Generative Leadership: Rescripting the Promise of Action Research (SpringerBriefs in Education) 9813345616, 9789813345614

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Christine Joy Edwards-Groves Karin Rönnerman

Generative Leadership Rescripting the Promise of Action Research

Generative Leadership

Christine Joy Edwards-Groves · Karin Rönnerman

Generative Leadership Rescripting the Promise of Action Research

Christine Joy Edwards-Groves School of Education Charles Sturt University Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia

Karin Rönnerman University of Gothenburg Gothenburg, Sweden

ISBN 978-981-33-4561-4 ISBN 978-981-33-4563-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4563-8 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Foreword

Leading educational development and action research are commonly linked in professional and academic educational literature. However, what is meant and practised under the banner of action research varies greatly, and can, despite the promise of development, end up being a time impost on busy teachers and educators for little gain. This can result in limited meaningful change, resentment, and at times, cynicism. Also, although action research has been clearly and thoroughly outlined and justified by Kemmis and McTaggart (1988 and revised with Nixon in 2014), there have been others who have copied the form of these ideas and developed similar (albeit often without the necessary critical perspective) approaches (e.g. Inquiry Cycles, Learning Circles). In this book, the authors do not seek to create yet another parallel version of action research, but rather, they present it again in a philosophically robust and practically sound manner vis-à-vis the leading practices of middle leaders—‘to rescript the promise of action research’. They achieve this necessary rescuing of action research from its current neo-liberal captors by proposing and outlining the democratic notion and practices of generative leadership. Generative leadership could be seen as yet another model or ‘catch phrase’ to add to the collection of distributed leadership, servant leadership, hybrid leadership, etc., and so the authors need to make a good case for this latest version—why another ‘ leadership’? Here, it is clear that generative leadership offers something—a new ontological and praxis-oriented way of understanding and developing leading practices in educational sites. It leaves behind the unhelpful and erroneous conceptions of the benevolent, strong-charactered, lone leader who is single-handedly responsible for ‘steering the ship’ and rather focuses on the actual practising of leading in real sites in real time. Thus, it is about leading, as opposed to leadership. Furthermore, the approach taken here also jettisons the myth of leadership best practice, clearly arguing that leading needs to be generated and practised in response to unique and particular local conditions, arrangements and needs. Unfortunately for some, this means that this book does not provide a ‘how to’ manual for educational leaders, but it does provide useful and sound insights into how leaders might practice their leading in generative and responsive ways.

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I believe a key feature of this text is the way the authors have centralised dialogue in educational development. This is not just a theoretical idea that they have proposed, but rather it is a practical and pragmatic foundational dimension of leadership that is generative and productive. This principle is evident even in the way this book has been crafted and written—through dialogue between two researchers from different sides of the world (see the Preface, and the Afterword that brings it to a conclusion). In educational sites, of course communication is central and is practised in formal and informal ways through structures like staff meetings and coaching conversations. However, here Edwards-Groves and Rönnerman outline, justify, explain and exemplify how dialogue can be used in generative and democratic ways that lead to, and sustain, positive educational development. Relatedly, I appreciated in this book how the authors moved beyond the ‘project’ mentality of educational development. Across many countries, professional learning and curriculum development have been conceptualised as fixed-term projects—focus on something for 12 months or so and then move onto the next topic, issue or project. Even when those involved are espousing an action research approach to their development, the word ‘project’ is often added as a part of the title (e.g. our action research project). Whilst there is nothing wrong with projects per se, they tend to be understood and enacted as discrete events rather than an ongoing and continuous process of learning. Here, as an integral dimension of generative leadership, EdwardsGroves and Rönnerman have shown how, through action research based on dialogue and reflection, professional learning can be ‘a way of being’ as an educator—the standard practices and ways of understanding professional educational work. Finally, this book clearly and overtly views and understands leading as a practice, and this ontological approach provides refreshing insights that see educational development as local and site-based. As noted previously, this beautifully shows the fallacy of the notion of a singular best practice. Rather, Edwards-Groves and Rönnerman have developed a strong argument that education is local, and leading education needs to be responsive to local needs and conditions—and so generative leadership requires recognising and responding in, and to, one’s own site. Perhaps this will provide an antidote to the plethora of programs that have a parade of educational gurus peddling the next ‘silver bullet’ and will rightly refocus educational leading and development back in the hands of those who actually undertake their educational practices in real school sites. This would be truly generative. Peter Grootenboer Professor Griffith University Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Preface

A number of years ago we were travelling in a car together on a rural road in New South Wales, Australia; we were on our way to conduct fieldwork for a research study examining on leading and learning practices in primary schools. On this journey, we found ourselves discussing our past and current research and professional work. To us it was striking that whilst contextually and geographically different (Christine living and working in regional NSW Australia, and Karin living and working in western Sweden), our recent scholarly work (as researchers and facilitators) in participatory action research and teacher professional development with groups of teachers were mirrors of one another. This trip, and the conversations thereafter, begun a new journey for us as we generated our own professional research partnership. This book is the result of this long collaboration. Its results give rise to rescripted promises of action research; it also introduces the concept of generative leadership that holds new descriptions about the long-term influences of participating in action research. The findings from our international study (reported initially in EdwardsGroves and Rönnerman, 2013, and in Rönnerman and Edwards-Groves, 2012, and described more fully in the pages of this book) revealed the generation of teacher leading practices through action research. These findings about the development of the leader-self form the basis for this book. Our data illustrates that this is an organic process that we describe as ‘generative leadership’. It is a finding which adds a new dimension to the descriptions about the influences and accomplishments of action research as long-term professional learning. Our research has led us to believe that a reciprocity exists as teacher leaders both create conditions for pedagogical and facilitative development (through aspirations, conviction, and drive to make change in their own circumstances and the circumstances for other teachers) and is created by the external conditions laid out for them as they experience learning in longer-term focused professional learning programmes. From this perspective, learning and leading practices take form in, and are formed by living the practice in ‘the site of the social’. In our view, this mutual accomplishment is necessary for generating learning and leading capacities. Edwards-Groves and Rönnerman (2013, p. 138).

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Ultimately, the book unsettles the propensity for action research literature to restrict itself to the life of the project, seldom going beyond. This book redresses this limitation. To do this, it examines the interconnectivities between action research, professional learning and leading practices, and in particular the longer-term impacts of critical participatory action research (Kemmis, McTaggart, & Nixon, 2014) on participating teachers’ professional career trajectories. But this is not simply just another book about education practices (action research, professional learning or leadership) and action research; it is a book that offers the reader a reconceptualised view of the residual effects of each of the dimensions of professional education practice on the other and the critical relevance of action research in this. These professional education practices form part of what Kemmis, Wilkinson, Edwards-Groves, Hardy, Grootenboer, and Bristol (2014) describe as the education complex of practices. The complex is constituted by five broad, yet distinct, educational practices—researching, leading, professional learning, teaching and student learning. Each, we argue, is the practices of promise and possibility. In this book, we will show how over time each of these parts becomes entwined, and made visible, in (future) practice—or in future occasions of practising. We present a historical account (of work conducted over a decade and a half) of how and why these dimensions of the education complex strengthen the enactment of the other; and how these exist not as separate bounded functions, but as connected, interconnected and interdependent practices—that is, as entwined ecologically connected education practices. From this we aim to illustrate how particular leading practices evolve from and are ecologically connected to, the particular kinds of professional learning practices encountered in projects of action research; but as we will show these only become comprehensible in the light of what practices have come, been experienced, before. That is to say, professional learning through action research prefigures leading—that action research as professional learning for teachers has the potential for the development of the leader-self. We argue that there is an urgent need for contemporary education, as a broad entity, to understand the interrelationships between these practices as a necessary condition that may counter a universal political environment concerned with performativity, measurement and effect sizes. In fact, releasing education from the constraints experienced internationally by enduring forces of accountability that compromise education itself would shift the focus to school-based, teacher-designed practice development (Edwards-Groves & Davidson, 2017). This is a view that valorises site-based education development (Kemmis et al., 2014), a view of practice unclouded by a neglect of the specific needs and circumstances of individual teachers, students, schools and communities. We come to a view that argues for a substantial and systematic investment in longer-term professional development through action research as critical in an educational agenda desiring, demanding and sustaining strong educational futures. Throughout the chapters that follow, we draw out insights from the voices of our participants (teacher action researchers, now middle leaders), about the role and influence of action research as a practice that prefigured their professional learning that, in turn, prefigured their leading. This book is about their learning and their

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journey into middle leading from a position of being teacher action researchers in the first instance, rather than, for example, a focus on the more dominant research on principal’s leading, characteristics and perspectives. Nor is the book a research report on teachers’ action research projects and changes to their teaching practices or their improved student learning outcomes. To this, we acknowledge the broad fields of scholarship published on these respective fields. Chapter 1, ‘The Red Thread: Connecting Action Research, Professional Learning and Leading’, orients the key ideas of the book in terms of its theoretical and methodological approach. In Chap. 2, ‘Action Research as Democratic Practice: Characterising the Cornerstones of Contemporary Professional Learning’, we trace some historical threads of action research, reconceptualising it in terms of seven key cornerstones that form particular practice architectures or conditions for efficacy and sustainability in professional learning. Then, in Chap. 3, ‘Transforming Professional Practices: The Practice Architectures of Generative Leadership’, we lay down the conceptualisation of generative leadership showing how professional learning and leading practices can be understood, developed and sustained as integrated sensemaking practices. In Chap. 4, ‘Being and Becoming a Middle Leader: Journeying into the Space of Leading’, we demonstrate how professional learning through action research provides transformative conditions for the emergence of middle leading; it establishes ways middle leaders themselves account for their professional education journey as one that formed as critical educational praxis. In Chap. 5, ‘Generative Leadership: Investing in Action Research for Leveraging Leading’, we argue that to sustain and revitalise future educational action, education policy and practice need to invest in site-based action research by accounting for and drawing together the leveraging dimensions of generative leadership. This is an important story to be told—one that has implications for policy, for theory and for practice. It is our belief that it is a story that rewrites what is known about the flow-on effects of action research as long-term professional development. Wagga Wagga, Australia Gothenburg, Sweden

Christine Joy Edwards-Groves Karin Rönnerman

References Edwards-Groves, C. & Davidson, C. (2017). Becoming a meaning maker: Talk and interaction in the dialogic classroom. Primary English Teachers Association Australia, Sydney, NSW: PETAA. Edwards-Groves, C., & Rönnerman, K. (2013). Generating leading practices through professional learning. Professional Development in Education, 39(1), 122–140. Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R. & Nixon, R. (2014). The action research planner: Doing critical participatory action Research. Singapore: Springer. Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, L. (2014). Changing practices, changing education. Singapore: Springer. Rönnerman, K. & Edwards-Groves, C. (2012). Genererat ledarskap [Generative Leadership]. In K. Rönnerman (Ed.), Aktionsforskning i praktiken—förskola och skola på vetenskaplig grund. [Action Research in Practice] (pp. 171–190). Lund: Studentlitteratur.

