TIME Type of Process

Mode of Cognition Mode of Cognition Mode of Cognition Reading the

Situation

Pattern recognition Rapid interpretation Review involving discussions and/or analysis

Decision-making Instant response Intuitive Deliberative with some analysis or discussion Overt activity Routinised action Routines punctuated

by rapid decisions

Planned actions with periodic progress reviews

Metacognitive Situational awareness Implicit monitoring Short, reactive reflections

Conscious monitoring of though and activity.

Self-management.

Evaluation

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Figure 6: Teacher Decision Making

The teacher has a repertoire of educational practices that defines their professionalism. When they move between schools they need to, through the transition period, adapt their repertoire to the new situation. Some aspects may be able to be directly transferred, others may need some alterations whilst there may be some that no longer apply and there may be more that the teacher is initially unfamiliar with and will need to learn. This understanding will occur within the frameworks introduced above, in the actual teaching situation, and will be

experienced subjectively as a ‘change experience’ and will then need to be further analysed as a process in itself beyond the content of the practices as they are modified or added to.

This is the teacher’s reflective practitioner thought processes.

2.5 Transitions between mainstream and special schools

Transitions are recognizable movements that involve a new environment and role for the teachers and are understood as events that mark changes in their professional career ‘journey’

and can be distinguished from more localized movements or transfers as they impact on that teacher’s identity and sense of agency as well as their knowledge and skill base. The

transition can be seen externally as the movement of the teacher from one setting to another and then, as this study aims to do, and internally – as transformational learning experienced by the teacher. Jarvis (2006) writes,

Our experience occurs at the intersection of the inner self and the outer world and so learning always occurs at this point of interaction, usually when the two are in some tension, even dissonance, which I have called …. ‘disjuncture’. In fact, the desire to overcome this sense of dissonance and to return to a state of harmony might be seen as a fundamental motivating force in learning, and the disjunctural state may be said to be one in which a need has to be satisfied. (p. 7)

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It is clear that almost all learning is experiential, the only exception being pre-conscious learning. (p. 184)

Kolb (1993) locates theories of learning that are based on experience as being a third group distinct from those that are derived from empirical or behavioural principles and those that are rationalist or idealist (cognitive or constructivist). Kolb (1993) sets out a number of axioms that set the framework for experiential theories, he has an emphasis on the here-and ms that set t experience of the agent as a means to validate their ideas or abstract

conceptualisations of the process so that it can be shared and re-used and then he highlights the importance of feedback processes. He then selects the developmental or transformational nature of the learning that shifts the agenthat shifts the transformational nature of the lear.

The teacher experiences a disjunction, a cognitive dissonance, between their expectation of the teaching situation and the professional practice they can utilise from the repertoire they have at their disposal. This will occur at different levels as they appraise their practice and self-review in terms of their self-efficacy in their role.

Eraut (1994) elaborates on the concept of 'skill' in order to explain in more detail the type of practice that is being explored. Eraut defines skilled behaviour as,

... A complex sequence of actions which has become so routinised through practice that experience that it is performed almost automatically. For example, much of what a teacher does is skilled behaviour. This is largely acquired

through practice with feedback, mainly feedback from the effect of one's actions on classes and individuals... Teachers' early experiences are characterised by the gradual routinisation of their teaching and this is necessary for them to be able to cope with what would otherwise be a highly stressful situation with a continuing 'information overload'. This routinisation is accompanied by a diminution of self-consciousness and a focusing of perceptual awareness on particular phenomenon. Hence, knowledge of how to teach becomes tacit knowledge, something which is not easily explained to others. (p 111)

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Eraut (2004) refers to transfers of skills that are straightforward as there is a communality of contextual factors as a 'low road transfer' and a transfer where this is not possible and which requires the teacher to use higher order cognitive processes in order to rework and adapt their skills as a 'high road transfer'. Transferring from mainstream teaching into special school teaching would be a 'high road transfer'. This would lead to the teacher needing to go through a series of cognitive processes that puts together previous knowledge into an abstract

generalised system with an understanding of the new situation so that it can be re-framed to fit these circumstances.

It is this process that forms the core of this study. For the individual teacher it will be

experienced psychologically as a 'stressful' period because of the complexity of the teaching situation with its information overload and their own less efficient 'tacit' knowledge that is not providing them with the strategies that help them to adjust to the novel teaching situation they face. In Personal Construct Theory terms their constructs are being challenged by their new teaching situation and consequently they will experience a range of emotions until they amend their constructs. This process of change takes the teacher beyond the conventional learning cycle set out by Dewey (1938) and developed by Kolb (1984).

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Figure 7: Kolb’s Learning Cycle

The teacherLearning Cycle and plans need to extend beyond the repertoire they have available to them based upon their experience in the mainstream school. Argyris and Schon (1978) introduce the addition of ‘double -loop learning’ to illustrate the additional work that the teacher must do in questioning their assumptions and the basis for what they have been doing given that it’s not effective in the new situation. Argyris and Schon (1974) argue that the internal models that the teacher may have will be described in two ways – as a ‘theory of action’ and as a ‘theory in use’. The former is the espoused theory that the teacher believes they adhere to and the latter is the actual theory to which their behavior accords. Reflection by the teacher on their behavior would reveal the differences. The process the teacher would undergo is,

Reflect

Act Observe

Plan

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Figure 8: Single-Loop learning

This is single-loop learning as the teacher corrects their mistakes within the classroom when their application of their teaching competencies has consequences they did not intend.

Double-loop learning occurs when the teacher changes the governing variables that frame the teaching strategies and begin to transform their mental models that are applied in the

classroom as a consequence of the needs of the learners before them.

Senge et al (2005) believe that even double loop learning will not seriously change a teacher’s behaviour because they believe it will stay reactive to the perceived reality. The change required needs to go beyond the current reality and imagine or visualize a future reality. This is to take seriously the question that arises from the theory that the teacher’s reality is socially constructed in which they play a part and therefore it is changed by the joint commitment of individual people to bring about a differently ‘socially constructed’

future. It takes up Martin Buber’s (1958) argument that ‘experience’ is always felt as having happened and is reflected upon and n double loop learning will not seriously change a teacher’s behaviour because they beof thinking the approach is always one of roach is