Table Of ContentSchool-Based Deliberative
Partnership as a Platform for
Teacher Professionalization and
Curriculum Innovation
Using cutting-edge and frontline research relating to present day problems in
educational systems, this volume provides a critical discussion about political
alternativesineducationtoneoliberalism.BasedonEngeström’sCulturalHistorical
Activity Theory (CHAT), a theory that has potential for new areas of educational
research, this book explores a conceptual frameworkof curriculum innovation in
school practice that focuses on processes of mutual meaning-making as boundary
crossing between partners from different communities.
Focusing on active professionalization and continuing professional learning
of teachers as subjects, agents, extended professionals and curriculum makers
in school-based deliberative partnerships with one another and with other
educational partners inside and outside school, this volume is divided into
eight accessible chapters and covers topics such as political and curricular
considerations about educational change, deliberative partnership as a new
way for reform, prospects for an innovative curriculum process and putting
into action deliberative partnership-based curricular innovation.
This volume is the perfect addition for teachers, teacher educators, researchers
and practitioners who are looking to explore beyond the viewpoint that teachers
operateinsingularcommunitiesandthepotentialandpossibilityof an alternative
framework for teacher learning in the future.
Geraldine Mooney Simmie is a senior lecturer at the School of Education,
University of Limerick, Ireland.
Manfred Lang, now retired, was senior researcher of the Leibniz Institute for
Science and Mathematics Education (IPN) at the University of Kiel, Germany.
Routledge Research in Teacher Education
The Routledge Research in Teacher Education series presents the latest research
onTeacherEducationandalsoprovidesaforumtodiscussthelatestpracticesand
challengesinthefield.
Professional Development through Mentoring
Novice ESL Teachers’ Identity Formation
Juliana Othman and Fatiha Senom
Research on Becoming an English Teacher
Through Lacan’s Looking Glass
Tony Brown, Mike Dore and Christopher Hanley
Intercultural Competence in the Work of Teachers
Confronting Ideologies and Practices
Edited by Fred Dervin, Robyn Moloney and Ashley Simpson
Teacher Representations in Dramatic Text and Performance
Portraying the Teacher on Stage
Edited by Melanie Shoffner & Richard St. Peter
School-Based Deliberative Partnership as a Platform for Teacher
Professionalization and Curriculum Innovation
Geraldine Mooney Simmie and Manfred Lang
Technology-Enabled Mathematics Education
Optimising Student Engagement
Catherine Attard and Kathryn Holmes
Integrating Technology in English Language Arts Teacher
Education
Donna L. Pasternak
Research-Informed Teacher Learning
Critical Perspectives on Theory, Research and Practice
Edited by Lori Beckett
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
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School-Based Deliberative
Partnership as a Platform for
Teacher Professionalization and
Curriculum Innovation
Geraldine Mooney Simmie and
Manfred Lang
Firstpublished2020
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Contents
List of illustrations vi
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xiv
1 Political and curricular considerations about educational change 1
2 Situational factors to be considered for curricular processes of
school improvement 29
3 Deliberative partnership as a new way for reform 55
4 Prospects for an innovative curriculum process 67
5 A framework for partnership-based curricular innovation 79
6 Models for innovative planning based on partnership 89
7 Putting into action deliberative partnership-based curricular
innovation 115
8 Prospects for higher-order curriculum innovation and deliberative
partnership 132
References 143
Index 158
Illustrations
Figures
1.1 Two interacting activity systems as units of the analysis 20
3.1 Paths of reform processes guided by curriculum innovation and
teacher professional development 56
5.1 Activity on different system levels based on a partnership between
school and university 86
6.1 Sketch of a work plan for the development of a competency
matrix of given standards (translated). 95
6.2 Competence grid for the completion of topics (translated). 96
6.3 Elements of a Curriculum Workshop 100