Contents

1 The Red Thread: Connecting Action Research, Professional Learning and Leading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Voice from the Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Noticing a Red Thread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Why a Red Thread? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Illuminating the Red Thread in Action Research Across Time and Place: Tracing the Pendulum Swing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tracing the Existence of Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Background: A Longitudinal Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Empirical Cases—Australia and Sweden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The International Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tracing den röda tråden Between Researching, Professional Learning and Leading Practices: An Ecological Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . Turning to the Theory of Practice Architectures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Education Practices as Ecologically Interrelated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Formation, Transformation and Sustainability of Professional Education Practices: A New View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Towards a Generative View of Learning and Leading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Holding on to den röda tråden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Action Research as Democratic Practice: Characterising the Cornerstones of Contemporary Professional Learning . . . . . . . . . . A Voice from the Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Finding den röda tråden in Action Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cornerstones for Democratic Ways of Working: Action Research as Democratic Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Contextuality—A Cornerstone for Site Based Education Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Commitment—A Cornerstone for (Individual and Collective) Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents

Communication—A Cornerstone for Participation and Intersubjective Meaning Making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Collaboration—A Cornerstone for Collective Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Criticality—A Cornerstone for Critical Inquiry and Activism . . . . . . . Collegiality—A Cornerstone for Professional Sustainability . . . . . . . . Community—A Cornerstone for Democratic Ways of Working . . . . . . In Summary: Seven Cornerstones of Action Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reclaiming the Space for Action Research: Site Based Education Development for Learning and Leading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Transforming Professional Practices: The Practice Architectures of Generative Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Voice from the Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Picking up den röda tråden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Transforming the Professional Self: The Practice Architectures of Learning, Development and Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Understanding Educational Transformation: Producing, Reproducing and Translating Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conceptualising Intersubjective Spaces for Sensemaking in Professional Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Participation as Sensemaking in Education Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Practice Architectures and Interspatial Media of Sensemaking . . . . . Cultural-Discursive Arrangements, Sensemaking and Transforming the Professional Self as Teacher in Semantic Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Material-Economic Arrangements, Sensemaking and Transforming the Professional Self as Teacher in Physical Space-Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Social-Political Arrangements, Sensemaking and Transforming the Professional Self as a Teacher in Social Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dynamic Interdependence Between the Individual and the Collective in the Public Sphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Cornerstones of Action Research for Professional Learning in Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion: Learning to Leading—A Generative Journey . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Being and Becoming a Middle Leader: Journeying into the Space of Leading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Voice from the Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Following den röda tråden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Middle Leading as Critical Educational Praxis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Middle Leading as a Practice-Changing Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Journey into Middle Leading: A Transformational Process of Endless Becoming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents

Professional Learning and Leading as Practices that Transform: Making Leading Practices One’s Own . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Leading Edge: Recognising and Responding to Relational Density . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tracing the Conditions for Leading and Learning to Lead: An Ecological View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dispositions Revealed in Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Being a Changemaker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Practicescape of Generative Leadership: Arriving at a Definition . . . Conclusion: Learning to Learn—Learning to Lead: A Rescripted Promise of Action Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Generative Leadership: Investing in Action Research for Leveraging Leading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Voice from the Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Securing den röda tråden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Investing in Site Based Education Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Leveraging Professional Learning to Leading: Driving the Policy Agenda for Building Leading Capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Investing in Action Research as a Practice of Promise and Possibility . . . Understanding the Investment: Why This, Now? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Generative of Professional and Practical Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Generative of Educational Professionalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Generative of Individual and Collective Agency for Activism . . . . . . . Generative Educational and Social Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Re-setting the Policy Agenda for Learning to Lead: Recognising the Ecologies of Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Generative Leadership for Education Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Afterword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Appendix: Middle Leading Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Chapter 1

The Red Thread: Connecting Action Research, Professional Learning and Leading

Abstract The expression ‘the red thread’ has had artistic, mythological and practical uses in history and in everyday life. We use this phrase in this book felicitously as a deliberate (and poetic) metaphor for recognising the interdependent and interconnected nature of educational practices that link practices historically, ontologically and ecologically. The chapter presents an overview of the study and theoretical principles that inform the remaining chapters in the book. It begins with a brief prelude outlining the use of the metaphor, ‘the red thread’—den röda tråden in Swedish. This section is followed with a brief discussion about the background and context for the research that underpin the concept of generative leadership introduced in this book. The theory of practice architectures and ecologies of practices are then described as the theoretical and linguistic resources that shape the arguments presented. These theories recognise, and draw attention to, the ways that practices as they happen in enactment are social, are instances of human co-existence, are situated and contingent on practice architectures, and are influenced by local discursive, material and relational conditions.

The Voice from the Field It was actually a surprise to me that when I thought about it, my facilitator role can be traced back to my experiences in the action research. Developing and sustaining and transforming good teaching practice into strong leadership I think it comes back to learning how to learn as a teacher. The action research processes that values participation in long term, ongoing professional development gets to real learning actions that sticks, so it’s not just the delivering of the program, it has meaning and relevance… also I know teachers get a new energy when they talk and learn together over a longer period, that’s what happened to me. They also get courage that they can do it and go on to work with others share their knowledge and experiences with others down the track, so I think there’s sort of two levels here - of strength, courage, belief, conviction to do it for yourself, and then strength, courage, belief, conviction to help others do it for themselves.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 C. J. Edwards-Groves and K. Rönnerman, Generative Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4563-8_1

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1 The Red Thread: Connecting Action Research, Professional … I think this is an underpinning factor for anyone who engages in driving long term professional development because I think there is a difference between driving it over time and doing the one-off thing. It does something deep inside to the people who participate, it is more organic and relevant to people than the “out of the box” PD. Nette, Middle Leader

Noticing a Red Thread We ask ourselves in this book whether there is a red thread—in Swedish: röda tråden—between professional learning through action research and the development of leading practices. A red thread will be used throughout the book, as a metaphor of flow and interconnectivity, holding together the picture of how professional learning and leading practices, in particular, hang together in an ecological landscape of education practices to which we argue forms a more sustainable education development. Breaking or unravelling this thread causes things to become tangled and tousled and, in the end, effects the possibilities for accomplishment—in educational circumstances, we mean student learning, undeniably the ultimate goal of Education. The generative nature of long-term action research projects for the purpose of teacher professional development will be our starting point in this book. However, our end point will take us to a realm of action research not yet described; that is the longer-term effects of action research on the development of leading practices. Our aim is to rescript the promise of action research. In this chapter, we begin with a brief prelude outlining the historical and artistic use of the expression ‘the red thread’ and why its metaphor holds value for the ideas presented in this book. It is important to note that across the text we predominantly use the Swedish words den röda tråden, rather than the English words ‘the red thread’, as a deliberate move to show the interconnections between our ideas, our research collaborations, our mutual respect and acceptance of our different languages (of which English is the dominant in the publication of this book). The chapter presents the theoretical principles that inform the remaining chapters in the book. These sections provide a discussion about the theories of practice architectures and ecologies of practice; these theories are presented as the theoretical and linguistic resources that shape the arguments presented throughout the book. Like other practice theories, the theory of practice architectures and its related theory, the ecologies of practices, are theories that recognise, and draw attention to, the ways that practices are social and situated, and are influenced by both historical and local discursive, material and relational conditions.

Why a Red Thread?

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Why a Red Thread? The red thread is the element found in every layer, section and cycle of a project that draws the whole together with unity and harmony. The red thread is the connection between parts of and within a project. Unity comes from the uninterrupted presence of the red thread. Harmony is achieved when the red thread is woven into multiple layers of a project from the birth of the concept throughout the planning, execution and all the parts between… A single red thread may appear in different forms to different people. Whatever form the red thread takes, the key is that it is continuous and consistent though it may be invisible…The red thread never runs out, but it’s up to you to pick it up and carry it with you and pass it on to others. A tapestry made of every other colour may make a single strand of red thread hard to see or find, yet it is there throughout, from beginning to end. Alicia Bramlett, film maker and artist, 1999.

The metaphor of the ‘red thread’ has had artistic, mythological and practical uses in history and in everyday life. As an expression, the ‘red thread’ originates from the Greek mythology where King Theseus found his way out of Minotaur’s labyrinth by following a red thread. The red thread is also used both in mythology in China, Sweden and England (for example) and in craftsmanship to express how something is held together (metaphorically and practically). In a practical sense it is probably best known by its use as a marking thread for recognising ownership in making cordage to identify where it was produced (and of course it was claimed, that it also worked to prevent theft of the yarn). If an accident occurred or a ship sank, it was important in the subsequent investigation and trial, to identify who was to blame. If the accident was caused by poor quality ropes, the noticeable yarn made it easy to identify where it had been manufactured. Coloured thread eventually became compulsory for cordage making for maritime and military use across the globe. Ropes marked with red thread or yarn came from the Chatham rope makers, southeast of London on the River Thames. In Portsmouth in southern England yellow yarn was used as the marker. In Sweden the rope makers in Karlskrona (established in 1692) only had white yarn, but the yarn was too prone to being stolen (the workers’ children were often found dressed in white woollen cardigans) so the yarn was changed to a blue colour, which was used until the rope making industry closed in the 1960s. In Swedish the expression den röda tråden (the red thread) also connects to folklore, philosophy and education. In Swedish folk culture, for example, ‘Hold on to the Red Thread’ is a proverb. It conveys the meaning of keeping your wits about you whilst holding on to your dreams; it has also been interpreted as a lifeline that keeps people in touch with their roots and while holding den röda tråden you can’t get lost. ‘It runs like a red thread’ is also used as an expression, among other places, in Swedish education to explain a view of education as a lifelong journey. Swedish educators visualize education as a thread connecting it to democratic values running through a person’s life from early childhood through to old age. When Swedish educators speak of life-long learning, they speak of den röda tråden, the red thread. In this line of thought, educators are emphatic about the need for students’ learning to

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be considered as a progression—where all aspects of ‘the learning life’ are connected across all phases of a lived life, that is, between grades at school from pre-school, primary and secondary school into learning for and across the career. For them, the red thread acts as keeping the values in teaching in relation to the set curriculum goals and not vice versa. Using a coloured thread had, in fact, no practical use in the production process, but the Swedish expression ‘it runs like a red thread’ (in Swedish: som en den röda tråden) connects to the words from film maker and artist, Alicia Bramlett, that opened this section. In this understanding ‘the red thread’ relates to a particular theme that would go uninterrupted from the beginning to the end; for instance, if a piece of text or a movie or a project has a röda tråden, it is written with a consistent and coherent thought and flow throughout. We use this phrase felicitously as a deliberate (and poetic) metaphor for recognising the interdependent and interconnected nature of education practices—like action research, professional learning and leading—that link these practices historically (over time), ontologically (in sites) and ecologically (between one another).

Illuminating the Red Thread in Action Research Across Time and Place: Tracing the Pendulum Swing Over time, action research—and its variants—has oscillated in and out of popularity as a way for developing the practices of practitioners from a wide range of professions and workplaces. The movement towards individuals taking on a more central role in their self-education is not new. Historically, action research has been more or less present in many cultures across the world, evolving and responding to particular local social, political and economic conditions. For instance, countries from Latin America (Fals Borda, 2006; Santos, 2012), continental Europe (Altrichter & Posch, 2007; Ponte & Smit, 2007) and the Nordic region (Rönnerman & Salo, 2014; Rönnerman, Furu, & Salo, 2008) have had long histories of action research. Action research in those countries have sprung from deep and rich societal traditions such as folk enlightenment, bildung (in Swedish: folkbildning, bildning) and pedagogik (Ponte & Rönnerman, 2009). These are traditions built on democratic and emancipatory principles (of the kind espoused by philosophers such as Dewey and Freire) that hold community, collegiality, communication and collaboration as societal and activist cornerstones for development, learning and growth.1 Connected to these idea(l)s are practices such as study circles (Larsson & Nordvall, 2010; Rönnerman & Salo, 2012, 2014; Rönnerman et al., 2008), research circles (Holmstrand & Härnsten, 2003; Rönnerman & Olin, 2013) and teacher dialogue conferences (EdwardsGroves & Davidson, 2017; Shotter & Gustavsen, 1999); and dialogue conferences based on democratic values and participation in decision making (Furu & Lund, 2014; Gustavsen, 2001; Kalleberg, 1993) that form differing ways for critical action 1 We

present and explain these cornerstones in detail in the next chapter.

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researchers (McTaggart & Kemmis, 1988; Rönnerman & Salo, 2012) to understand and improve their own practices in light of their epistemological, existential and ontological circumstances. Learning through reflection, dialogue and action are idea(l)s that have shaped the practices for ‘site based education development’ (as put by Kemmis et al., 2014) across the globe, as highlighted in the comprehensive review of action research conducted by Somekh and Zeichner (2009). Within different global contexts action research practices have long been considered variously in practices such as critical practitioner inquiry in Namibia, learning circles in Singapore, lesson studies in Japan and learning and lesson studies in Hong Kong (as reported in Somekh & Zeichner, 2009). On their reckoning, Somekh and Zeichner (2009, p. 18) signify the importance lies in recognizing that action research aspires to bring about change and improvement through accepting the tension of working in both realms of human experience simultaneously. By sharing knowledge and experiences of action research – not just between East and West, but between action researchers in many countries and cultures– it is possible to contribute to ‘the world of flows’ knowledge and learning from multiple local sites about the process of effective educational reform.

