Radical Collegiality Research Articles

The Formation of Michael Fielding's Concept of 'Radical Collegiality': Focusing on the Relationship Between Teachers and Students

The Formation of Michael Fielding's Concept of 'Radical Collegiality': Focusing on the Relationship Between Teachers and Students

Measuring Mechanisms of Student Voice: Development and Validation of Student Leadership Capacity Building Scales

This study developed measurement scales on student leadership capacity building through a survey of 280 students from nine U.S. high schools. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses resulted in a personal, interpersonal, organizational, and overall scale for building student leadership capacity. The scales included eight mechanisms that schools can use to enhance student leadership: pedagogy, relationships, radical collegiality, governance structure, research, group makeup, consistency, and recognition. The scale items also reflected three leadership competencies: critical awareness, inclusivity, and positivity. Focus groups and interviews with students and teachers in these nine schools supported survey findings and suggested implications for practice.

Roseanna Bourke and Judith Loveridge (eds.): Radical Collegiality Through Student Voice: Educational Experience, Policy and Practice

Roseanna Bourke and Judith Loveridge (eds.): Radical Collegiality Through Student Voice: Educational Experience, Policy and Practice

The other side of a magic mirror: exploring collegiality in student and staff partnership work

ABSTRACT This article adds to the corpus of writing that examines collegiality's idealistic yet elusive nature in Higher Education by focusing specifically on how collegiality can be enacted in student–staff partnership work. An innovative initiative, ‘Students as Colleagues in the Review of Teaching Practices’, provides a case to qualitatively explore the collegial characteristics. Here, students reviewed a paired staff member's teaching practice over one semester, as a peer review exercise. This shift in social roles troubles the understanding of ‘peer’ and asks if authentic collegiality is possible. The study is conceptually framed by Fielding's notion of ‘radical collegiality’ and draws on standpoint theory and dialogic education to raise issues of power, mutual support and productive tensions. The findings have implications for how Higher Education institutions can support student and staff to actively engage in authentic collegial partnerships by developing relational and dialogic spaces, rather than just abstract institutional infrastructures.

Democratic contribution or information for reform? Prevailing and emerging discourses of student voice

While a range of typologies frame and critique the scope, purpose and power relations of different student voice approaches, it is timely to look at the direction that student voice literature has taken in recent years and map dominant discourses in the field. In the article the following questions are addressed: (a) What are the dominant discourses in student voice literature? (b) What are the ways forward, to ensure there is both systemic quality assurance and democratic (if not radical) student participation? The discourses named and interrogated in this article include: governmentality; accountability; institutional transformation and reform; learner agency; personalising learning; radical collegiality; socially critical voice; decolonising voice; and refusal. Consideration is given to the ongoing impetus to position students as consumers and resources for quality control. It is an ongoing concern that student voice projects can miss opportunities for reconfiguring the status of students within democratic schooling partnerships. There is an important role for ongoing and initial teacher education that addresses a politics of voice associated with systemic quality assurance, decolonisation and democracy.

Student-Faculty Partnership as a Foundation for Authentic Learning

To understand the nature of student-faculty partnerships we began to explore the literature on students and educators as pedagogical partners (Cook-Sather, Bovill, & Felten, 2011). What emerged was a strong alignment between our transformational partnership as co-teachers in higher education and how our co-teaching practice has evolved to influence our relationships with students. Reflecting on our co-teaching practice has created a space for us to cross the threshold and embrace ‘radical collegiality’ (Fielding, 1999); not only through engaging as full faculty partners but transforming our thinking about the nature of partnership with students (Bovill, Cook-Sather, & Felten, 2011; Cook-Sather, 2014). Students became active partners in pedagogical planning surrounding a teaching philosophy assignment which revealed students’ understanding of the significance of authentic partnership. Understanding the education process as a partnership between students and educators compels us to continue fostering a brave space for both students and ourselves to risk and engage in courageous change, growth, and learning (Cook-Sather, 2016).

