Conference Agenda

Starting with Vygotsky's research and the decisive contribution of the ensuing cultural-historical tradition (Smolucha & Smolucha, 1992; Gajdamaschko, 2005) the use of the term "imagination" in psychological and educational research has changed radically. From an irrational, egocentric and unrealistic type of thinking (Piaget, 1962), the term has come to denote a sophisticated form of intelligence in which logic is integrated with emotions and cognitive flexibility (Abraham, 2020).

Moreover, recent research in cognitive science and developmental psychology, even outside the cultural-historical tradition, has provided further empirical confirmation to support this critical rethinking of classical Piagetian ideas about imagination. This psychological function has proved indeed crucial for personal development and meaningful learning at different levels. It supports and enriches personal meaning-making and knowledge construction (Kind & Kung, 2016; Root-Bernstein, 2013). It is required for the proper functioning of emotional intelligence, empathy and theory of mind (Goldstein & Winner, 2012). It enhances metacognition and self-regulation processes (Goldstein & Lerner, 2017) and is an essential component of creative idea generation (Russ, 2014), divergent thinking and hypothetical and counterfactual reasoning (Harris, 2021).

Imaginative Education (IE) is an educational theory that unfolds the consequences of this post-Piagetian perspective on imagination in the field of curriculum design, teacher education and teacher professional development. The theory clarifies in a systematic way the reasons why imagination is a crucial resource for teaching and learning. On this basis, it also provides teachers with a set of “cognitive tools crystallized in culture” (Egan, 1997) with which to enhance the imaginative potential of teachers and learners and relate it to the acquisition of curricular knowledge and skills.

However, despite addressing several focal issues in the contemporary debate on teacher education and professional development, in its two decades of global dissemination and application, IE has yet to be analyzed and tested in the European context.

This work is part of a larger doctoral project that aims at the following objectives:

-clarify the relevance of IE in relation to the main issues addressed in the contemporary debate on teacher education and professional development, such as the development of complex thinking and creative agency informed by critical and responsible reflection on the nature and purposes of education (Biesta, 2017);

-document and analyze IE-based teacher training programs that have been developed internationally for more than two decades;

-develop a prototype of an IE-based teacher training program to be implemented in the Italian context, taking current practices in Canadian universities in British Columbia as a model (University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, Capilano University);

-conducting an exploratory case study with a group of in-service teachers to analyze the critical issues of this implementation process.

This study is the initial part of a wider research project that aims at the creation and evaluation of training programs for students and teachers based on the theory of Imaginative Education, and their implementation in the Faculty of Education of the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano. The hypothesis is that this process will result in a significant enrichment of the University's educational programs and catalyze its integration with other educational institutions in the region. Concurrently, we aim to support the dissemination and the development of Imaginative Education within the European context, to enrich the debate in the fields of curriculum design, teacher education and teacher professional deveolpment.

Research Question

What is the Role of the Primary School Teaching Assistant Amidst the Implications of Identity, Status and Professionalism in the Hierarchy of the School Workforce?

This research is an offshoot of a pilot study titled ‘The Role of the Teaching Assistant in Reflection of Experience, Qualifications and Status’, that I conducted in 2022.

Since the Plowden Report (1967), the Warnock Report (1978) and the Time for standards: reforming the school workforce report (2002), there has been a breadth of variation in both the roles and responsibilities of the teaching assistant in England’s schools (Adamson, 1999; Cajkler et al., 2007; Hancock et al., 2001). Barber (1996) characterised the employment of the teaching assistant as an ‘incipient quiet revolution’ as they began to adapt to more pedagogical roles (Butt and lance, 2009). Many teaching assistants were not specifically trained for this (Blatchford et al, 2004). Although teaching assistants began playing a major role in the teaching of children, they were not credited for this as the teacher was still viewed as being core to a lesson whilst the teaching assistant was seen as being periphery (Hancock and Eyres, 2004). With regards to positioning in the workforce, this view created a hierarchy between the teacher and the teaching assistant and what could be deemed as a watering down of a profession by funnelling traditional aspects of a professional job to an assistant. Friedson (2001) argued that the intertwining roles of professional and paraprofessional were designed to reduce the cost and the independence of the professions. Butt and Lance (2005) advised the need for sensitivity in the approach used by teachers towards teaching assistants. Difficulties and benefits associated with the remodelling of the workforce strategy continue to emerge since 2006 (Collins and Simco, 2006) but are seen as dependent upon the way in which teaching assistants are conceptualised, trained, and deployed by a school.