Reason and Bradbury (2001) suggest that action research can be seen as an umbrella term to illustrate the myriad of action research approaches held together by a central belief that an individuals’ practice is developed and knowledge is created collaboratively and in democratic ways. Practitioner inquiry, dialogues and collaboration are important standpoints from which to understand, and then develop, one’s professional practice and workplace conditions. Carr and Kemmis (1986) encapsulate this in their portrayal of a critical education as one that seeks to improve: (a) aspects of your own practice, (b) your understanding of your practice, and (c) your understanding of the situation in which your practice takes place (p. 164). Capitalising on these broad goals and perspectives, in its differing forms action research has been understood over many decades in Western education through concepts such as teachers-as-researchers (Elliott, 1991; Stenhouse, 1975); teacher research (Zeichner & Noffke, 2001), self-study research (Zeichner & Noffke, 2001), participatory action research (Carr & Kemmis, 1986; McTaggart & Kemmis, 1988), practitioner research or practitioner inquiry (Cochrane-Smith & Little, 2009) and more recently critical participatory action research (Kemmis, McTaggart, & Nixon, 2014). Threaded through these traditions are practices of people engaging with one another in democratic ways through systematic processes of inquiry and research that inherently respond to local site-based needs and circumstances. In recent times, the emergence of “new” professional learning practices in the form of communities of practice (Wenger, 1998) and professional learning communities (Hord, 1997) (for instance) have risen to prominence as characteristic ways to improve education, in particular in its quest to improve student outcomes. However, being cast as a community of practice or a professional learning community does not necessarily move practitioners towards practice development that responds to the

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nuances of their situation, nor does it simply make a cohesive community. Furthermore, educational reforms in current neoliberal times have also pushed professional learning to be dominated by popularised approaches such as professional learning conversations (Earl & Timperley, 2008), action learning (Revans, 1982), collegial learning, coaching conversations, collaborative learning, inquiry learning or spirals of learning (see for instance the work of Timperley, 2008), lesson studies (see for example WALS, 2016), learning studies (Marton & Runesson, 2015) as answers to questions concerning education development. These are concepts—as variants of action research—that have crowded the lexicon concerning professional learning, development and growth. The surge of these ideas—along with ideals about working in teams, collegiality, inquiry-based learning or collaboration—circulate incessantly as ‘catch phrases’ or latest innovations that promise to support change and site based education development in schools, that generate conditions that make sustainable change possible. Although these practices appear in sites as a way for education systems to respond to the demands of political accountability, there has been a tendency for many of these approaches to become so sloganized, even clichéd, in the educational media, and so popularised by a market driven society, that the understandings about the practices that constitute their utility in different circumstances and contexts may have been diminished. It is also possible, that because of this, these variants are masquerading as action research rather than substantively as action research. This trend creates a tension for us, because in one way, their connection to scholarly research balanced with site-based evidence may appear as cursory or even neglected dimensions of practice development.

Tracing the Existence of Practices Practices simply do not just appear. They evolve in places and over time, appearing in new istes by virtue of their practising (Hardy, Edwards-Groves, & Rönnerman, 2012). Understanding education, and so educational change, means understanding and accounting for its history, its politics and its practices (Kemmis & EdwardsGroves, 2018); that is to historicise practices (Hardy & Edwards-Groves, 2016). The practice of action research, as a professional learning and researching practice, does not happen in a vacuum but is always found to exist and unfold in a particular site at the same time it is, and has been, influenced by the history of the persons and practices present in the place (of practising). That is, the practices that shape the conduct of action research also exist and evolve in history as practice traditions (ways of thinking and talking about things, doing things, and relating to people and things in a particular field), and as such prefigure, as well as inform and transform, practices as they adapt—through being practiced—to changing times, participants and locally experienced circumstances. This proposition follows the work of Kemmis et al. (2014, pp. 47–48) that recognised that:

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in education, some practices and practice architectures persist or endure or disappear over time; that new practices travel into sites or into the capabilities of the practitioners (and from where); and that practices and practice architectures vary and change in relation to other practices and practice architectures, and so become transformed or even ‘evolve’ into other variant forms or even into different practices.

Suggested here is the evolutionary, transitory and transformational dimension of practices. And practices need to be understood in terms of a dynamic flow that moves in and out of sites, times and circumstances. It is a point that recognises that changing times calls for changed practices, and so changed practice architectures. Therefore, in a world beset with novelty and innovation on the one hand, and accountability and performativity on the other, we want to connect the red thread between contemporary professional learning practices and the traditional idea(l)s from which they emerged. Action research—and its variants like action learning—have threads connected to history, to professional and workplace learning and to democratic ways of working; and by retracing and acknowledging the thread that hold them together we strive for stabilising education development. For us understanding present practices of action research and professional learning will be strengthened by anchoring them within the historically-located culturally responsive roots that shaped them. We tread carefully here since we not want to dismiss their relevance; our aim is to illuminate the strong foundation from which this constellation of action research practices has emerged. We caution that these contemporary professional learning practices cannot be simply taken as action research. Following den röda tråden pushes the pendulum back towards locating the central ideas that education practices require to be relevant to, and take account of, the existential and ontological dimensions of particular ‘places’, at the same time acknowledge the histories from which practices stem. This is slippery territory. Next, we lay out the background and context for the research that underpins the concept of generative leadership introduced in this book.

The Background: A Longitudinal Study The background to the research presented in this book reaches back to beginnings of a long-lasting professional learning partnership (over a decade and a half) between us (the authors) as facilitators and academic researchers, and groups of teachers in our own countries (Australia and Sweden). As researchers from two different hemispheres, connected by our participation in the Pedagogy, Education and Praxis Network (PEP)2 (see Edwards-Groves & Kemmis, 2016; Kemmis, Rönnerman, & 2 Pedagogy,

Education and Praxis (PEP) International Research Network is a group of researchers from across Australia, Finland, Norway, Sweden, The Caribbean, The Netherlands, Colombia and The United Kingdom who meet regularly in different national contexts to engage in conversation, debate and research about issues pertaining to contemporary education, pedagogy and praxis. Members seek to understand how the congruencies and differences in different cultural, political and social contexts are shaped by and shape the intellectual traditions that influence the practices

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Edwards-Groves, 2017), we recognised through our discussions, initially serendipitous conversations about our research, that we had both been actively involved in similarly structured long term professional learning through programs of action research for teachers within our own countries. These programs existed long before we met in 2006. Generally, the participants in the action research projects we had been facilitating were classroom teachers (in preschools or primary and secondary schools) who were seeking to improve aspects of their teaching (for example their pedagogical practices, assessment practices, literacy teaching, curriculum knowledge and/or curriculum implementation). These teachers acted with a commitment to improving practices through systematically interrogating their own practices and capacities as educators, at the same time developed capacities for leading the change agenda at their own school. These educators are insider-practitioners of the practice of teaching and the practice of action researching and the practice of leading from the middle (Grootenboer, Edwards-Groves, & Rönnerman, 2014, 2020). As such, they inhabited both their day-to-day professional activities and the communicative spaces they cocreated for the collective and collaborative theorising of their practices. From their insider-practitioner perspectives, they gave us insight into their practices (Carr & Kemmis, 1986) as they revealed their understandings of their practices (their sayings, doings and relatings) and the practice architectures (the cultural-discursive, materialeconomic and social-political arrangements) which made their leading practices possible. Through our conversations about the respective projects in each of our sites, it was soon clear that after time, many of the teachers began to take on leading roles either within their own school or across a cluster of schools as well as remaining teaching in the classroom at the same time (Edwards-Groves, 2008; Rönnerman, 2008). Their professional work journeyed into such practices as facilitating professional learning in their own schools or for a cluster of local (to them) schools, or setting up and leading working parties to canvas system leaders in district offices for more support to implement site based professional learning opportunities, or taking on inter-school curriculum development roles. But more interesting for us was that none of these teachers wanted to move into the principalship (even though for many this was being suggested or even pushed towards them). and practice architectures found in education. See the following publications for more information about the network and its research program: (1) Edwards-Groves, C., & Kemmis, S. (2016). Pedagogy, education and praxis: Understanding new forms of intersubjectivity through action research and practice theory. https://doi.org/10. 1080/09650792.2015.1076730. (2) Kemmis, S., Rönnerman, K., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2016). Pedagogy, education and praxis: An international research network for education and change. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1137-40523-4. (3) Mahon, K., Edwards-Groves, C., Francisco, S., Kaukko, M., Kemmis, S., & Petrie, K. (Eds.). (2020). Pedagogy, education and praxis in critical times. Singapore: Springer.

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For our participants their professional journey from professional learning to leading was generated by their participation in action research. For us there appeared to be a tight interrelationship between these dimensions of their professional work. We saw that professional learning through action research led to the development of the leader-self—in many ways this revelation reflected what Stenhouse (1975) described as the extended professional as these teachers became leaders of and among teachers. Some theorists describe these teachers as, for example, “teacher leaders” (Muijs & Harris, 2003) or “middle leaders3 ” (Grootenboer et al., 2014, 2020), to which we would agree. For us, however, we became specifically interested in the practices that led to or generated leading. To explore this idea further, we needed to address two issues that concerned us: first, the literature examining action research largely begins and ends with the project, and second, the literature examining teacher leaders often centres of characterising their roles, dispositions and practices. An outcome of our ongoing discussions led us to formalise the richness of the story of “generative leadership” through a sitebased grounded research that enabled us to look both ways at this phenomenon as (i) insiders as participant facilitators, and as (ii) outsiders as researchers. Our work searched for the connective tissue—den röda tråden—threaded between leading, teaching and action research as professional learning in the work of teacher leaders in our own countries, and within the practices that we observed (if there were indeed any). It was striking to us that there was something about the teacher’s participation in the long-term action research (as part of their professional learning) that generated leading practices; these revelations prompted us to ask these research questions: 1. What are the long-term effects of action research on site-based education practices? What practices are sustained after the project is completed? 2. What ecological relationships exist between teaching, professional learning and leading for teachers participating in action research? 3. In what ways was action research and professional learning generative of leading? What specific practices generated teacher leading?

3 Examining and describing the practices of middle leading have been a mainstay of our more recent

collaboration with colleague Peter Grootenboer. In our international research collaboration with Peter (since 2014) we have published widely in the field of middle leading (and direct you further to Appendix A, for professional and scholarly publications in the field of educational middle leading). The term middle leading emerged in our collaboration and writings with Peter in 2014, subsequent to our initial reported study in Z and Edwards-Groves (2012) and Edwards-Groves and Rönnerman (2013). We pick up the term middle leading in this book to describe those educators who both teach and lead professional learning in their schools—this describes the inherent nature of the role and practices of the teachers in our study, the middle leaders who facilitated long term action research projects in their own schools. Where this book differs, however, is its attempt to trace the journeys of teachers into the space of middle leading; and to understand, by unravelling the threads of the complexity of the kind of practices and experiences that prefigured their professional education journey.