Pedagogic rights and the acoustics of health and physical education teacher education: whose voices are heard?

ABSTRACTBackground: Health and Physical Education Teacher Education (HPETE) is increasingly shaped by agendas, stakeholders and accountability regimes that restrict rather than open up what is possible (Tinning [2006]. “Theoretical Orientations in Physical Education Teacher Education.” In The Handbook of Physical Education, edited by D. Kirk, D. Macdonald, and M. O’Sullivan, 369–385. London: SAGE). The evolution of an HPETE programme orientation that is ‘more conservative, less eclectic and adventurous’ (Tinning 2006, 372), and less socio-cultural and democratic (Enright, E., L. Coll, D. Ní Chróinín, and M. Fitzpatrick. [2017]. “Student Voice as Risky Praxis: Democratising Physical Education Teacher Education.” Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy 22 (5): 459–472) has serious implications for both the official and the hidden curriculum (Bain [1975]. “The Hidden Curriculum in Physical Education.” Quest 24 (1): 92–101) of HPETE, meaning the explicit and implicit content and values taught and learned by students.Purpose: In this paper, we seek to identify how, why and to what effect various agendas and stakeholders are shaping HPETE programme orientations in Australia. To this end, we draw on the work of Bernstein and deploy an acoustic metaphor to consider who speaks, who is heard and who is addressed within HPETE, with a particular focus on the implications of these acoustics.Participants and setting: The paper draws on data that were generated across three academic years with the students and teacher educators of one HPETE programme in an Australian university.Data collection: Data were generated through: (1) focus group interviews with teacher educators and students; (2) teacher educator written reflections; (3) programme review documentation for national accrediting bodies; (4) electronic course profiles; and (5) university internal policy documents.Data analysis: These data were subjected to an inductive thematic analysis. Following Armour and Duncombe [(2004). “Teachers’ Continuing Professional Development in Primary Physical Education: Lessons from Present and Past to Inform the Future.” Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy 9 (1): 3–21, this journal], three vignettes were also constructed post-analysis to serve as rhetorical devices to facilitate the reader in engaging with the complexity, the emotionality and the politics of curriculum construction, contestation, reconstruction and reform (Goodson [1984]. “Subjects for Study: Towards a Social History of Curriculum.” In Defining the curriculum: Histories and ethnographies, edited by I. Goodson and S. Ball, 24–44. London: Routledge) and the pedagogic acoustics of one HPETE programme.Findings: HPE teacher educators are serving many masters in order to have programmes accredited whilst also satisfying internal university approval processes and trying to maintain the philosophical integrity and some sense of ownership over HPETE programmes. Students are often unaware of the non-negotiables that have come to define and/or limit how teacher educators teach towards social justice and facilitate democratic engagement and, therefore, are sometimes critical of the disconnect between the ‘walk and talk’ of teacher educators. ‘The medium is the message’ was one of the strongest themes to be constructed from the data set, as all participants agreed that certain institutional and policy arrangements, pedagogical decisions and styles of communication were a large part of what was taught and learned about social justice, democracy and equity in and through HPETE.Discussion and conclusion: In contexts where both teacher educators and student teachers feel that their voices have been silenced, sidelined or muted and their pedagogic rights limited, opportunities for ‘democratic deliberation’ and ‘radical collegiality’ [Fielding (1999). ‘Radical Collegiality: Affirming Teaching as an Inclusive Professional Practice.’ The Australian Educational Researcher 26 (2): 1–34] become imperative. Our discussion engages with the implications of the explicit and implicit values taught and learned by student teachers through their experiences of HPETE and highlights how teacher educators can work to promote the pedagogic rights of their students.