Professional learning required for successful large-scale reform depends on a commitment to experimentation and innovation at the local level (Leithwood et al, 2006). Since 2006, the role of the teaching assistant has undergone a period of experimentation and innovation and as there is currently no definitive job description that sets out the job role of the teaching assistant, it can be assumed that the drawn-out period of experimentation and innovation continues to be on-going. In the current climate, more than five decades after The Plowden report (1967), there are several options by which they are able to simultaneously work as a teaching assistant and upgrade their qualifications to enter the teaching profession (CooperGibson, 2019), albeit this being an expensive and time-consuming process.

This research aims to find out firstly if there is a definitive employment role for the teaching assistant in the primary school, to close the gap nationally in research literature on the actual role of the teaching assistant. This is timely because the whole picture of teaching assistant employment is and has been on a pendulum of continual change and whilst government research initiatives and updated government policies manipulate the pendulum, there remains a gap in research that identifies specifically, the current state of play in schools. Secondly, this research aims to explore how the implications of identity, status, and professionalism within the workforce, affect both the perceptions and the work role of the teaching assistant. There is currently a trending dichotomy in that the role of the teaching assistant is becoming professionalised whilst the role of the teacher is becoming de-professionalised.

Interviews (via Teams) are also being undertaken internationally, to provide a comparative overview on a global basis for this research.

Research on professional development (PD), exploring its practice and impact, has made significant progress in the past thirty years. In a vocational education environment, the role of teacher professional development in relation to enhancing teaching quality and capability has received extensive attention (Zhou, Tigelaar and Admiraal, 2022). Scholars have reviewed PD in conjunction with students' academic performance, leadership performance and school reform (Sims et al., 2021). More recently in China, the PD of middle leaders (MLs) has gradually entered scholars’ field of vision, through the development of distributed leadership theory and adult learning theory.

Internationally, MLs have been recognised as playing a key strategic and operational role in the leadership team of schools and colleges as executors, coordinators and participants of development strategies, working both vertically and horizontally within their organisations (Lipscombe et al., 2020). However, research exploring the PD for MLs in the Chinese mainland is still limited. Indeed, the literature review findings of this study found that most of the existing research is restricted to a general education environment. From a vertical perspective, research on the PD of MLs is relatively advanced (Zhang, Wong and Wang, 2022; Bryant and Rao, 2019; Walker and Qian, 2019; Bryant, Wong and Adames, 2020). From a horizontal perspective however, there are clear limitations to the research conducted to date, when compared with other countries. Scholars are accustomed to classifying the PD for MLs directly as teacher professional development, without taking account of the added complexities involved in MLs’ rolls and the PD needed to support their development. As such, this simplistic generalisation limits the scope of PD and its impact on both MLs’ and system improvement.

In the context of the new education reform, the Chinese Ministry of Education issued a series of policies that put forward higher requirements for the quality and ability of teaching faculty in Chinese higher vocational colleges (CHVCs) from 2019. Among them, the principles of stratification and classification were explicitly proposed. The policy requires that the improvement plan for different stages of PD in CHVCs should be precisely planned, according to the needs of different teachers, leaders and trainers. However, reform efforts in PD for MLs lack an informed view, through the absence of empirical research in the context of China. There is a reliance on learning from the experience and achievements of research on PD and MLs conducted in other countries. This runs counter to contemporary understandings of the importance of context for system improvement efforts. Conducting localised research in China, is therefore key to reform, enhancing the quality and training of CHVCs. Moreover, such empirical research could contribute to the limited number of non-Western centric studies which dominate the international literature.