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The Empirical Cases—Australia and Sweden Ongoing investigations led us to discover that the two professional learning projects from Australia and Sweden were structured similarly as long-term action research programs, conducted with groups of teachers over at least 12 months, and each program included eight to ten sessions of group meetings. The groups were comprised of between 8 and 12 teacher participants and were facilitated by an academic or professional consultant (ourselves). At least 22 groups of teachers had participated in the year-long action research for teacher learning programs (involving approximately 220 teachers since 1999 in Australia and from 2004 in Sweden). Within the programs, teachers’ own professional learning was specifically emphasized and reflected upon as a way of becoming cognisant of teachers’ own learning processes and teaching practices. In addition to the group meetings, professional readings of a theoretical kind were provided; understandings were strengthened by a self-designed case study carried out within participants’ own practice site (preschool, primary school, secondary school). Participant experiences (challenges and successes) formed the substantive content taken up in group discussions and personal professional reflections. In Australia, primary and secondary school teacher’s action research professional learning projects were facilitated by an academic consultant (including the author 1999–2007). Regularly held meetings had an emphasis on collaborative analytical dialogues (Edwards-Groves, 2002, 2008) as a way to challenge takenfor-granted practices, approaches and beliefs as a springboard for teaching change in the curriculum area of literacy learning and teaching. Through a range of action research data gathering methods teachers conducted case studies of their teaching practices (in reading and writing) using data collection methods such as pre- and poststudent assessments, gathering work samples, videoing teaching, teaching for peers, participating in peer visits (between classrooms and schools) and debrief coaching sessions (Edwards-Groves, 2002). In Sweden, early childhood teacher learning projects were facilitated by researchers at the university (including the author 2004–2012) as a part of their professional development studies. The focus was on developing systematic quality work with a purpose to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions and support the school-based development work that was carried out. Particular emphasis was placed on teacher reflection in order to create a meta-awareness of learning processes. In addition to reading a range of professional and research literature, all participants would implement an inquiry case study in their own practice site. A range of different tools such as mind maps, video observations, focus groups interviews were used for collecting information for analyses and documentation on the action research carried out. Together with a researcher, teachers met regularly in small groups to share experiences and deepen their knowledge, understandings and practices about the particular aspect of their work (Rönnerman, 2004, 2008). Anecdotally, through our conversations, we recognised that the story of development did not stop ‘when the time and funding for the projects finished’. Our ongoing

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contact with the teachers (in our own jurisdictions) established that many of the teachers who had participated in the initial action research programs had (over time) began to take on leading roles as teacher facilitators—or middle leaders as we now prefer. A key dimension of their ‘leading’ was to support the professional learning of other teachers within their own schools, and sometimes in their broader school district. Furthermore, these teachers had become ‘drivers’ of system change and continued to lead teacher learning in local contexts often in preference to taking on more formal leadership positions (e.g. principal or other specific leadership roles such as consultancy) even if encouraged or sought after. It struck us that this flow on effect was not a coincidence; and ultimately prompted our further investigation. Additionally, understanding the connectivities between action research, professional learning and leading had not been the object of research from our experience in the field, hence in a next step, we decided to go back to the schools in both Australia and Sweden to observe and interview these teacher facilitators, middle leaders. Our research then focused on investigating how and why this happened and what were the conditions and resources for enabling and constraining such transformation.

The International Study The data for this qualitative study involved translating an established questionnaire from Sweden into English that formed the basis of data collection used in the international study in the two countries. The initial phase consisted of semi-structured interviews (based on the translated questionnaire) ranging from 60 to 90 min (audiotaped and transcribed) conducted with 20 teacher leaders/facilitators across the two sites (14 participants in the Riverina region in NSW, Australia, and 6 participants in Western Sweden). Together, we conducted the first series of interviews and initial analysis in Australia in 2010. The remaining interviews and observations were conducted separately in each country by the ‘home’ researcher. In Sweden, an additional research circle with 12 early childhood teachers was held in 2012, in which the practice of leading others was discussed and reflected upon (reported in Rönnerman & Olin, 2013). A subsequent, more in-depth observational phase was conducted in 2014 in one primary school site in Australia with one teacher action research facilitator and the 22 teachers in that school. Here focus groups with teachers, and observations of the professional development sessions, teacher sharing meetings and classroom lessons were made. These research activities were audio recorded for transcription, and additional field notes were gathered.

Interviews and Interpretations As sociological researchers, who also are experienced action researchers and facilitators of action research, we capitalised on our prior relationships between ourselves and our interviewees (since we had knowledge of these participants post-project

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activities, and/or been facilitators or co-facilitators with some). This former relationship further supported an interactional and invitational character, and so conduct, of the interview itself. Suffice to say, although guided by a core schedule of questions aimed to understand the professional practices and leadership development of these teachers, each interview was semi-structured and open-ended in substance. For us, the local circumstances of their production, that is, interviews conducted with known associates on each occasion, facilitated the opportunity to treat our respondents as conversational professional partners, rather than simply as research participants. We recognise acutely there is a methodological slipperiness and potential vitiation of drawing solely on interview material as data. However, for us, the legitimacy of the experiences reported by interviewees accounts is found in the coherence of message across the two countries, and importantly that participant descriptions of their journey and work in middle leading was not compromised by the passing of time since they, themselves, had been teacher action researchers. The coherence across accounts (from both countries) form a deep logic of the practices and practice architectures we report in this book. According to our analysis, the commonalities imputed by participation in the action research is striking. We drew largely on interpreting interviews, but rather than vitiate or diminish our interpretations, we treat their ideals (emerging from their accounts) as practical matters or ideals-in-practices (Hester & Francis, 1994, p. 677). To this end, we also acknowledge that interviews alone can only produce remnants of how the actual practices were experienced and enacted by participants in the temporal realities of physical space-time. Important for this study, is how, in this instance, these are recalled as historical renderings of the actualities of the practices they had encountered or produced (many years earlier). But, like Kemmis, Wilkinson, and Edwards-Groves (2017, p. 254), we think it is helpful to be able to interpret how people interpret the experience of practices—their own and others’—as part of a broader hermeneutical task of understanding others and ourselves in the social world. However, we caution that analysis of these data may, in many ways, be rendered loosely as simplistic interpretations of interpretations. So we also stress that our interpretations draw on decades of our own ‘insider’ experiences as action research scholars, action researchers, and facilitators of action research in schools and preschools to have deep confidence in the messages we bring to the fore in this book.

Analysis Over time, we jointly conducted a systematic thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) of recorded observational and interview data to familiarise ourselves with the data and to elicit main themes through processes of searching, reviewing, refining and establishing. These analysis meetings were mainly held during cross-institutional visits at Charles Sturt University (Wagga Wagga, Australia) or the University of Gothenburg (Sweden), and in regular Skype meetings (involving the authors). A cross-examination of emerging categories to discern relevant themes using direct interpretation of the data was conducted. A collection of instances from across the

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corpus of data was sought with the view that issue-relevant meaning would emerge as they recurred in the data (Creswell, 1998). This process involved closely looking and relooking at the raw data for each case and then across the cases to draw meaning, or a semantic logic, from the emerging themes. This step proceeded with fine-tuning initial interpretations through recursively examining the thematized data through a specific theoretical framework (Bruce, 2007); here we applied the theories of practice architectures (Kemmis et al., 2014) and ecologies of practices (Kemmis, Edwards-Groves, Wilkinson, & Hardy, 2012) as a form of abductive reasoning that provides the analyst with the capacity to make logical inferences and drawing plausible conclusions beginning from and returning to the empirical data set. (Note, the theories of practice architectures and ecologies of practices are described in more depth in subsequent sections of this chapter.) In this analytic step, the establishment of the interconnections between action research practices, professional learning and leading practices was facilitated by the use of “the table of invention” (Kemmis et al., 2014) for interpreting how particular ‘sayings, doings and relatings of a practice hang together in the project of a practice’ and how ‘the practice architectures of the practice hang together in the practice tradition that lies behind the practice’ which forms part of the practice landscape of each site. The constructed meanings form the semantic logic or central ideas presented in the remaining chapters.

Tracing den röda tråden Between Researching, Professional Learning and Leading Practices: An Ecological Perspective Our use of the red thread metaphor framing this book emphasises the importance of seeing the whole picture of education and how the dimensions of education are coherently connected in time and over time, rather than seen as discrete parts separated from one another. Like all metaphors, the metaphor of den röda tråden speaks to us across contexts, circumstances and times. They inform us and teach us to be open, interpretive, objective and subjective at the same time. They connect us to our experiences in interesting, and even surprising, ways. For us, we also see how these metaphorical threads are woven together the form a rich tapestry that can be appreciated in its wholeness. Our work (as participants, facilitators and researchers) directed us to further explore the connectivities between the professional learning and leading practices that over time—after participating in long term action research projects—produced ‘significant’ yet ‘unexpected’ outcomes. From our longitudinal work (over a period of 15 years), we believe there must be a greater awareness of how Education practices (here researching, professional learning, teaching and leading) exist in ecological relationships with one another and in whole ecosystems of interrelated educational practices (Kemmis et al., 2012). This book presents the results of our sustained examination of these educational interconnections; it is work that has led us to understand more deeply the residual and ‘generative’ nature of action research. Put simply,

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Fig. 1.1 The red thread: understanding the education complex of practices as ecologically connected (adapted from Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 52)

action research generated professional learning which over time generated leading practices. To this end, we treat action research as professional learning. Our findings show that each of the components of the Education Complex (represented in Fig. 1.1) are never discreet (and should not be reported that way), but that they are distinctively always existentially overlapping, recursive and interlocking with each leaving visible traces on the other—den röda tråden. The focus for us is to illustrate, through the study of researching, professional learning and leading practices and through the voices of teachers and teacher leaders (we describe as middle leaders), the generative power of practices encountered in the Education Complex, and how these practices are held in place by ecological connections with one another, and that these connections are necessary for ongoing sustainable development in schools. To clarify, we note that our international research focuses on studying the practices and practice architectures of teacher’s professional learning through action research projects. Practices, like action research, professional learning, teaching and leading for example, are occasions of sociality and human coexistence. In this book, we also take seriously the concept of the site. So, we take a site based or site ontological approach (informed initially by the work of Schatzki, 2002, 2010) which emphasises that practices do not occur in a vacuum as discrete entities but that practices are always found to exist and unfold in the temporally located ‘happenings’ of the site (Schatzki, 2010). Kemmis et al. (2014) also describe this as the practice landscape (p. 4). To understand how each component of the Education Complex influences one another, there is a need to both ‘zoom in’ and to ‘zoom out’ (as put by Nicolini, 2012) to closely see in micro details (the intricacies, complexities, ambiguities) as well as the broader macro overarching picture of the practices that exist in sites. This task requires an historical, an ontological and an ecological lens. The enactment of practices in the present always occurs as a response to the past, and so an historical lens enables the trace of past practices and intellectual histories continuing to exert influence on the present to emerge. Historicising practices matters (Hardy & Edwards-Groves, 2016) since they exist and evolve through

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history (in historical time) as practice traditions (Kemmis et al., 2012). This perspective directs us to the circumstances of practices as they exist and are entwined with other practices in history and across historical time (Kemmis & Edwards-Groves, 2018), in discourse, in relationships, in activities and in physical space-time. Therefore, in one way, history prefigures and so informs and transforms practices as they adapt (in the present) to changing times, participants and local circumstances. An ontological lens acknowledges local conditions and circumstances that influence the conduct of practices in particular places at particular times; it enables a view of the nuanced arrangements found at specific sites to emerge. This idea follows the work of Dewey (1933) and Freire (1985) for example, who suggest site ontological approaches provide authenticity to the view of practice. A site ontological perspective enables practices to be theorises as being relevant to particular sites whereby educators, in reality, make visible the ethical, moral and affective dimension of their practices (Grootenboer, 2013, 2018) as they are done in particular places at particular times. Understanding the formation and transformation of practices in sites is also about understanding how transformations are brought about and how the practices which exist there hang together entangled in ecological relationships with one another in time and over time. An ecological lens allows us to understand how practices are inextricably related to one another in contexts. It enables the emergence of an understanding of the enabling and constraining conditions that shape and are shaped by the practices that enter or come to exist in particular places at particular times in particular practices; thus, orienting to the notion of travelling practices (Hardy et al., 2012; Wilkinson, Olin, Lund, & Stjernstrom, 2013). This means that it is not enough to view transformations discretely; you must understand the practice architectures which create conditions to change or transform practices in sustainable ways. In any practice landscape, for instance classroom teaching, there is a need to take account of a more complete picture of how student learning is enabled and constrained by the teaching that happens there; in turn, the teaching is influenced by the professional development teachers are involved in, which often depends on what the principal invests in or values, and so on. These influences reveal a distinctive and dynamic ecological flow of practices between and across sites. And so, to understand practices, you need to understand the practice architectures (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008; Kemmis et al., 2014); and, from this, to change practices you need to change the practice architectures.

