Working with EPs

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Working with EPs

• no picture is ever complete
• (Lincoln Denzin, 1994)

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Overview of Project

• Peer shadowing
• 3 EPs, 3 films, 3 feedbacks.
• Contact principles.
• Psychology of consultation.

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Consultation aims to

• Encourage teachers to think about the role they
  and their decisions have in situations.
• Make better use of teachers existing skills.
• Take account of teachers perceptions beliefs.
• Enable teachers to be more involved in solution -
  building.
• Generate ways forward that everyone feels may be
  successful in the context.

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Philosophy

• Aim was to convey some of the complexities of
  human experience.
• Focus on conveying our experience of feedback and
  what happens during feedback.

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Research Process

• Grounded Theory approach.
• Complexity approach to change.
• Visits to the field.
• Coding process.
• Research strength.

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Emergent Theory

• multi-voiced dialogue
• It is a theory grounded in observation of reality
  not because it seems logical or because it fits
  with hypotheses.
• Can appear messy or confusing at times.
• --gt reflective interview

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Emergent Theory (diagram)
emergence
emergence
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Theory and Reality

• This relationship often difficult in a G.T study.
• Internal logic validity does not always easily
  relate to the real world.
• About understanding contemporary social
  relationships.

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Complex People

• People think that stories are shaped
  by people. In fact, its the other way around
  Pratchett, cited by Knight, 2002.
• Beliefs, behaviours and feelings are influenced
  by contextual factors.
• Links with assumptions of grounded theory,
  consultation process of VIG.
• Encourages us to remain within the movement of
  communication, learning and organisation.

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Thinking about the process

• What was happening during the VIG sessions?

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The power of the conversational process

• Immense freedom in the way we tell something.
• Also constrained by the need to maintain a
  connection with others and how they are
  constructing meaning.
• Desire to understand further.
• Changing conversations.

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So how would we describe it?

• Experience from within.
• Theres an element of messiness.
• Socially constructed.
• A process that is constantly shifting, changing
  and reconstructing meaning.
• Fresh appreciation of our experience.

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What you see is what you get?

• Cognition - new level of thought/ understanding.
• Metacognition - beyond observable to
  consideration of meaning and process.
• Tool for developing new meaning.
• Affective factors.

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Skill/ practice

• Unconsciously competent.
• No blueprints!
• Spontaneous and skilful ensemble.
• Time and space - time for psychology.

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The cultural web
(Johnson, cited by Seel, 2000)
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Professional Learning

• Self-directed
• changing paradigms changes practice.
• Constructivist approach
• takes people from where they are, no assumptions
  made about previous knowledge or experience.
• Different levels EPiTs, EPS, INSET

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Identifying Learning Needs

• Harris, 2000 - self - identification of learning
  needs.
• Needs should be located within the system within
  which the indv interacts one which locates the
  indv at the centre.
• Shift in control.
• EPs had their own different learning hopes.

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• Knowledge of consultation alone is
  insufficient to change practice - the most change
  occurs where thought, practice and relationship
  have been co-constructed in changed ways
• Watkins and Hill (2000)