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Journal of Educational Change

, Volume 13, Issue 3, pp 311–326 | Cite as

School district triggers for reconstructing professional knowledge

  • Lynne M. Hannay
  • Lorna Earl
Article
First Online:

Abstract

In a recent publication, Senge (All systems go: the change imperative for whole system reform. Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, 2010, x) stated “at no time in history has there been a more powerful need for a new vision of the purpose of education.” Increasingly citizens, academics and practitioners are calling for radical changes to educational practices to meet the needs of a knowledge-based society in the twenty-first century (Dede in 21st Century skills: rethinking how students learn. Solution Tree Press, Bloomington, 2010; Hargreaves and Shirley in The fourth way: the inspiring future for educational change. Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, 2009). Accomplishing such substantive educational change requires that individual educators collectively reshape their personal professional knowledge (Connelly and Clandinin in Teachers as curriculum planners: narratives of experiences. OISE Press, Toronto, 1988; Elbaz in Curriculum Inq 11(1):43–71, 1981) and adapt their personal mental models (Duffy in J Staff Dev 24(1):30–36, 2003). In 2000, we began a longitudinal study on the role of a school district in facilitating significant educational reform which required adaptations to individual and collective mental models of professional practice. Annually we conducted intensive interviews with a large sample of teachers, school and system administrators in this large Ontario, Canada school district. Recently, we conducted a retrospective analysis of these data collected in order to identify the conditions necessary for a large organization to support knowledge-creation and dissemination. In this paper, we identify three school district actions that triggered individual educators to challenge and reconstruct their professional personal practical mental models of the teaching and learning. First, improved student learning became the central focus of the school district. Second, the school district stressed and created opportunities for educators to collectively engage in professional dialogue about their practice. Third, the school district emphasized the importance of educators individually and collectively using evidence to assess whether their actions improved student learning.

Keywords

Knowledge-based paradigm Knowledge mobilization Organizational culture Reconstructing professional practice School district Systemic change 
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Wilfrid Laurier UniversityWaterlooCanada
  2. 2.Aporia ConsultingTorontoCanada

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