Turning to the Theory of Practice Architectures To understand practices in education, recent years have witnessed a monumental shift to theories of practice for analysing and understanding the enactment of practices. Among these theories the work of Garfinkel (1967), MacIntyre (1981), Bourdieu (1990), Schatzki (2002, 2010), Latour (2005), and Ingold (2011), position practice as intrinsically social and locally enacted. Their work (although distinct,

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nuanced and varying) draws attention to the different and distinctive ways people, objects, resources, discourses, relationships, activities and circumstances are entangled with or enmeshed in the doing of a practice. And, as suggested by Goodwin and Heritage (1990) and Kemmis et al. (2014), practice is accomplished intersubjectively as people meet one another as interlocutors in interactions through processes of social interaction, shared meaning making. Together in practices, persons strive for: 1. mutual understanding and comprehensibility, 2. the formation of interpersonal relationships (that account for varying balances of power, agency and solidarity), and 3. the coordination of human conduct in their activities. Common among these theories of practice, a central point for attention concerns the sociality and the enactment of practices in local circumstances. As social, then, practices always occur in a plenum whereby people meet one another in the doing of the practice. Therefore, a practice turn facilitates richer conceptions of the conditions that enable and constrain practices as they occur between people in ‘real time’ in particular sites. Teacher professional learning—as part of the Education Complex of practices— provides the cultural, discursive, physical and relational space for school development and change. And so practices such as action research bring into being distinctive kinds of intersubjective spaces, so that people encounter one another (a) in language that creates particular kinds of semantic space, (b) in work and activity realised in particular locations and durations in physical space-time, and (c) in relationships realised in particular kinds of social space (Kemmis et al., 2014). One way to understand the nature of these spaces is to understand the practices and practice architectures in which teachers encounter one another through their professional learning. Further to this, the ecological view enables the interconnections and interrelationships between practices as they travel in time and space to be examined. Turning to the following definition of practice offered by Kemmis et al. (2014), the multidimensionality, the sociality and intersubjectivity of practice can be established: A practice is a coherent form of socially established cooperative activity involving characteristic forms of understanding (sayings), modes of action (doings) and ways in which people relate to one another and the world (relatings), that ‘hang together’ in a distinctive project. (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 31)

Taking this definition beyond a tacit level of understanding, through the chapters of this book we will illustrate through empirical material the particularities of these three dimensions of practice. Drawing from the practices in action research, for instance, we will show characteristic forms of understanding (or the saying of particular things) that create the semantic space of professional learning and leading, the characteristic modes of action (or the doing of particular things) that create the physical spacetime, and the characteristic ways in which people relate to one another and the world (or the relatings between people) that create particular social spaces. Taken together, these characterising mediums mark the composition of practices and how

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these become entwined over time in action research, in professional learning and in leading professional learning. In the doing of a practice, three kinds of arrangements are always entangled with one another, each influencing and being influenced by the other. According to Kemmis et al. (2014, p. 32) these particular arrangements are identified as: • the cultural-discursive arrangements are linguistic resources found in (or brought to) a site and influence sayings; for instance, the language and specialist discourses of disciplines are the media in semantic space that shape the sayings (or thinking) and make the particularity of the sayings understandable or comprehensible to others. They can constrain and/or enable what it is relevant and appropriate to say (and think) in performing, describing, interpreting, or justifying the practice; • the material-economic arrangements are physical configurations of human and non-human entities and material resources found in (or brought to) a site and influence doings; for instance, how arrangements of people and physical set-ups of material objects (like teachers working independently, in groups or pairs, furniture and room layout, books, technological or audio-visual equipment), how resources are distributed, set out and used (e.g., aspects of the physical work environment, financial resources and funding arrangements, timetables and schedules, staffstudent ratios, access to professional planning times or to additional support staff, division of labour arrangements), are the media that influence what, when, how, and by whom something can be done particular activities to be ‘done’ in physical space at the particular time; and • the social-political arrangements found in (or brought to) a site and influence relatings; for instance, how roles and relationships between people (e.g., organisational rules or codes of conduct; social solidarities; disciplinary expertise; positional hierarchies; community, familial, and organisational relationships) and between people and things (for instance using computers, phones, social media) in the practice are the social media that make power, agency and solidarity visible (p. 32). How these arrangements subsist together in a particular kind of practice landscape needs to be understood as they occur in relation to the other. The theory of practice architectures (presented figuratively in Fig. 1.2) proposes that practices are a nexus of these arrangements in the realm of the cultural-discursive (that happen in the discursive flow of language-in-interaction), the material-economic (that are brought to bear on the doing of activities) and the social-political (that determine different kinds of roles and relationships, power and agency) that form the shaping mechanisms of practice. This diagram developed by Kemmis et al. (2014) depicts the layers and dimensions of practices that simultaneously shape and are shaped by practice architectures (arrangements and set-ups) that are always and ever present in practices. Each dimension forms shaping mechanisms or conditions for the other. These arrangements are the influential architectures that shape (or enable and constrain) the ‘sayings’,

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Fig. 1.2 The theory of practice architectures (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 38)

‘doings’ and ‘relatings’ that make up practices of one kind or another. These arrangements prefigure practices, but do not predetermine what actually happens at the moment of enactment. For example, the school curriculum exists as a prefiguring entity and may shape what happens in classrooms but the curriculum itself does not directly determine what happens in particular sites at the particular moment in time. It is the teachers when using the curriculum makes it happen in time. According to Kemmis et al. (2014, p. 5) these three dimensions of practices do not occur separately from one another; they are always bundled together in practice and in places. Bundled together, they give social life – and our consciousness of it – its apparent solidity, its palpability, its reality and its actuality.

For instance, on the side of the individual (as shown on the left side of Fig. 1.2), participants’ sayings, doings and relatings can be identified as they occur in particular practices, and how in enactment they are “bundled together” in particular projects like teaching students how to write sentences, or deciding which school-based professional learning program to adopt. In particular projects the sayings, doings and relatings enacted by individuals become characteristic of the doing of the practice at the time. On the side of the social (shown on the right side of Fig. 1.2), practices both shape and are shaped by the practice architectures that form the socialness of the doing of the practice when people come together as interlocutors in activities and interactions. It is the people, as intersubjective meaning makers, who in coming together act in these spaces to create the very practices they are participating in.

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People make practices by being present in and participating in sayings, doings and relatings in real time. We use this theory because, for us, it provides a connection to the practical realities of human sociality. According to Lave and Wenger, knowledge of the socially constituted world is socially mediated and open-ended. Its meaning to given actors, its furnishings, and the relations of humans with/in it, are produced, reproduced and changed in the course of activity (which includes speech and thought, but cannot be reduced to one or the other). In a theory of practice, cognition and communication in, and with, the social world are situated in the historical development of on-going activity. (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 51)

As suggested here by Lave and Wenger, a theory of practice also enables a sense of how historical, ontological and ecological influences moments of practice (made visible in meanings or sayings, furnishings or doings and interrelations between humans or relatings). It is a pursuit that offers a view of educational work that reconnects the empirical with the theoretical set against a historical backdrop (EdwardsGroves & Grootenboer, 2015). That is to say that understanding practices as they are enacted in the present requires understanding the histories that have laid down (to influence and shape) its path. Practice theory offers researchers and practitioners the opportunity to develop a meta-awareness of the particular kind of dispositions, judgments and actions enacted in educational circumstances which can be evaluated only in the light of their consequences (this is, in terms of how things actually turn out) (Kemmis et al., 2014). It is a theoretical approach that underscores our pursuit to trace the distinctiveness of the practices that influenced how leading evolved (in our cases) as a consequence of participating in professional learning through action research. The theory of practice architectures enables us to isolate the specific resources or conditions for transforming the professional self as a teacher and transforming professional self as a leader (as will be shown in Chap. 3). By using the theory of practice architectures as a theoretical and linguistic resource for understanding and analysing practices we aim to present a fresh perspective on the transformative nature of action research as professional learning that goes beyond its influence on teaching and improvement. Its interest in history provides an account of practice that enables the analyst to trace den röda tråden prior to and beyond the life of the (action research) project. These historical traces are not ‘just history’, ‘the past’, ‘what’s done and dusted’ - somehow divorced from present conditions and circumstance. Rather, these historical traces are key elements, key parts of the architecture of practice, the ‘practice architectures’ which we recognise as influencing current practices… Acknowledging and valuing how current day practices, and their associated doings, sayings and relatings, are not just site-based but deeply historically embedded, enables us to better understand the conditions for practice, and how more productive conditions might be brought about in practice, and supported in policy. (Hardy & Edwards-Groves, 2016, n.p.)

Tracing den röda tråden means historicising practices (Hardy & Edwards-Groves, 2016), by showing how particular practices are prefigured by history; by coming to exist in practice over time in ways that form historical traces that leave remnants from

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the past on moments in the present. “Retrieving a sense of this intellectual history is not an antiquarian pursuit” (Doecke, Homer, & Nixon, 2003, p. 100), but rather a pursuit that offers a view of educational work that reconnects the empirical with the theoretical set against a historical backdrop.

Education Practices as Ecologically Interrelated The theory of practice architectures is predicated on the suggestion that all practices relate interdependently to one another in ecologies of practices (Kemmis et al., 2012). Examination of practices reveals particular kinds of historical, ontological and ecological connectivities that lead to thinking about practices in terms of interdependencies, ecologies and even eco-systems. According to Kemmis et al. (2012) and Kemmis et al. (2014), the theory of ecologies of practices shows the interdependencies, interconnectivities and interrelationships or ecological chains of practices as they exist between the cultural-discursive, the material-economic and the socialpolitical arrangements that hold particular practices (or the interconnected web of sayings, doings and relatings) in place. The relationships between these dimensions of practice are not abstract; in reality they always “hang” together as entangled actions. These actions—although they take place in the present—that are always prefigured or ecologically related to individual and social histories, circumstances and site ontologies. That is to say practices are experienced by people as living realities in the actual minute-by-minute unfolding of activities in time and space. As a ‘living’ practice, sayings, doings and relatings form part of the happenings that simultaneously happen to unfold in a particular place at a particular time; they are the actualities, the realities, the happeningness and the here-and-now-ness of practices (Edwards-Groves & Grootenboer, 2017, p. 31). In describing practices, proponents of the practice theories, in particular the theory of practice architectures, use the verb form (for example leading, learning, knowing, thinking, saying, doing, relating) to point to the motion and happeningness of practices. Wacquant (2016, p. 5) describes this motion and action of actors in practices, and the practice architectures or structuring configurations that influence the conduct of practices, in this way: […] dynamic webs of forces inscribed upon and infolded deep within the body as perceptual grids, sensorimotor capacities, emotional proclivities, and indeed as desire itself. Structures are internal springs or propellers as much as they are external containers, beams, or lattices. They are limber and alive, not inert and immobile.

To understand this, means understanding that practices are never static or in a state of completeness but rather exist as discursive, living practices, unfolding in a continuous present, shaped by often unseen hands and habits inherited from the past. It is more or less intensely present to us in our consciousness. We ‘flow’ in it in ways guided by our experience, correcting an imbalance here and recovering from a hesitation or mistake there, as the action unfolds and as we ourselves unfold as living, conscious beings present in and with our practices. (Kemmis, 2009)

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The need for a deeply ecological perspective has been proposed as a delimiting notion to understand education (see for example Macy, 1991) in terms of interpreting connections between human consciousness and the social and material worlds. Although the concept “ecologies of practice”4 has also been used by Stronach, Corbin, McNamara, Stark, and Warne (2002) to describe the incremental accumulation of particular individual and collective experiences, beliefs and practices that professionals develop in learning and performing their roles, its use has largely remained metaphorical. Boylan (2004) used the concept of ecologies of practice as a frame of reference to describe the contrasting nature of school ecologies or environments. In this view, it was considered to be a flexible construct that allows the diversity of participant networks and practices in classrooms to be theorised. Stengers (2005), Potter (2008), then Weaver-Hightower (2008), have also since recognised “ecologies of practice” as a useful concept to represent and symbolise, in more generalised ways, the particular actors, relationships, environments, structures, and processes found in social fields, or as in Weaver-Hightower’s theorising in the policy field. However, these descriptions of an educational “ecology” remain more universal unitary representations that gloss practice in terms of its generalities rather than considering the actual empirical (non-metaphorical) interdependent, interrelated and interconnected nature of practices as they happen in reality. To advance these ideas, the theory of practice architectures draws on Kemmis and Mutton’s site ontological observations of ecologies of practices5 (2012) concerned with the observably, and more pluralistic, “distinctive interconnected webs of human social activities” (p. 15). They also emphasised that under certain conditions “practices can sustain (that is, symbiotically and interdependently) or suffocate other practices, and that different ‘ecologies of practices’ may be hospitable to some practices and not to others” (p. 15). From an ontological standpoint this perspective on practices accounts for the happeningness of realities of the entities and their relationships that occur as living practices in social life. The social happeningness (after Heap, 1985) relates closely to the notion of understanding practices as living, as unfolding in real physical space-time, and as experienced by the people who enact them as co-inhabitants of the site. Indeed, practices depend on one key kind of living thing: the people who enact them. We are aware, however, that practices are also shaped by many non-living and non-human things – like a roof that shelters practitioners from sun or rain, the gravity that holds people in place, or the interactive whiteboard that a teacher uses in a lesson. Practitioners – people – might in one sense thus be ‘motors’ for practices, so practices might be ‘living’ because they have this organic connection with practitioners. (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 47)

The theory of ecologies of practices, as suggested by Kemmis et al. (2014), challenge the more general and abstract ways of thinking about practices by its insistence 4 Note

the use of the singular form of the term. and Mutton’s work led to the use of the plural ‘practices’ to emphasise that an ecology of practices involves various different kinds of practices that co-exist in a site.

