Conference Agenda

The professional learning of educators is a wide-ranging, complex assemblage of practices and activities that occur within and outside of institutions, formally and informally, ranging from individual to collective participation, as well as occurring on a mandatory and/or voluntary basis (Opfer & Pedder, 2011; Timperley, 2011). Notwithstanding the breadth and complexity of the practices and activities associated with professional learning, the process of reflection or reflective practice has maintained a longstanding presence as a key learning tool that educators use to engage with, make sense of, and articulate their thinking about their professional practice (Moon 1999; Tight 2023). It is fair to say that reflection is widely considered the cornerstone of professional learning (Postholm, 2008), as it is associated with learning from experience and it is something educators engage with throughout their careers. From the early stages of initial teacher education programmes for schoolteachers, to developing and updating the pedagogic skills and subject knowledge of experienced educators in higher education (HE), reflection features prominently in organisational approaches to promote and enhance educators’ professional learning across education sectors. And as Tight (2023) argues, it has become increasingly pervasive in HE in teaching and learning and in the professional disciplines in recent decades.

Donald Schön (1983; 1987) is widely viewed as the leading figure and most influential thinker on reflection. Schön’s work still plays a central role in shaping reflective practice across different disciplines, particularly in education and teachers’ professional learning. However, there are those who argue that reflective practice has become colonised by a managerialist, performative agenda in some organisations, where it ‘has become routinised, as teachers are provided with checklists of ritualised questions to answer’ (Farrell and Kennedy 2019, 2). In their critique of Schön’s conceptualisation of reflective practice, Thompson and Pascal (2012) state that Schön did not consider the ‘importance of forethought, or the need for planning’ (p. 316) in his binary categorisation of reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action. They argue that what is missing from Schön’s model is a third element that they refer to as reflection-for-action, which ‘refers to the process of planning, thinking ahead about what is to come, so that we can draw on our experience (and the professional knowledge base implicit within it)’ (p. 317). This is a crucial consideration in relation to the role of reflection in professional learning when exploring the model of unseen observation used in the research study in this paper. In particular, the role that collegial reflection plays in shaping educators’ decision making about their planning for teaching as part of pre-lesson professional dialogues, as discussed below.

This paper examines the role of reflection and collaborative dialogue in supporting professional learning through the lens of a model of reflexive self-observation known as ‘unseen observation’ (O’Leary 2024). Using a single tertiary institution that participated in a two-year funded project as an illustrative case study, it draws on a range of in-depth qualitative data to explore educators’ experiences of participating in unseen observation, with a particular focus on the integration of reflection-for-action through pre-session professional discussions. The participant educators (n=46) had the opportunity to anticipate challenges, co-construct session objectives and improve session design in ways that were grounded in shared pedagogical reasoning. These collaborative discussions not only enhanced individual practice but also helped foster professional learning communities within the participating subject areas. The findings also highlight the importance of ‘authentic’ and ‘honest’ self-reflection, which was made more feasible in the absence of third-party observers and performative pressures. This suggests that when given the space and support to reflect meaningfully, educators embrace the opportunity to engage in deep, critical analysis of their own practice, thereby enhancing the quality of teaching and their students’ learning.

In short, this project’s findings reveal how unseen observation challenges prevailing performative approaches to the observation of teaching and learning and offers an alternative that centres educators as knowledge generators rather than subjects of evaluation. Furthermore, this study rediscovers and reimagines the role of reflection in professional learning by foregrounding reflection-for-action in the cycle of unseen observation, positioning it as a dialogic, agentic model of teacher collaboration grounded in mutual trust and collegiality.

