This research and development project aims to develop a framework for teacher professional learning in Wales centred on disciplinary and interdisciplinary teacher-teacher dialogue.
We have a unique opportunity to explore and enrich the dialogue teachers have across traditional curriculum boundaries at a time of curriculum-making in Wales. Wales is undertaking a process of fundamental education reform focusing on teacher agency and school-based curriculum redesign as a central concept.
We share the concerns of some of our fellow teacher educators in Wales that interdisciplinary collaboration runs the risk of being shallow if teachers are not given the time, space and opportunity to carefully plan together. This research is important as it seeks to deepen teacher-teacher dialogue which will, in turn, deepen collaboration and provide a higher quality of interdisciplinary planning which will, in turn, improve the educational experience of young people in Wales.
The project is centred on three research questions:
The project will start with a short survey, seeking self-reporting from teachers across Wales on frequency and quality of teacher-teacher dialogue opportunities.
The second part of the project involves working with teachers in 4 schools, first in a micro-study in one school, then a macro-study across 3 further schools. The project will introduce teachers to new knowledge on sustainability and climate change, then explore how teachers talk about and respond to that new knowledge in disciplinary and interdisciplinary settings.
The project will result in a series of academic articles and professional resources that will be rich with data from the project and intend to increase the status of teacher-teacher dialogue in a country committed to teacher agency and interdisciplinary learning.
Through working across science and humanities Areas of Learning Experience (AoLEs), the project intends to put a spotlight on the new subject of Religion, Values and Ethics in Wales. Some schools appear to be using the new status of the subject to include less in the curriculum. It is hoped that attending to teachers of Religion, Values and Ethics in this project, particularly through the focus on Sustainability and Climate Change Education (SCCE), will provide a boost to its status and show senior leaders the importance of the subject on the curriculum.
The ambition of this project is to empower teachers to have richer dialogues across curriculum boundaries to benefit pupils’ integrative understanding of knowledge. We want to raise the profile or teacher-teacher dialogue so that policy leaders and senior school leaders see the need for our resources. We want the secondary school community in Wales to value the importance of deep teacher dialogue as part of shaping professional learning. This project will involve the creation of resources for teachers that we hope Curriculum for Wales will share on their teacher professional development website.