6.4 Argumentation scheme of Toulmin (1958, p. 97) 102
7.1 The GIMMS collaborative framework (Mooney Simmie & Lang,
2012, p. 17) 118
Tables
4.1 Central aspects of teacher collaboration in schools after Huber,
Ahlgrimm and Hader-Popp (2012, p. 354–355; translated by the
authors) 70
6.1 Comparison of components in activity theory (Engeström, 2001)
and the Curriculum Workshop 107
7.1 Main emphasis of the work in national case studies of the GIMSS
project 123
Preface
Nowadays, the view of the educated person as an individual rational
economic actor is widely reflected in international comparative surveys, such
as OECD PISA and TALIS and in quality assurance systems of public
accountability. It is dominating externally planned reform policy processes in
teacher learning and schooling (Cochran-Smith et al., 2017; Hardy, 2018;
Muller, 2018). In the face of globalized rhetoric and neoliberal reification
underpinned by narrow instrumental principles of Human Capital Theory
(Tan, 2014), questions arise about teachers’ professional development and
education’s social responsibility for public interest values and a vibrant
democracy (Lynch, 2014; Mooney Simmie & Edling, 2016, 2018). This is
overshadowed by a global populism where the better argument securing
reason and wisdom is under attack from a constant stream of fake news, the
tyranny of metrics fixation and new soft modes of public accountability where
democracy is being slowly suffocated (Browning, 2018; Muller, 2018). Specifi-
cally, in terms of schooling and teacher education, this is concerned with tea-
chers’ productive engagement in discursive meaning-making of content,
sociocultural contexts and moral principles, leading to school-based curricular
questions by means of deliberative partnership discourses for the enactment of
new learner-centered active pedagogies, critical teacher education and other
contemporary policy reforms (Ball et al., 2012; Gore et al., 2017; Gunter, 2001;
Kincheloe, 2004).
Curricular questions about local considerations of educational needs and the
discursive justification of these contexts, cultures and particularities are hardly
ever considered (Connelly, 2013). Within a new business-like model of teacher
professional learning, former understandings of good teaching as complex
interplays between theory, practice, experience and research and teachers’
competencein multipleknowledgeforms (MooneySimmie,Moles,&O’Grady,
2019) have been debunked in favor of the straightforward application and
knowledge transfer. Teachers’ subjectivities are thereby repositioned as a perma-
nent search for a new professional identity, a new ideal teacher as a competitive
entrepreneur planning risk-managed activities and predefined outcomes (Ball,
2003; Nussbaum, 2010; Skerritt, 2018).
viii Preface
Thisreframescriticalthinkingastheabilitytothinkscientificallyinadisciplinary
contextratherthanthecapabilitytocriticallyreflectontheworldatlargelinkedto
theviewthateducationhasanemancipatorysocietalfunction(Erikson&Erikson,
2018). A statement of learning outcomes puts a “ceiling at which students safely
stop, knowing that any further achievement will not be rewarded. The more
weight the learning outcome model is given, the more central this ceiling can
become” (p. 5), as it embeds a “naïve conception of intellectual development
implicitinalistoffixedoutcomestostrivefor”(p.8).
In this way the balance point – the “open enough” discursive gaps between
official (political) discourses and pedagogical discourses (Gore et al., 2017) – is
distortedbythepersistentepistemicdominanceofperformancecomparisonsanda
national reform drive to evaluate standards and competency scales for the expe-
dient assessment of predefined and measurable results and learning outcomes
(Lingard,Sellar&Savage,2014;Sellar&Lingard,2013;Youdell&McGimpsey,
2015).Whilepoliticiansappearconcernedaboutachievementtestresultsanddata
for political and economic competitive value, they call for reform enforcement
withinamarket-leddiscourseofmetrics.However,policyleaderswillnotachieve
muchiftheycontinuetoadoptthisdysfunctionallinearrationalunderstandingof
policyasatechnéofimplementation(Balletal.,2011).Wewillarguethatwhatis
neededisaradicallydifferentnotionofteachers’practicesandaradicallydifferent
picture of the teacher as a professional agent and activist for a socially just and
decentdemocraticsociety(Gore,2012;Goreetal.,2017;Nussbaum,2010).
