Keeping it complex: the power of support from a community of professionals

Abstract

This paper reports on ways to think about how a teacher educator might learn. A review of the process of writing a Collaborative Action Research Network conference paper is presented, followed by a reflection on the nature of the Conference feedback. The learning at the Conference is built on by an analysis of approaches to thinking about learning. This covers how learners, both teachers in initial education and their teacher educator, might respond to anomalous data. This shows the need to think things through from the points of view of others. This difficult process is aided by conference attendance and also by adopting post-formal thinking. This post-formal approach goes beyond the formal, closed problem approach of a number of models of teacher learning to one that acknowledges a multiplicity of ways of looking and analysing teaching and learning. Evidence is presented that suggests that using the post-formal approach may be a fruitful way to think about teacher development.