There are spaces and opportunities in every system for educators to exercise agency through being prepared to try out strategies and approaches they have not used before. There have always been such educators who deepen their pedagogical knowing through being prepared to take risks. The risk is less high stakes when the approach is grounded in empirical evidence as in the case of the dialogical inquiry approach. Where there is risk, there is potential for what is often labelled as failure. However, the individual and the team and system can continue to move forward by renaming ‘failure’ as something to analyse why, to seek further information and to try again based on further learning. Educators who seek to constantly evolve their practice are often recognised and rewarded through strong positive student feedback, formal recognition of quality teaching, generally in the form of a certificate of excellence in teaching, and in various other ways. Provision of opportunities for these teachers to share their expertise and strategies varies across institutions, but a common approach is through observing their teaching. As discussed in the section on system change, recognition and reward of these individuals should be encouraged. A tool useful for individual educators in gaining feedback on current or new practices they are trialling include Brookfield’s (1995) critical incident questionnaire. This questionnaire includes questions such as, What surprised you? When were you most engaged?, When were you least engaged?. Such questions can be used by individual educators to gain feedback when considering change and when trialling new pedagogical approaches. Individual educators should be encouraged to try out different approaches. The key message is that educators should feel empowered to try different approaches; even in quite restrictive systems there is room for individual practitioners to exercise agency through professional decision making.
6.2 Developing educator capabilities
Exercising individual agency can be encouraged with a growing sense of confidence and system support. In this section, the focus is on ways in which educator capabilities may be supported. In the reference group discussion, this was an area that drew much attention. Some indicated that dialogical teaching was something they have been “pushing all the time” and “learners’ are different now so educators must change”. Here the discussion in relation to Figures 6.1 and 6.2 is pertinent. Understandings of dialogical teaching, of course varied amongst reference group members. Equating constructivist practices with dialogical teaching practices is a common misconception as discussed above. Many of the stakeholders considered that educators in their institutions would need to develop the pedagogical skills and importantly the ‘mindset’ (beliefs about teaching and learning) to enact dialogical teaching. Comments such as the following expressed these concerns: “It’s a higher level of facilitation. It’s no longer just about managing within a fixed lesson plan”, “There is a lot more of that classroom management, facilitation skill…” Reference group members also noted that systems that strongly support monologic approaches, are an additional barrier as they provide limited space for educators to try new approaches. Providing space for educators to try new approaches was considered an important means of change from the bottom up. Most agreed that it would be important for educators to experience the power of dialogical teaching, to deconstruct what was happening, to learn the specific pedagogical strategies and to have spaces to experiment. Reference Group members were also very mindful of the identity shifts required and the need to be sensitive to changing identities. Educators, they commented, express their identity as
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