This study, located in CHVCs, aims to explore the relevant policy requirements and specific development pathways of PD for MLs, through exploring the following research questions:

1. What are the policy aspirations for the PD for MLs in CHVCs?

2. What is the experience of MLs engaging with PD in CHVCs?

3. What are the implications for the extent to which policy aspirations and MLs’ experience of PD match in CHVCs?

Through the generation and analysis of data through semi-structured interviews and policy documents on PD at the national, regional and institutional levels, the policy background and implementation status regarding PD for MLs in CHVCs has been illuminated. This study contributes to filling the research gap about PD in the Chinese educational environment. Correspondingly, it introduces understandings of PD from the Chinese mainland to an international audience, especially meaningful for European countries increasingly aware of the importance of MLs and their PD.

There is an increasing body of work which explores the use of various social media platforms in different educational contexts. Social media and online learning communities have been positioned as contemporary forms of professional development that can address the clear challenges associated with teacher learning (Goodyear, Parker, & Casey, 2019). Several studies identified that teachers, particularly pre-service teachers, are increasingly using social media for professional learning, voicing teaching problems and/or sharing teaching experience with experts and colleagues (Carpenter, 2015; Goodyear, Casey, & Kirk, 2014).

From a higher education perspective, Wang et al. (2012) found that a Facebook Group could be used as a Learning Management System (LMS) for Singapore students with the purpose of posting announcements, sharing resources, organizing weekly tutorials and conducting online discussions. Findings showed that students were satisfied with using Facebook in this way as it mirrored the fundamental functions of a LMS at this teacher education institute (Wang et al., 2012). However, many studies have criticised formal educations use of LMS as they limit students’ control over their learning (Chen & Bryer, 2012; Dabbagh & Kitsantas, 2012). Indeed, teachers and pre-service teachers may prefer informal learning activities, which do not follow a specified curriculum and are not restricted to certain environments (Desimone, 2009). Consequently, social media seems to provide teachers with more informal professional learning opportunities as they attempt to engage in professional development outside of formal contexts (Carpenter, 2015). Whilst some literature has reported that social media has the potential to integrate learners’ formal and informal learning, this work is under-theorized (Greenhow & Lewin, 2016). Indeed, little scholarly attention has been given to the study of the role of social media in supporting different types of learning from the learner’s perspective.

Research to date, concerningly, takes a predominantly Western perspective and focuses on students’ learning through social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. In contrast, little is known about students learning through the unique social media environments in other countries such as China. Indeed, while Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest dominate the landscape of social media in many countries, they are infrequently used in China. Instead, social networking sites such as WeChat and Weibo are popular. Furthermore, given that cultural differences have been shown to strongly impact people’s online behaviour (Ji et al., 2010), coupled with the knowledge that the relationship between teachers and students in China is hierarchical (Zhao & McDougall, 2008), there is a need to better understand how students learn through the unique social media environment in China. This is even more important when noting:

(a) the dearth of research exploring how the Chinese educational culture might influence its students’ attitudes towards integrating social media into institutional settings, and

(b) that Chinese students are often inactive and unwilling to express their ideas in online discussions because they are not prepared to contradict their peers or instructors in a public platform, and they are afraid of losing face (Zhao and McDougall, 2008).

Despite this lack of knowledge, it is important to support the ambitions of the Chinese online community by furthering our understanding of social media in supporting physical education (PE) student-teachers' professional learning. There have, however, been very few research studies investigating how Chinese PE student-teachers' use social media as a professional learning platform and how they value online learning communities in their professional learning. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to explore Chinese PE student-teachers’ attitudes to using the WeChat group for professional learning under the lens of formal and informal learning theory.