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An individual learning belief and its impact on schools’ improvement work
Table 1: Examples of the three dimensions that influence the coherence of a community
of practice as manifestations of a social perspectve - or an individual learning perspective.
Community of Practice Social Learning Perspective Individual Learning Perspective
Joint Work
Mutual Engagement
Shared repertoire
(shared history of language
and artefacts)
– Shared responsibility for
improvement
– Participation required
– Joint identification of learning
needs
– Work together to complete
tasks
– Collective effort
– Experience which learning
needs arise in interaction
– Collective planning and
problem-solving (e.g. peer
counselling)
– Leadership needed because
activities go beyond the
individual and observational
situation
– Soliciting each other’s opinion
– Checking for agreement
– Development of a common
language (using terms familiar
to the group)
– The situation carries new
knowledge
– A shared repertoire of earlier
events
– Shared beliefs and
assumptions rely on
knowledge
– Individual responsibility for
learning
– Voluntary participation
– Individual decision on learning
needs
– Individual work
– Working without consulting
others
– Making decisions
independently
– Individual planning
– No need for a leader because
reponsibility is shared among
the individuals (but no skills
to organise situations for
learning)
– Explaining personal terms
– The individual carries new
knowledge
– Reference to individual
classroom experience
– Shared beliefs and
assumptions rely on simplistic
or easily summarised
explanations
In looking at disrupted improvement processes, we want to show how improvement
activities in schools which appear to be based on a social learning understanding where
teachers come together in groups to learn from each other may still ‘run out of steam’
due to events we believe are a result of an individual and cognitive learning belief.
For this, the interviews from the two studies were reanalysed on the basis of findings
that some schools had failed to implement the school improvement efforts. Transcripts
were read and reread to identify trends, patterns (Sim, 1998) and processes,
or the lack thereof, which disrupted the improvement efforts. We identified aspects of
joint working, mutual work and a shared repertoire in the data based on the analysis
matrix outlined above and shown in table 1. Accordingly, the data wers reanalysed
through the lenses, so to speak, of the social and individual learning perspective, as
bipolar metaphors.
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