5 Kemmis

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for seeing how practices and practice architectures exist or unfolding in reality. That is that practices happen in sites; thus, rendering the site as the existential ontological reality of practices. This notion of ecologies of practices encompasses the ideas that the form and content of one practice may change the form and content of another and that practices can travel from site to site (Kemmis et al., 2014). As a theory, it offers a view of practices as ecologically arranged in particular sites and under particular conditions that is useful for understanding the interconnectivities and interdependencies between teacher professional learning through action research and leading. Understanding the principles of ecologies of practices is important because when one practice in an ecology of practices becomes developed and strengthened (for example professional learning and teaching) then other parts of the complex of practices may also be developed and strengthened (for example student learning or leading). This concept is important for chapters that follow because of our interest in the trajectories and transformation of practices; that is, the connectivity between long-term professional learning practices and leading learning practices has emerged as a significant, yet unexpected, outcome (Edwards-Groves & Rönnerman, 2013; Rönnerman & Edwards-Groves, 2012). Table 1.1 presents a summarised description of practices as explicitly aligned with Capra’s (2005) eight principles of ecology to demonstrate how they can be understood as relating to one another within ecologies of practices. Table 1.1 Ecological principles (adapted from Kemmis et al., 2012, pp. 39–46) Ecological principles If practices are living things and ecologies of practices are living systems, then … Networks

Practices derive their essential properties and their existence from their relationships with other practices

Nested systems

Different levels and networks of practice are nested within one another

Interdependence

Practices are dependent on one another in ecology of practices as are ecologies of practices

Diversity

An ecology of practices includes many different practices with overlapping ecological functions that can partially replace one another

Cycles

Some (particular) kinds of matter (or in education—practice architectures, activities, orders or arrangements) cycle through practices or ecologies of practices—for example, as in a food chain

Flows

Energy flows through an ecology of practices and the practices within it, being transformed from one kind of energy to another (in the way that solar energy is converted into chemical energy by photosynthesis) and eventually being dissipated

Development

Practices and ecologies of practices develop through stages

Dynamic balance

An ecology of practices regulates itself through processes of self-organisation, and (up to breaking point) maintains its continuity in relation to internal and outside pressures

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According to Kemmis et al. (2012), from an ecologies of practices perspective, when the external or internal conditions in sites of practice are not hospitable (supportive or nourishing), then the other parts of the complex of practices may be threatened and the changing of practices may not be sustainable or even possible.

The Formation, Transformation and Sustainability of Professional Education Practices: A New View In their book, Changing practices, changing education, Kemmis et al. (2014) point us to a new view of practices and suggest practices are paths for those who walk them, forming new ways of being—a teacher, a researcher, a leader, a professional developer, a learner—for those who travel them. Like Kemmis and colleagues, the title of the Horton and Freire book We Make the Road by Walking (1990) about the formation and transformation of education, captures for us the way practices make paths, on the one hand, and, on the other, how the practice of walking paths, whether paths are already laid down or trails we blaze for ourselves, also makes us and our histories. As practitioners, like teachers, travel these paths they step into unknown, unenvisaged, and perhaps even unintended practices. Based on our work reconnecting with the teachers who took part in our long-term action research programs (reported in this book) we see that the practices of action research, professional learning, teaching and leading are passages from one to the other, made through time and space that people enter and that people make through their practising, just as Nette says in the beginning of this chapter. That is, practices enable and constrain movements in time and in semantic, physical and social space. For us, our long-term partnerships with the teachers enabled us to follow their development and leading work in their schools through follow-up visits, interviews and research circles conducted years after the completion of their action research projects. Groundwater-Smith and Mockler remind us, in their book Teacher Professional Learning in an age of compliance (2009, p. 65), of the need to promote and nourish teacher inquiry as stance (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999) within a culture of collegiality, collaboration, community and communication for sustainable education futures. For us, understanding such a culture requires conceptualising action research and professional learning within an ontological perspective; that is, within the practices within the particular sites where it occurs. By participating in practices (like action research) the paths taken are altered; and the path laid down becomes part of a new way of being—a new form of life shaped by our encounters in practices with one another. This book offers new ways to conceptualise ideas about teacher professional education in its directions by presenting fresh insights into the pathways laid down by action research—pathways that connect action research to professional learning to teaching to leading. This is a new conception of a path whereby education can fulfil its mission for a sustainable educational future.

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Towards a Generative View of Learning and Leading Researching and describing the development of leading, particularly as these link to or are developed through participation in action research, is rare. More typically the links between professional learning and teaching, or student learning and teaching, or leading and teaching are made. In this book we describe a generative view of leading, whereby learners (here the teachers involved in professional development through action research) transform their professional teaching self to become leaders. These teacher leaders are learners who manage their own generative processes (Åteg et al., 2009; Wittrock, 1974), but in ways that are transformative. We show how the formation of the leader-self emerges, along with a self-extending professional learning system, is a transformation that produces more sustainable professional education practices. We believe this presents a new view of the formation, transformation and sustainability of professional education practices. For Surie and Hazy (2006), generative leadership is a form of leadership that creates a context to stimulate innovation in complex systems; at the time they argued that their framework provides new directions for leadership research and policy implications for managers. Their framework links theories of leadership with perspectives on innovation and complex systems. They suggest that generative leadership involves balancing connectivity and interaction among individuals and groups in complex systems by managing complexity and institutionalising innovation. They focus on how leaders can be generative in their practices by the way they create conditions that nurture practices (innovative for those learning) rather than focus on individual traits or creativity. We take this one step further to show how it is the processes of professional learning over time (that action research affords) that generates leading. Its concern is with the practices—the path, the journey, the action.

Holding on to den röda tråden The chapters in this book are themselves a red thread, with each one laying down a path for understanding the other. And although they are presented as separate entities, they can only be understood in light of each other. From this, the book could help to change many contemporary ideas about how changes in teaching and learning, and in leading professional learning, can be achieved: it sees these as practices, not just ‘processes’ or ‘phenomena’. The importance of this is that it sees practice change and development as something that takes place through living and working differently— not just implementing new plans or new intentions (with varying degrees of skill). It sees practice change as learning to live differently in the world—and the participants in the programs to be reported here did indeed come to see themselves as conducting enquiries into their own practice and as doing their educational practice as different ways to live in the world.

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The word ‘empowerment’ is often used in the context of action research programs as it speaks back to standards-based reforms. Many authors write as if this ‘empowerment’ was easy to achieve—even routine, sometimes taken for granted. Few action research projects live up to the promise of the label, however. It is in its constructed routinised, taken-for-grantedness that for many, action research has become transcendent in its goal of empowerment, agency and transformation. Unlike some, the unexpected outcomes (like reported here) were empowering, were experienced as empowering, and did indeed empower the people who participated in them (Rönnerman, 2008). It changed key practices by which they lived their working lives so that they became more powerfully sensitized to the possibilities for and the limits on practice change in the settings within which they worked. From a cursory glance, perhaps the results reported in this book situates action research against the climate of performativity, compliance and accountability (Comber & Nixon, 2011; Hardy & Rönnerman, 2011; Hardy, Salo, & Rönnerman, 2015), taking professional learning in education away from immutability towards a new promise of leading. Throughout the book we argue that inherent in action research is its power to enable emancipation, agency and solidarity with the potential to lead to the transformations we describe in latter chapters. Two interconnected dimensions of transformation are offered: first, transforming the professional self as a teacher, and second, transforming the professional self as a leader. Resources for mutually forming and transforming practices provide guidance for those in education and a lesson for other researchers throughout the social disciplines about regenerative nature of action research for the sustainability of education and its path forward. Through the enablements of professional learning through action research, teachers take upon themselves the responsibility for educating their peers in sustainable ways. The next chapter will start with an overview of action research where we explore the new promise of action research as a generative mechanism for leading professional learning. We do this through presenting what we describe as cornerstones of action research. Throughout the chapters, excerpts drawn from our interview data are presented as voices from the field, and are selected as representative of the general or more typical perspectives of our informants. These data are organised in a fashion that frame, introduce and exemplify the key concepts presented. We note that to form the narrative arc of the book that selected segments of talk from the individual middle leaders interviews are presented without the interviewer’s intermediate turns (questions, interruptions, prompts, or commentary). We also recognise that such interviews do not occur without the typical pauses, silences, hesitations, prosody, intonations and overlaps that comprise such conversations and so conventions to represent these do not appear in the text. Importantly, for our Swedish participants, their interviews were translated into English and therefore involved some additional language wash. Although these extracts might appear, at times, as monologues (in reality they are not); these are fashioned this way for coherence, readability and comprehensibility. Finally, we note that each of the educators in our study began as teacher action researchers, and moved into leading roles over time (as facilitators or middle leaders), so for consistency throughout we use the term middle leader to accompany their name (a pseudonym).

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It is our aim that the book provides insightful analyses of the transformation of practices while also offering new ways to conceptualise ideas about education practices. These are powerful stories that are important to hear in the contemporary climate for professional development in education today, when there is far greater reliance on programs that promise ‘quick fixes’ to long-sustained practices and longsustained conditions for practice that enable but also constrain possible changes. As the book will show, it is possible and, indeed, necessary to change both practices and the conditions that support practices together—dialectically—if the changes are made over sustained periods. This is a hopeful message, and one systems authorities and professional development providers need to read and hear about. This book provides helpful and successful empowerment narratives that will encourage teachers to participate more actively in long term professional learning initiatives—including ones they collaboratively organise for themselves. Not because they must, but as part of their own commitment to lifelong learning.

References Altrichter, H., & Posch, P. (2007). Lehrerinnen und Lehrer erforschen ihren Unterricht Unterrichtsentwicklung und Unterrichtsevaluation durch Aktionsforschung. Verlag Julius Klinkhardt KG. Åteg, M., Wilhelmson, L., Backström, T., Moström Åberg, M., Köping Olsson, B., & Önnered, L. (2009). Tasks in the generative leadership; Creating conditions for autonomy and integration. Sweden: Dalarna University. https://www.du.se/PageFiles/8823/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20R WL6_-_Tasks_in_the_generative_leadership.pdf. Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice (R. Nice, Trans.). Cambridge: Polity Press. Boylan, M. S. (2004). Questioning (in) school mathematics: Lifeworlds and ecologies of practice (Doctoral thesis). Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield. Bramlett, A. (1999). The Red Thread. https://www.tomorrowmakers.org/articles-resources/TheRed Thread.pdf. Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3, 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa. Bruce, C. (2007). Questions arising about emergence, data collection, and its interaction with analysis in a grounded theory study. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 6(1), Article 4. Capra, F. (2005). Speaking nature’s language: Principles for sustainability. In M. K. Stone & Z. Barlow (Eds.), Ecological literacy: Educating our children for a sustainable world (pp. 18–29). San Francisco: Sierra Book Club Books. Carr, W., & Kemmis, S. (1986). Becoming critical: Education, knowledge and action research. London: Falmer. Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. L. (1999). Relationships of knowledge and practice: Teacher learning in communities. Review of Research in Education, 24, 249–305. Retrieved from https:// rre.sagepub.com/cgi/content/short/24/1/249. Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. L. (2009). Inquiry as stance: Practitioner research for the next generation. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Comber, B., & Nixon, H. (2011). Critical reading comprehension in an era of accountability. Australian Educational Researcher, 38, 167–179. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-011-0022-z. Creswell, J. (1998). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five traditions. London: Sage.

