Minority educators discuss a public story that challenges social inclusion

Abstract

Abstract This paper focuses on understanding professional development as an interactive social, cultural, and political process. Toward that end, we present an analysis of an innovative professional development activity with educators from a minority group in a social inclusion reform program who reflected on a news story of an event challenging the reform. Based on socio-cultural discourse theory, we posited that participants' interactions around the public story would reveal unique insights about implementations of the policy, and we posed questions about what those insights would be. Participants—174 Roma Pedagogical Assistants (PAs)—read, discussed, and wrote endings to the public story in a workshop during their professional training. Analyses of the public story discussions and original story endings by 24 groups of PAs emphasized the need for public authorities to enforce social inclusion policy in collaboration with a wide range of relevant stakeholders, including those in Roma communities. Participants reached this consensus through effortful argumentation about threats to integration indicated in the public story and their own deliberations about the need for justice for the entire community. This study offers evidence that policy subjects offer unique insights by interacting directly with one another around a relevant critical incident. We discuss implications of the study for research and practice of educational reform as an interactive process.