In this book, we define the term school-based deliberative partnership for its
practical use in understanding curriculum innovation and teacher learning. Our
thinking is based on assumptions that teachers as professionals need to claim a
more substantial voice as curriculum designers and policy actors in public
spaces. This definition implies the following seven key principles:
(cid:1) It is our understanding that good teaching and teacher professional
learning are complex endeavors taking place in particular sociocultural
and political contexts and settings. We understand complex as holistic
teacher learning and acting that requires reflexive, collaborative and
democratic procedures for a sophisticated praxis inclusive of all policy
actors and stakeholders (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999; Pillow, 2003;
Bourdieu, 1991; Habermas, 1990).
(cid:1) This situated complexity requires an advanced professional practice that
includes multiple forms of knowledge and different ways of knowing
(Bourdieu, 1991) that recognizes both the usefulness and limitations of
large-scale empirical research findings (Opfer & Pedder, 2011) and open
enough spaces for philosophical co-inquiry and questioning authority
(Feldges, 2019).
(cid:1) We assert that new pedagogies and reforms are never implemented in
straightforward linear ways but instead involve complex, critical and creative
processes of policy enactment that require teachers to do the hard work of
Preface ix
recontextualization, reconceptualization, interpretationand translation taking
into account a rich diversity of learners, contexts, particularities and pecu-
liarities (Ball et al., 2012).
(cid:1) Schools and teachers are, therefore, positioned at the center of deliberation
in public space with partners from multiple communities, a view that goes
beyond the hegemonic closure inherent in singular communities of practice
and/or prescriptive governance views of standards and competences. In this
way,deliberationisanintenseattemptofhigher-orderdiscoursewithagreed
rules of deliberation for justification of outcomes for deliberative
democracy (Ewert, 1991). It is very different from the more usual type of
argumentation practiced in university and higher education settings. It is
not confined to counter-intuitive knowledge forms and involves a far
more messy narrative of interaction (Nixon, 2004).
(cid:1) In this regard, partners meet in school-based settings with the implication
of equal treatment of all partners and an understanding that each partner
has an important contribution to make to this complex epistemic puzzle.
The purpose of these meetings in public space is for deliberation as shared
meaning-making and justification of curriculum innovation. This requires
a high level of reflexivity from all actors – not just the teachers – what
Pillow (2003) calls the uncomfortable hard work of reflexivity. Bleakley
(1999) argues that critical reflexivity is needed for a holistic education that
is socially just and emancipatory.
(cid:1) Partnership in deliberation implies a trusting sustained relationship with
an equal exchange, reciprocity and mutuality. It is a prerequisite of
communicative action and co-inquiry for shared meaning-making. Such
a process needs to acknowledge unequal power relations and actively
seek to redress imbalances. We assume as a condition of possibility com-
municative competence for all actors in a partnership. However, Zipin
and Brennan (2003) highlight the ethical suppression of teachers’ voices
in contemporary times of data analytics and metrics fixation. Santoro
(2017) considers the moral madness experienced by many teachers who
dare to transgress and to question authority. She argues that teachers
working in a feminized profession are readily dismissed by expert voices
as out-of-date, lazy or burnt out and lacking resilience. Instead, she
argues that many experienced teachers have become demoralized with
reforms that regard teaching and teacher learning as little more than
quantifiable commodities for a market-led discourse of learning.
(cid:1) Deliberation for this complexity view of good teacher professional learning
and innovation, involving extended social partnerships, assumes intelligent
accountability for an advanced professional practice rather than the narrow
technocratic modes of self-evaluation currently in vogue for public
accountability in schooling (Brady, 2016, 2019a, 2019b; O’Neill, 2013;
Muller, 2018).