The politics of student voice: unravelling the multiple discourses articulated in schools

For almost two decades student voice has been used and enacted in educational settings for a range of purposes. Student voice theorists have framed it in sociocultural, social constructionist and poststructural terms. It has been located in a range of schooling discourses and there have been powerful critiques of instrumentalist uses of student voice. It has been reified for its potential to leverage schooling reform, associated with accountability, governmentality and technologies of control, and also heralded as a process to activate radical collegiality in educational settings. This article investigates how school leaders from Aotearoa/New Zealand discursively locate the complex and contested construct of student voice in their schooling settings. Drawing data from principal interviews, discourses inherent in school leader comments are analysed to consider the contribution of student voice. A consideration is provided of how young people are ascribed positions as agents in contemporary Aotearoa schools.

Student-Led, Individually-Created Courses: Using Structured Reflection within Experiential Learning to Enable Widening Participation Students’ Transitions Through and Beyond Higher Education

The notion of students as partners in the co-creation of curricula and indeed co-evaluating or co-grading has shown positive outcomes that include increased engagement and motivation (Cook-Sather, Bovill, & Felten, 2014; Cook-Sather 2014; Cook-Sather & Motz-Storey 2016). In order for a student to be a pedagogical co-designer or indeed a change agent it is reasonable to suggest that they must already possess a substantial level of social and cultural capital (Woolcock, 2001) to enable this engagement. However, students from lower socio-economic status backgrounds are more likely to lack such capital and to not understand the “rules of the game” (Bourdieu, 1990; Bourdieu, 1984). In this situation, the value or pay-off of being involved in such co-design in terms of attribute development through a novel sense of experiential learning, may not be fully appreciated. Therefore, there are likely limits to the extent that co-creation and radical collegiality (Fielding, 1999), will lead to the democratisation of curricula and enhance students’ experiences, irrespective of social background. Despite the barriers outlined above, Student-Led, Individually-Created Courses (SLICCs) are an emerging area of practice at the University of Edinburgh through which widening participation (WP) students are successfully being engaged in the graduate attributes and employability agendas and ultimately in the pedagogical co-design of their own credit-bearing curriculum. SLICCs provide a flexible reflective-learning framework for experiential learning that enables individuals and groups of students to work across disciplinary and structural boundaries. These courses broaden the scope of what is considered to be ‘curricular’, bringing what was previously co- and extra-curricular into the credit-bearing provision. This paper will explore how WP students are engaged in the radical collegiality of SLICCs, despite the many barriers related to capital, through a rational pedagogy as outlined by Bourdieu and Passeron (1979).

‘Observation has set in’: comparing students and peers as reviewers of teaching

Peer review is a powerful method to enhance teaching in higher education. Peers, however, may not be the most relevant people in evaluating teaching success; as the most important stakeholders in learning, students’ evaluations need to be heard. Whilst some efforts to capture ‘the student voice’ are simplistic and may foster consumerist approaches, adopting ‘radical collegiality’ towards students may provide the benefits of peer review whilst avoiding some of its disadvantages. Here we describe the Students as Colleagues project, which trained student volunteers as evaluators of teaching. To assess the ability of students to provide useful reviews, we compared their evaluative feedback with that from academic peers, using a paired design and qualitative and quantitative data. Students gave significantly more positive comments, and just as many negative and directive comments, as academic peers. Student colleagues emphasised the positive personal (rather than professional) capacities of their reviewees, encouraged expressed vulnerability and drew on their broad experiences as students rather than from professional perspectives. Participation changed how students saw their abilities and helped ‘humanise’ both the reviewees and the university as a whole. Our results and standpoint theory suggest that students’ evaluative feedback is the most valuable perspective to inform teaching enhancement.

