Responding to the forum: a professional conversation / Bellis & Parr
Some of the points raised in this written professional conversation seem relevant to the things I have been reading, thinking, writing and learning about.
Bellis wrote:
“I have spent many, many hours with a couple of my colleagues reading and discussing student work, sharing ways to approach various texts, sharing ways to approach various texts, talking about our practices-what seemed to be working well, what wasn’t, what we think subject English is and should be…the list goes on. Even though I was the ‘newbie’, it wasn’t as if ‘the knowledge’ (whatever that means) was flowing in one direction-in the act of discussion we are required to question and reconsider what we think we know because we are attempting to articulate our understandings. It is impossible to equate the learning that transpires in these sorts of professional relationships to one individual teacher” (p. 41).
Bellis was lucky enough to not only find teachers who regularly engaged in professional dialogue, but for them to include her as an equal in those conversations. Unlike Bulfin and Mathews, Bellis felt from the beginning that she is an equal in the production of knowledge through dialogue with her peers.
The article emphasises the tension between the notion of teacher collaboration in learning and the present emphasis being placed on individual teacher performance. Parr discusses the need to concentrate on the quality of teaching rather than on the ability of individual teachers. I agree with his conclusion that it is impossible to assign credit to a single teacher working in an educational framework. Teachers interact with each other, and with students in so many different ways and it is impossible to determine what exactly contributes to any particular breakthrough.
Bellis, N., & Parr, G. (2005). Responding to the forum: a professional conversation. Idiom, 41(2), 39-45. Retrieved from http://search.informit.com.au
