as defined by Mezirow, emancipatory knowledge seems to be similar to the tacit knowledge likely to appear in non-formal learning settings.
The learning process of understanding tacit knowledge focuses on freeing learners from forces that could limit their professional performance. Therefore, a critical individual examination of practices could provoke a change of belief about actual practices and principally about their own process of learning (Imel, 1999), in Reiss´s (2012) terms, “challenging assumptions”.
53 Although researchers who have analysed the in-service learning of education, professionals suggest that teachers do not always learn when they teach, and do not consider themselves as individuals in the process of learning. Those who are participants, but are not involved in training, offer their bodies but not their minds, and therefore are not receiving the right of education (Mead, 1934). Instead, they usually focus on their students’ learning process (Hoekstra, et al., 2007). Furthermore, Hoekstra, et al. (2007) show that learning though self-reflection for teachers is still distinct from policy and theoretical expectations. This could be the case because teachers do not know how to approach the issue, or because they do not have time to explore these ideas on a daily basis, or, indeed, because the preschool schedule does not support it (Abdal-Haqq, 1996). Critically, it seems nobody has ever asked them for their knowledge and opinions on the matter (Fraser, et al., 2007; Elmore, 2009). The system seems to ignore that, to be capable of emotion and care, staff must be highly competent (Clark, 2005; Osgood, 2006; Nucci and Narvaez, 2008). It is taking the role of the students, it is like seeing yourself within the child’s perspective and this is what is suggested by the Symbolic Interactionism, to go through interaction with others and with yourself, develop a definition of the situation, make a decision, and create an action (Charon, 2001).
Further, according to Schön (1987) and Argyris, et al. (1985) the purpose of reflective practices is to offer services related to values and beliefs of their staff, and then offer double loop learning such as creating more desirable social realities which requires a new design of the working actions and changes their structures (Greenwood, 1998).This process is conceptualised by Scott, et al. (2004) in terms of “theories in action”, expressed by participants’ reflective practices. As an example, Scott, et al. (2004) describes how PhD students undertaking professional doctorates, question their own practices and communicate their acquired knowledge.
During the last few years, Argyris and Schön’s (1974) double loop of learning has been developed into a triple loop model. This occurs when the attention of the professionals involved is directed toward power relationships in order to create “a field of inquiry” for actions, for example, through committees elaborated to solve problems (Isaacs, 1993). The third loop of learning is called “learning to learn” (Hummelbrunner and Reynolds, 2013, p.9). In this model, the stakeholders participate in the learning process and take into account the impact of organisational processes on how they learn (Hafford-Letchfield, et al., 2008; Anderson, 2008). The staff reflect and modify rules
54 and their own learning mechanisms so that they may change in positive ways that affect knowledge acquisition and behaviour.
Cohen (2008) stated that although educational staff have a professional identity as experts in education or knowledge production and, as agents of change, they are usually engaged in critical analysis planning action, there is limited published research about individual or collective good practice produced from their own learning (Hargreaves, 2000b; Borko, 2004). It is recognised, however, that this should be considered part of their job and not as an additional extra (Ballet. et al., 2006). The alternative suggested is the dissemination of methodological techniques for reflection through collaboration among researchers and professionals (De Roos. et al., 2010) and among nursery nurses (Potter and Hodgson, 2007).