Conference Agenda

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how an interorganizational network of professional learning communities (PLCs) can be conceptualized as an ecology. In the recent 30 years PLCs have become a certain way of organizing professional collaboration in educational institutions worldwide (Albrechtsen et al., 2022). Beginning in North America in the 1990’s and building on theories of the learning organization and organizational learning, the research primarily focused on school-based teacher collaboration. Since, the practice of and research on PLCs has expanded to also include other participants, like the whole school, the whole school district, research-practice partnerships and generally – collaboration across educational organizations (Stoll & Louis, 2007; Marzano et al., 2016: Admiraal et al. 2019). The interorganizational collaboration is also conceptualized as ‘professional learning networks’ (PLN) (Brown & Poortman, 2018; Schnellert, 2020); Handscomb & Brown, 2022). However, there is still a need for developing theoretical models of how PLCs are connected in such networks. In this paper we propose to understand multiple PLCs interacting with each other with the metaphor of an ecology. We are especially interested in understanding how it is possible for professional knowledge created in one PLC to flow to another PLC (as ‘nutrients’), how it will enhance the capacity building or growth of the participants and in what ways the diversity of the participants play a role in this regard. The background of the paper is a 4-year longitudinal study (2022-2025) of an emerging interorganization network of PLC’s in the field of science teacher education in Denmark called Naturfagsakademiet (NAFA) (English translation: Danish Academy of Natural Sciences). For a short English introduction see the homepage: About NAFA - NAFA. NAFA is a national program supported by Novo Nordisk Fonden and VILLUM FONDEN with more than 25 million Euros in the period from 1^st August 2021 to summer 2028. The main objective of NAFA is to enhance knowledge sharing and knowledge creation among science teaching professionals at different educational levels, both teacher education and primary and lower secondary schools. A central part of this is the organizing of national and local PLCs at all the teacher education institutions. In this first phase of the study, we work on developing a theoretical frame for investigating NAFA as a knowledge ecology. Therefore, the research question we want to explore in this paper is:

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the ecology metaphor applied to the understanding of the circulation of knowledge in an interorganizational network of professional learning communities in science teacher education?

In our paper we address aesthetic and art-based research and mediation approaches to diversity in the context of organised learning. In doing so, we will present image- and art-based approaches developed in the field of teacher education, with which shifts in relation to diversity in educational organisations become visible. The global crisis situation, which causes economic, ecological and social transformations, demands from pedagogy new forms of dealing with diversity. These transformations and the associated debates are often transported via the media. These debates often revolve around certain images that evoke emotional reactions. Against this backdrop, images continue to gain massive social significance. Therefore, the background of our research is the question of how diversity in educational organisations is negotiated visually or can be negotiated by trying out aesthetic approaches. From an organisational pedagogical perspective (Göhlich et al. 2018), we focus in particular on how the relationship between diversity, pedagogical professionalisation and educational organisations is expressed in images and can be dealt with. How is the relationship between one's own situatedness and positioning in relation to socially prefigured images dealt with in pedagogical professionalisation processes and how do these relationships become visible?

The theoretical background is provided by academic debates on diversity and organisation, whereby we start with approaches to diversity based on difference theory (Mecheril 2016; Czejkowska 2018). Pedagogical ways of dealing with difference move in a "trilemmatic" relationship of empowerment, normalisation and deconstruction (Boger 2019). We classify the aesthetic treatment of these relations as an aspect of pedagogical professionalisation, which emphasises the social conditionality of education as a critical approach (Messerschmidt 2020; Heidrich et al. 2021). In addition, the view of conditions that manifest themselves as dependencies on others - humans and non-human others as well as nature and technology - changes in the light of posthumanist omens. In view of the "posthumanist situation" (Braidotti 2013), the constitution of the self can be understood as situated. Not only human diversity plays a role in this, but also the diversity of species and the interconnectedness with the manifold technical conditions that help shape the human self-understanding and its numerous ways of interconnectedness with the world.

This paper focuses on collaborative research undertaken in partnership with Fig Leaf (pseudonym) - a charitable organisation based in a historical allotment site, in an area of urban social deprivation. Fig Leaf manages four community projects, uniquely based on the same allotment site, and attracting four, distinct user groups.

The projects are as follows: The Community Garden, offering fun and educational activity for local families; The Growth Space, providing social and learning opportunities for the local community; City Green, a wildlife and conservation project; and The History Plot, a site of historical architectural and horticulture interest. The projects incorporate opportunities for volunteering, activities for local groups, and coordinate outreach into the local community.

The research centres on developing methodologies that can effectively generate data to gather the experiences of this diverse range of participant groups, including ‘at risk’ adults and young people, with a particular focus on exploring the benefits of participation to wellbeing.

The concept of wellbeing was identified by Fig Leaf as the focus of the study, based on their own analysis of in-house project evaluations. There is not scope here to discuss the multifarious interpretations of the term in these evaluations. However, a review of funding applications and reporting revealed the repeated reference to the ‘therapeutic benefits’ of participation, without further qualification, and the commitment to green social prescribing (Leavell et al., 2019; Fixsen and Barrett, 2022) by providing opportunities for engagement that would be of emotional, social, or physical benefit to participants.

The research aimed to address the following overarching question:

How can researchers and community garden project professionals co-construct methodologies to generate and interpret participant experience data?

And sub-questions:

What methodologies generate rich, experiential data from different groups participating in the Fig Leaf projects?

What are the ‘therapeutic benefits’ of participating in activities at Fig Leaf?

Why does this matter?

Community environmental initiatives can provide rich learning opportunities, and have the potential to positively impact communities and contribute to education for global sustainability (Christie and Waller, 2019; Flachs, 2010; Smith and Sobel, 2014)

Green social prescribing is much discussed across the charitable sector but there is limited evidence to demonstrate its efficacy or outcomes, since Social Prescribing is still a developing practice (Brandling and House, 2009; Chesterman and Bray, 2018).

However, robust methodologies that can underpin claims about the participant experience are limited and therefore the ‘impact’ of the prescription (e.g. University of York, 2015).

Urban agriculture organisations, such as Fig Leaf, are vulnerable. They exist with precarious and short-term funding (St. Clair et al., 2020), threat from development in the drive for housing and infrastructure (Fletcher and Collins, 2020), and lack sufficient expertise or time for effective project evaluation that comprises rich participant voice data (Houlden et al., 2018)

Fig Leaf is the oldest and largest allotment site in Europe. It has over 25 years’ experience of working with individuals and groups in the local community and, through externally funded project activity, has built significant expertise in working with a diverse range of users, some with significant and complex emotional, social, and learning needs.

This research into the unique site of Fig Leaf enables development of robust methodologies that can be packaged as a ‘toolkit’ for sharing across the UK and wider, international community of urban agriculture projects (Houlden et al., 2018).

These methodologies capture often marginalised voices, through participatory methods that have the capacity to empower, and to ‘decolonise’ experiential data by moving the site of the research out of the academy and into the community, both physically and intellectually (Elder and Odoyo, 2017; Igwe et al., 2022).