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Dewey, J. (1933). How we think. A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process (Revised edn.). Boston: D. C. Heath. Doecke, B., Homer, D., & Nixon, H. (Ed.). (2003). English teachers at work: Narratives, counter narratives and arguments. Kent Town, S. Aust: Wakefield Press. Earl, L., & Timperley, H. (2008). Understanding how evidence and learning conversations work. In L. Earl & H. Timperley (Eds.), Professional learning conversations: Challenges in using evidence for improvement (pp. 1–12). London: Springer Academic Publishers. Edwards-Groves, C. (2002). Building an inclusive classroom through explicit pedagogy: A focus on the language of teaching. In Literacy lexicon. Sydney: Prentice Hall, Australia Pty Ltd. Edwards-Groves, C. (2003). On task: Focused literacy learning. Sydney: Primary English Teachers Association (PETAA). Edwards-Groves, C. (2008). The praxis-oriented self: Continuing (self) education. In Enabling praxis: Challenges for education. Rotterdam: Sense Publisher. Edwards-Groves, C., & Davidson, C. (2017). Becoming a meaning maker: Talk and interaction in the dialogic classroom. Primary English Teachers Association Australia, Sydney, NSW: PETAA. Edwards-Groves, C., & Grootenboer, P. (2015). Practice and praxis in literacy education. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 38(3), 150–161. Edwards-Groves, C., & Grootenboer, P. (2017). Learning spaces and practices in the primary school: A focus on classroom dialogues, Chapter 4. In K. Mahon, S. Francisco, & S. Kemmis (Eds.), (2017). Exploring education and professional practice - Through the lens of practice architectures. Singapore: Springer. Edwards-Groves, C., & Kemmis, S. (2016). Pedagogy, education and praxis: Understanding new forms of intersubjectivity through action research and practice theory. In Special Issue, Action Research Networks: Prospects and Challenges of Greater Global Connectivity, Guest Editors: Lonnie Rowell (University of San Diego) & Joseph Shosh (Moravian College). Educational Action Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2015.1076730. Edwards-Groves, C., & Rönnerman, K. (2013). Generating leading practices through professional learning. Professional Development in Education, 39(1), 122–140. Elliott, J. (1991). Action research for educational change. Open University Press: Milton Keynes. Fals Borda, O. (2006). Participatory (action) research in social theory: origins and challenges. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (eds), The handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and practice (pp. 27–37). London: Sage. Freire, P. (1985). The politics of education: Culture, power, and liberation. New York, NY: Bergin and Garvey. Furu, E. M., & Lund, T. (2014). Development teams as translators of school reform ideas. In K. Ronnerman, & P. Salo (Eds.), Lost in practice: Transforming Nordic educational action research (pp. 153–170). Rotterdam: Sense. Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Goodwin, C., & Heritage, J. (1990). Conversation analysis. Annual Review of Anthropology, 19, 283–307. Grootenboer, P. (2013). The praxis of mathematics teaching: Developing mathematical identities. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 21(2), 321–342. Grootenboer, P. (2018). The practices of school middle leadership. Singapore: Springer. Grootenboer, P., Edwards-Groves, C., & Rönnerman, K. (2014). Leading practice development: Voices from the middle, Professional Development in Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/194 15257.2014.924985. Grootenboer, P., Edwards-Groves, C., & Rönnerman, K. (2020). Middle Leadership in Schools: A practical guide for leading learning. Sydney, Aus: Routledge. Groundwater-Smith, S., & Mockler, N. (2009). Teacher professional learning in an age of compliance. Singapore: Springer Gustavsen, B. (2001). Theory and practice: The mediating discourse. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.), Handbook of action research (1st edn, pp. 17–26). London: SAGE.

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Hardy, I., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2016). Historicising teachers’ learning: A case study of productive professional practice. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 22(4), 538–552. http://www. tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13540602.2016.1158463. Hardy, I., Edwards-Groves, C., & Rönnerman, K. (2012). Collaborative learning as a travelling practice: How practices of learning travel. Educational Practice and Theory, 34(2), 5–22. Hardy, I., & Rönnerman, K. (2011). The value and valuing of continuing professional development: Current dilemmas, future directions and the case for action research. Cambridge Journal of Education, 41(4), 461–472. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2011.625004. Hardy, I., Salo, P., & Rönnerman, K. (2015). Bildung and educational action research: Resources for hope in neoliberal times. Educational Action Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2015. 1012175. Heap, J. (1985). Discourse in the production of classroom knowledge: Reading lessons. Curriculum Inquiry, 15, 245–279. Hester, S., & Francis, D. (1994). Doing data: The local organization of a sociological interview. British Journal of Sociology, 45, 675–695. Holmstrand, L., & Härnsten, G. (2003). Förutsättningar för forskningscirklar i skolan - en kritisk granskning. Stockholm: Myndigheten för skolutveckling. Hord, S. (1997). Professional learning communities: Communities of continuous inquiry and improvement. Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL): http://sedl.org/pubs/cha nge34/index.html. Horton, M., & Freire, P. (1990). We make the road by walking: Conversations on education and social change (B. Bell, J. Gaventa, & J. Peters, Eds.). Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Ingold, T. (2011). Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description. Oxford: Routledge. Kalleberg, R. (1993). Implementing work-environment reform in Norway: The interplay between leadership, labour and law. In W. Lafferty & E. Rosenstein (Eds), International handbook of participation in organizations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kemmis, S. (2009). Action research as a practice-based practice. Educational Action Research, 17(3), 463–474. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650790903093284. Kemmis, S., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2018). Understanding education: History, politics and practices. Singapore: Springer. Kemmis, S., & Grootenboer, P. (2008). Situating praxis in practice: Practice architectures and the cultural, social, and material conditions for practice. In S. Kemmis, & T. J. Smith (Eds.), Enabling praxis: Challenges for education. Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense. Kemmis, S., & Mutton, R. (2012). Education for sustainability (EfS): Practice and practice architectures. Environmental Education Research, 18(2), 187–207. Kemmis, S., Edwards-Groves, C., Wilkinson, J., & Hardy, I. (2012). Ecologies of practices: Learning practices. In P. Hager, A. Lee, & A. Reich (Eds.), Practice, learning and change (pp. 33–49). London: Springer. Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R., & Nixon, R. (2014). The action research planner: Doing critical participatory action research. Singapore: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4560-67-2. Kemmis, S., Rönnerman, K., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2016). Pedagogy, education, praxis (PEP) network international research program. In L. Rowell, C. Bruce, J. M. Shosh, & M. Riel (Eds.), The Palgrave international handbook for action research (pp. 471–485). New York: Palgrave Macmillian. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40523-4. Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2017). Roads not travelled, roads ahead: How the theory of practice architectures is travelling, Chapter 14. In K. Mahon, S. Francisco, & S. Kemmis (Eds.), (2017). Exploring education and professional practice - Through the lens of practice architectures. Singapore: Springer. Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, L. (2014). Changing practices, changing education. Singapore: Springer. Larsson, S., & Nordvall, H. (2010). Study circles in Sweden: An overview with a bibliography of international literature. Linköping University: Linköping University Electronic Press. https:// doi.org/10.13140/2.1.1366.2081.

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Somekh, B., & Zeichner, K. (2009). Action research for educational reform: Remodeling action research theories and practices in local contexts. Educational Action Research, 17(1), 5–21. Stengers, I. (2005). An ecology of practices. Cultural Studies Review, 11(1), 183–196. Stenhouse, L. (1975). An introduction to curriculum research and development. London: Heinemann Educational Books. Stronach, I., Corbin, B., McNamara, O., Stark, S., & Warne, T. (2002). Towards an uncertain politics of professionalism: Teacher and nurse identities in flux. Journal of Educational Policy, 17(1), 109–138. Surie, G., & Hazy, J. K. (2006). Generative leadership: Nurturing innovation in complex systems. Emergence: Complexity and Organization, 8(4), 13–26. Timperley, H. (2008). Teacher professional learning and development. Educational Practices Series18. International Bureau of Education: UNESCO. Wacquant, L. (2016). Revisiting territories of urban relegation: Class, ethnicity and state in the making of marginality. Urban Studies, 53(6), 1077–1088. https://doi.org/10.1177/004209801 5613259. WALS. (2016). World association of lesson studies. Retrieved from https://www.walsnet.org/. Weaver-Hightower, M. (2008). An ecology metaphor for educational policy analysis: A call to complexity. Educational Researcher, 37(3), 153–167. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511803932. Wilkinson, J., Olin, A., Lund, T., & Stjernstrom, E. (2013). Understanding leading as travelling practices. School Leadership and Management, 33(3), 224–239. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434. 2013.773886. Wittrock, M. C. (1974). Learning as a generative process. Educational Psychology, 19(2), 87–95. Zeichner, K., & Noffke, S. (2001) Practitioner research. In V. Richardson (2001) Handbook of research on teaching (4th ed.). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.

Chapter 2

Action Research as Democratic Practice: Characterising the Cornerstones of Contemporary Professional Learning

Abstract Questions concerning the formation and development of education (and so the practices of education) have been at the centre of political, social and economic discussion and debate for centuries. For practitioners in many nations, fields and circumstances, the search for understanding and improving their work sets in motion endeavours to change their practices for the betterment of individuals and societies. History has shown that action research—as a socially enacted democratic endeavour—is one such practice that seeks these ends. It has continually reshaped itself to respond to changing times, circumstances and conditions. In contemporary times elements from traditional action research (processes and practices) have filtered back and forth through the sayings, doings and relatings of educational change and development. This chapter aims to examine practices of contemporary professional learning and its ideals as understood through the lens of particular historical action research as connected to a living a democratic educational way of life. Through this the seven cornerstones of action research are framed and characterised.

A Voice from the Field When I look back on my own process in developing my understanding of my practice, it is hard to see anything called a ‘developing project’ and even less ‘action research’. However, taking a longer perspective reveals how different influences, together with my own reflections and collaboration with colleagues, has led to big differences in my practice around literacy. Significantly, I can see a growing awareness about research and development is not just about being effective and improving student’s results; this is challenging given the political climate and debates concerning schooling. However, the imagination about research equalising experiments and proof of causes between teaching and result is difficult to avoid. Now I can see that research and school development can be about changing practice by developing better understandings. This leads hopefully to better student results even if this is not the focus of the research. To carry out action research does not typically involve big projects where the whole school is included. Action research is about the individual’s approach to teaching as a professional. It includes curiosity and an inquiring approach to the work I do in my practice and to take time for reflection. Through the literature, I can see it is not so much about how extensive a project is in time or how much data may be collected; rather it is about what is done with the data. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 C. J. Edwards-Groves and K. Rönnerman, Generative Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4563-8_2

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2 Action Research as Democratic Practice: Characterising … I can see reflection as a common feature throughout all the work I do as an action researcher. Reflection about my practice, in particular concerning what can be developed through dialogue with myself and others. When this happens, action research can be seen as practical philosophy in the sense used by Aristotle. Lisa, Middle Leader.