Abstract:
This paper is an attempts to develop new road map approach to examine (Model C* Twenty six steps established by the researcher of this paper) toward building context framework to evaluate and design mechanisms empowerment toward human resources field in organization behavior in order to introduce and demonstrate the application of acceptability to evaluate new theory as a model to be used as an important way to apply model C as a mechanism to develop new context at workplace and flexible strategic tool to facilitate and introduce new Model to contribute toward management science .
Models are a key resource for organizational management. The diversity, complexity, and reusability of this resource result in the need for model management systems. The construction of a model management system involves modeling task dimension and a design level dimension. The modeling task dimension consists of model formulation, model representation, and model processing.
In this paper, we identify and justify the necessary dimensions of model management research.
Model ‘C’ is a systematic approach which provides twenty-six steps which enable managers to develop and empower their human resources.

1. What is Model C and how was it developed?
Model C is a newly developed conceptual framework introduced by the researcher as a structured “road map” consisting of 26 interconnected steps designed to enhance professional skills toward higher education in scientific view . The model was developed through an exploratory research approach, integrating established theoretical foundations and practical standards. Specifically, it draws on key principles from ISO 9001:2015, the Harvard Human Resource Management Model, and Maslow’s framework to ensure both theoretical grounding and practical applicability. The development process involved synthesizing these models into a cohesive, step-based structure aimed at improving organizational effectiveness and employee empowerment to develop higher education.

2. What is the new research or development of concepts presented?
This study introduces a novel conceptual contribution by proposing Model C as a new theory-driven framework for modern management to develop important role toward higher education. The originality lies in:

• The structured 26-step “C-based” roadmap for organizational and human resource development in higher education.
• The integration of quality management standards with behavioral and HRM theories into a unified model.
• The introduction of “acceptability” as a mechanism to evaluate and implement management models in practice.

This represents a new way of conceptualizing how professional skills and organizational behavior can be systematically developed using a flexible and adaptive framework in higher education.

3. How will this paper contribute to the conference track and broader understanding of higher education?
This paper contributes to the EAIR Forum by offering a practical and theoretical framework that can be applied within higher education institutions to enhance administrative effectiveness, staff development, and organizational performance. Specifically, it:

• Provides a structured model that institutions can use to design and evaluate management in higher education practices.
• Supports quality assurance and continuous improvement initiatives aligned with international standards of higher education.
• Enhances understanding of how integrated management models can improve institutional governance and professional development in higher education contexts.

From an academic perspective, the paper further contributes by:

• Providing a conceptual framework that can be used as a foundation for future empirical research and validation studies.
• Bridging theory and practice by integrating established academic models into a newly developed framework.
• Opening avenues for comparative studies in higher education management, particularly in areas of organizational higher education development.

More broadly, the study contributes to management science by introducing a scalable and adaptable model that can be further tested, refined, and applied across different organizational and higher educational settings.

Across European higher education systems, governance reforms, performance regimes, and increasing administrative pressures have reshaped educators’ professional environments. While these structural transformations have been widely examined, less attention has been paid to how they affect the meaning educators attach to their work and how institutional governance and didactic management shape processes of meaning reconstruction. Drawing on scholarship on higher education governance, professional identity, and narrative meaning-making, this paper examines how educators interpret, experience, and reconfigure the meaning of their work under contemporary institutional conditions.

The paper reports findings from a qualitative study based on semi-structured narrative interviews with 50 educators from Lithuania secondary education system. The empirical material was analysed through qualitative narrative analysis, combining thematic coding with cross-case comparison.

The findings show that meaning reconstruction is not merely an individual psychological response to change. It is shaped by organizational conditions such as workload distribution, evaluation systems, leadership practices, and the availability of collegial and pedagogical support. On this basis, the paper conceptualizes didactic governance as an institutional capacity to create conditions in which educators can sustain meaningful work while adapting to governance change.

The paper makes two contributions. Empirically, it provides a grounded account of how educators experience governance reforms through disruptions and reconstructions of meaning. Conceptually, it introduces the Narrative Rupture Cycle as an analytically derived model linking governance, professional identity, and institutional value creation. The argument is that institutions that design supportive didactic environments strengthen not only educator engagement and capability development, but also long-term institutional resilience.