Professional Learning Communities and Teacher Enquiry

Val Poultney is an experienced teacher educator who has worked in partnership with a number of schools, specialising in evidence-based teaching. She is particularly interested in school leadership and school governance, with a focus on how to develop leadership to support teachers as researchers. Currently a senior lecturer at the University of Derby, she teaches on both initial teacher education and postgraduate programmes. Alison Fox is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies at the Open University, UK. After training as a secondary school science teacher, Alison moved into initial teacher training and undertook research around the support of beginning teachers, including their emergent development as school leaders. She also supports practitioner enquiry through Masters and Doctoral supervision.

At its heart, this book presents a resolute and modelled commitment to criticality as being central to any professional development and progress in practice. The depth and breadth of discussion is impressive, if possibly over-focused on finding an ideology at the expense of linking consistently with the ways in which teachers might create their own evidence-based interactions with the ideas discussed. The discussion of the tensions between what teachers construct as ‘right’ and the frameworks which they are given to work within is woven throughout this concisely comprehensive discussion, with suggested approaches to negotiating this through reading-informed reflection. The exploration of the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of key issues in the assessment field are handled with deft referencing and commentary, though there could be more of a focus on why these ideas are postulated and the impact that is intended for learners. That said, the book works hard to bridge the gap between teachers as practitioners and teachers as researchers, making a considered case that excellent practice requires teachers to be both. The strongest and potentially most provocative moments in this book come when the relationship between theory, practice and (vitally) impact on pupils is made direct: the summaries of and signposts to further reading would support any teacher to take their thinking in this direction.

• 1. Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Mapping the language of collaboration and enquiry Chapter 3: School-university partnerships: contexts for enquiry Chapter 4: Teacher-led enquiry Chapter 5: Lesson study as evidence-based teacher collaboration and enquiry Chapter 6: Leading professional learning communities: opportunities and challenges Chapter 7: Teachers’ access to and use of evidence Chapter 8: Conclusions and take-aways References Index