Defining a self-evaluation digital literacy framework for secondary educators: the DigiLit Leicester project

Despite the growing interest in digital literacy within educational policy, guidance for secondary educators in terms of how digital literacy translates into the classroom is lacking. As a result, many teachers feel ill-prepared to support their learners in using technology effectively. The DigiLit Leicester project created an infrastructure for holistic, integrated change, by supporting staff development in the area of digital literacy for secondary school teachers and teaching support staff. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how the critique of existing digital literacy frameworks enabled a self-evaluation framework for practitioners to be developed. Crucially, this framework enables a co-operative, partnership approach to be taken to pedagogic innovation. Moreover, it enables social and ethical issues to underpin a focus on teacher-agency and radical collegiality inside the domain of digital literacy. Thus, the authors argue that the shared development framework constitutes a new model for implementing digital literacy aimed at transforming the provision of secondary education across a city.Keywords: digital literacy framework; professionalism; radical collegiality; secondary education; transformation(Published: 10 April 2014)Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2014, 22: 21440 -http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v22.21440

Outputs of a radical collegiality?

The managing editor shares his thoughts on this issue and reflects on the notion of radical collegiality in higher education.

Creating and translating knowledge about teaching and learning in collaborative school–university research partnerships: an analysis of what is exchanged across the partnerships, by whom and how

Whilst there is a growing body of literature on practitioner research and the role of collaborations and partnerships that include universities in that process, there are relatively few studies examining the role of the university in any depth. We reflect on 12 years of working in school–university collaborative research partnerships through an analysis of the exchanges between teachers and academics as documented by interviews, case studies and project reports. We draw upon a sample of 90 teachers in 51 schools covering all phases of compulsory schooling. Focusing on the exchanges between the university and partnership schools, we extend the idea of radical collegiality to encompass teacher to academic dialogue in the process of mutual transformation. We contribute to the development of greater conceptual clarity regarding school–university research partnerships and their potential to contribute to the creation and translation of knowledge about teaching and learning. The interplay of the project as the context, the role of enquiry and the development and use of tools by the participants is outlined and a model for understanding the dynamics of school–university partnerships proposed. We suggest that the project as a space‐ and time‐limited context inclusive of partner institutions may have the scope to reconcile the tension between an impetus for exclusive bonding and the flexibility of bridging across structures in social networks. We conclude that the model of the exchanges between partners is fruitful in unravelling the relationship between theory and practice in the pursuit of knowledge about teaching and learning.

Radical collegiality: Affirming teaching as an inclusive professional practice

In trying to get to grips with the notion of collegiality in the context of the teaching profession four things are likely to strike the inquirer. Firstly, collegiality is invariably partnered with collaboration and the two terms are more often than not used interchangeably. Secondly, both are seen as hugely important. Thirdly, despite the fervour with which collegiality and collaboration are advocated, ironically, though perhaps unsurprisingly, it turns out that the abundance of their virtues is matched by the scarcity of their realisation: we do not often manage to actually work in these desirable ways. This is not altogether surprising since, fourthly, there is little commonality or clarity about what it is we are all invited to understand and emulate: we do not agree on what collaboration and collegiality actually are. Even more worrying, our disagreements are more often than not the consequence of intellectual laziness. It is not that collaboration and collegiality are essentially contested concepts: rather, they are essentially confused concepts more likely to produce indifferent assent or evangelical agreement, depending on the values and dispositions of those involved. Judith Warren Little puts the matter well when she argues that: 'The term collegiality has remained conceptually amorphous and ideologically sanguine' (Little 1990b, p. 509). The still current fervour for collegiality is difficult to overplay. Prior to embarking on a searching critique of some of its more dubious manifestations, Andy Hargreaves observes that:

Challenges to Weberians' Treatments of Collegiality: Comment on Waters

Previous articleNext article No AccessCommentary and DebateChallenges to Weberians' Treatments of Collegiality: Comment on WatersDavid SciulliDavid Sciulli Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 96, Number 1Jul., 1990 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/229496 Views: 4Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1990 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Michael Fielding Radical collegiality: Affirming teaching as an inclusive professional practice, The Australian Educational Researcher 26, no.22 (Aug 1999): 1–34.https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03219692