Researching teacher education as an act of professional activism 

Researching teacher education as an act of professional activism 

In this seminar I want to share how I have used my research in teacher education to influence policy, practice and culture. The session will tell the story of four distinct, but linked, pieces of work that I have engaged in over the past twenty years. They span conceptual work, programme development, institutional policy development and empirical research for national policy development. I start by drawing on a conceptual framework which emerged from my PhD (Kennedy, 2005; 2014), in which I began to think more deeply about the concept of transformative professional learning. This work was deeply influenced by Sachs’ (2000; 2003) concept of the activist professional, and the distinction between managerial and democratic perspectives on professionalism. I then go on to talk about how this early work was developed into a more deeply theorised understanding of transformative learning (Mezirow, 2006), and used to underpin an innovative new initial teacher education programme that challenged traditional cultures and structures (Kennedy, 2018; Kennedy, Hay & McGovern, 2020). From there, I share how these ideas informed the development of a vision for socially progressive teacher education (Kennedy, 2022) within my current institution. Finally, I talk about how a longitudinal research project – Measuring Quality in Initial Teacher Education (www.mquite.scot) – is influencing teacher education policy in Scotland.

The seminar will share findings from these various pieces of work, but will also illustrate how the integration of research, policy and practice can be deployed as an act of professional activism.

Aileen Kennedy • University of Strathclyde

Professor of Practice in Teacher Education at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, where she is also Director of Teacher Education. Aileen’s research focuses on how teachers learn, and the policy context within which that learning happens. This work enables her to conceptualise and explain the powers that influence teacher professional learning, exploring pedagogies for teacher learning that support a transformative and socially just orientation. Her teaching and curriculum development work focus on supporting teachers to learn in ways that embrace and support a diverse pupil population. She is co-Principal Investigator of the ‘Measuring Quality in Initial Teacher Education’ project (www.mquite.scot), Managing Editor of Professional Development in Education (@PDiEJournal), and co-convener of the Scottish Educational Research Association’s Teacher Education Network.