The view of action research, ascribed by Lisa above, incorporates a distinctive approach to being a learning teacher. Lisa is a literacy classroom teacher in Sweden who participated in a program of action research for over two years as part of her postgraduate studies. Since then, she has drawn on processes of action research (such as inquiry learning, reflection and professional dialogues) to initiate professional learning, as a school-based middle leader, with colleagues from her own school. What is highlighted by the excerpt is that for teachers, like Lisa, the development of the professional self as teacher and learner requires participating in practices whereby groups of teachers meet as interlocutors to engage in intersubjective meaning making about their teaching. That is, they meet as a community of professionals in spaces that make communication, collegiality, collaboration and critical reflection possible. In many ways, these are contextualised, co-ordinated, systematic and sustained. Her reasoning attests to the sociality of professional education as she recognises the importance of coming together in community with others as fundamental for developing, as she said, “a different attitude towards her teaching”. Lisa’s narrative captures the essence of several points we want to explore in this chapter. That learning and change through “research and school development” needs to be anchored in “self-reflection” shaped by “dialogues with others to better understand [her] teaching”. With practices of self-reflection and collegial dialogues, for instance, comes particular ways of understanding and improving professional work. From her experience, part of this is related to acting on professional “curiosities” and adopting “an inquiring approach” to her professional self-education. What is also interesting in Lisa’s portrayal of her work is the recognition that elements of change and development are rooted in history and in historical circumstances. For instance, she orients to “action research [as being] seen as practical philosophy in the sense used by Aristotle”. Illuminating and then understanding den röda tråden1 that hold elements of the professional work of action research that advances teaching, teacher-learning and leading together is a key goal of this book.

1 As

outlined in previous chapters, we note the use the Swedish words den röda tråden, rather than the English words ‘the red thread’. This is a deliberate move to show the interconnections between our ideas, our collaboration, our mutual respect and acceptance of our different languages (of which English is the dominant in the publication of this book).

Finding den röda tråden in Action Research

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Finding den röda tråden in Action Research The chapter begins with mapping the historical landscape of action research as a foundation from which to understand the nature and the conditions of promise and possibility that action research provides for learners and leaders of professional learning.2 Historically, action research has been more or less present in many cultures across the world, evolving and responding to particular local social, political and economic conditions. Historicising practices requires understanding the genesis of the traditions and practices that shape the conduct of action research which exist and evolve in history as practice traditions. As such, the practices of traditions prefigure, as well as inform, practices as they adapt—through their enactment—to changing times, participants and locally experienced circumstances. This chapter, therefore, aims to return to the roots of action research—we do this since understanding how action research is generative of leading requires a deep appreciation of action research as condition for improvement and development. Our intent is not to redescribe the fundamental purposes or processes and models of action research (or its derivatives), these are well reported and theorised by others.3 Nor is the purpose to report on the specific action research projects undertaken by the individual teacher action researchers in our study; and we recognise and acknowledge its critical importance for student learning, teacher practice development and schoolbased change. Rather we aim to retrace the genesis of action research in education as a way to strive for better understandings of the practices, conditions and influences of participating. We intend to hit ‘refresh’ on the fidelity of the fundamental democratic principles of action research that, in many ways, have been compromised in contemporary approaches to it. The process of historicising action research enabled us to establish seven cornerstones that provide a way of describing the practices and practice architectures of action research. Finally, we set the scene for reclaiming the space of action research as site based educational development where we will proceed to show (in latter chapters) the ways professional learning is connected to the research that takes place and, in time, transforms into leading.

Cornerstones for Democratic Ways of Working: Action Research as Democratic Education Education is a social process; education is growth; education is not preparation for life but is life itself. John Dewey, 1916

2 Note

our consciousness that not all traditions will be captured.

3 For example, handbooks by Reason and Bradbury (2001), Noffke and Somekh (2009) and Rowell,

Bruce, Shosh, and Riel (2017).

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We begin with Dewey’s words here as they ground the thinking about the democratic ways of working that action research espouses and that action researchers enact that inform this chapter. Democracy and education have been intricately connected for well over a century. In particular, the work of progressive and philosopher John Dewey (1859–1952) has been foundational for thinking about democratic ways of working (and learning) in modern education. His pedagogic creed (1897) turned away from solely an emphasis on the individual (Rousseau, 1712–1778) or an emphasis on society (Durkheim, 1858–1917) to bring into balance a view of education whereby learning for individuals is inextricably related to being in community with others. In his view, notions of sociality, community and communication are brought to bear on education practices that must, at the same time, strive for the formation of active and informed citizens for a democratic way of life. Of Dewey’s contribution, authors Groundwater-Smith et al. (2013) say that the “community should generate knowledge democratically while at the same time contributing to the achievement of democratic education” (p. 30). Herein lies the reciprocity between the formation of the individual and the formation of society whereby each has meaning only in relation to the other; each acting on and shaping the other. This captures the doubleness of education, encapsulated by Kemmis et al. (2014) in their statement about education being about supporting people to “live well in a world worth living in” (p. 11). This doubleness points to the Greek notion of Eudaimonia translated as meaning ‘human flourishing or prosperity’; it reflects a binary which requires an active and emboldened citizenship that relies on both the individual and society, on both (individual and collective) action and (individual and collective) activism. Such action and activism in education was also realised by politicising and democratising education in Freire’s (1970) ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’; work that galvanised notions of critical theory, action and activism as monumental stands in education. In parallel with Dewey and Freire’s thinking about education, are ideals that rise from continental traditions such as Bildung and folk enlightenment (as outlined in the previous chapter) that place virtue in democratic, communitarian and activist ways of working. These traditions shape practices that both aspire and transpire principles of education that are built on community, communication, collaboration, collegiality and criticality that create possibilities—and indeed practice architectures—for democratic, communitarian and activist ways of working. Furthermore, Dewey and Freire (among others) attend assiduously to the fundamental recognition of ‘place’ in education and its development. As such education practice (including theorising and researching education) requires an ontological approach whereby what happens is understood, takes account of and responds to the conditions and circumstances present in local sites and situations. Action research is one such practice. For decades, action research has made waves across the education and professional development landscape around three central ideas: 1. democratic working methods (e.g. Dewey, 1916), an ideal espousing that researchers, teachers and students become equal partners while meeting as interlocutors in conversations;

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2. real life action/experiments, exemplified by the work of German American psychologist Kurt Lewin (1890–1947), who gathered all stakeholders in educational circumstances as partners to participate in processes of site-based inquiry that included planning, acting, observing and evaluating actions; and 3. critical theory, emphasising the critical and emancipatory dimension of learning that proposes that through action and activism people are able to change their situation (e.g. Carr & Kemmis, 1986; Freire, 1972). The critical stance that underpins these ideas provides a platform for action research by suggesting that it is the issues and concerns in one’s own circumstances are the provocations that stir people to action and reflection on those actions in critical and transformational ways. That is to say, action research—across time and places—is not associated with docility but a certain kind of practice that espouses dynamism and activism, and that it necessitates being critical and participatory (Kemmis, McTaggart, & Nixon, 2014). Action research has had an enduring influence on education and development, connecting the schisms between theory and practice, between research and practical action, between reflection and action, between complicity and activism, between individuals and collectives, between schooling and education, and between autocracy and democracy. The next section of the chapter retraces the traditions and philosophies that prefigure, yet embody, contemporary professional learning practices. It will draw out what we describe as action research cornerstones—these cornerstones are contextuality, commitment, communication, collaboration, criticality, collegiality and community, derived from viewing action research from its historical principle of being a democratic way of working. We do this because of a noticeable hybridisation, fragmentation and even decontextualisation of action research whereby the cornerstones of action research have been reduced to strategies, policies or just simply a research method (McNiff, 2013; Somekh, 2006), movements rejected by Carr and Kemmis (2005). Whilst we recognise that action research and its derivatives have been shaped and reshaped as ideas and practices travel through history responding to local sites, issues and circumstances, we also notice a shift towards using slimmed down glossed versions of these cornerstones of action research as being more simplistic solutions rather than as ways to genuinely support teachers to take on a more critical stance towards their professional development. For instance, notions such as professional learning communities, communities of practice, collegial learning and inquiry learning have become overused clichéd phrases concealing real solutions and site-based change and development. The aim of describing each of the seven cornerstones that follow are twofold: to (1) show the historical ‘red’ thread that hold the idea(l)s, aspirations and practices of action research together in site based education development, and (2) show that “each is ‘integral’ in the sense that it is an indispensable aspect of the other” (to borrow from Carr & Kemmis, 1986, p. 221). That is, these cornerstones (contextuality, commitment, communication, collaboration, criticality, collegiality and community) form practices and practice architectures for each other. We also see the interconnections but the temporal formation of elements between these cornerstones, where for

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example genuine collegiality forms over time. Answering questions related to sitebased change and development must also attend to the practice architectures and the practice traditions that shape educational action and change over time. Thus, we must heed the caution raised by Dewey (in Experience and Education, 1938) that new movements and new practices do not simply supplant tradition for these “may develop its principles negatively rather than positively and constructively” (p. 20).

Contextuality—A Cornerstone for Site Based Education Development Responsivity to the particularity of sites and circumstances in education relates to Schatzki’s (2002) notion of site ontologies. It is a position that draws attention to the distinctiveness of contexts and their peculiar, nuanced, historical and ontological situatedness (and local happeningness) of the practices that come to pass in particular places at particular times. Put simply, context matters. “What works in one setting does not always work in another” (Timperley, Kaser, & Halbert, 2014, p. 4). So, a site ontological approach concerns how practices unfold over time in ways that are prefigured and transformed through and in interactions that take place at particular sites. Action research is comprised of practices grounded by the conditions that influence what happens in the sites in which it occurs. Thus, from an ontological perspective action research happens in sites in response to site-based circumstances and needs—that is the context. This idea gives relevance and substance to action research and professional learning as site based education development (Kemmis et al., 2014) where information about what is happening in places is gathered through systematic modes of inquiry (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988). Site based education development, a concept introduced by Kemmis et al. (2014), concerns “the development of education and educational practices to be appropriately and effectively responsive to the local needs, opportunities and circumstances of students, schools and communities in diverse and different local situations – at each local site” (p. 196). Therefore, action research from a: site ontological perspective has led us to see the development of education not as something abstract, or as something that can be done only in a general way. We see the development of education, as it actually happens, as something that necessarily happens at a local site, involving particular people and things to be found there. It is education in this site, this local ‘here and now’ that must be ‘developed’. (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 196)

Site based education development is not simply about contexts and contextuality however. It understands the local conditions that enable and constrain what happens in the actual place at the time. It is a view conscious of the ways that practices (found empirically in sayings, doings and relatings) both shape and are shaped by the conditions or practice architectures (or cultural-discursive, material-economic and social

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political arrangements) that exist or enter the sites. In these sites, particular practice traditions shape—prefiguring without predetermining—how social life unfolds. “This shaping is not just a product of the internal dynamics of the practice (the ways practitioners speak and think, do things, and relate to other people and objects) but also a product of the sites where practices take place” (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 195). It is in these sites and the practices and practice architectures that unfold in real time activities, people find or create intersubjective spaces for understanding one another (through communication and criticality), for being with and doing things with one another (through collaboration) and relating to one another and the world (through collegiality), to create for themselves their own community in other words their own of community of practice. Accounting for the site in educational work and recognising the centrality of these cornerstones trace back to, for instance, Dewey’s notions of educational pragmatism. Educational pragmatism values the contextual by insisting that knowledge should be of practical value and importance for human beings in their particular places, connecting teaching and learning to everyday life and experiences. These align with other historical traditions—for instance, folk enlightenment and bildung (as outlined in Chap. 1)—that form the essence of the kind of professional education that action research desires.

Commitment—A Cornerstone for (Individual and Collective) Change Commitment in action research can be understood in two interconnected ways. It firstly relates to an individual’s commitment to a project or program of change. Secondly, it connects to the related concept of educational praxis. In a fundamental way, an aspiration of education has always been to act in morally committed, ethically informed and prudently practiced ways. This requires deliberateness in one’s actions. Taking a praxis approach to education and the practices which comprise it means understanding one’s own individual praxis. In action research we see this as re-professionalising teaching and teacher learning, since it moves beyond the epistemological and technical dimensions of the work of the teacher to account for the practical wisdom and moral judgements required to act in the moment (Edwards-Groves, 2008). Change and improvement in professional practice requires the assent and commitment of the individual practitioners in local sites (Kemmis et al., 2014); colloquially there needs ‘buy in and focus’ from those involved there in the place where the work is taking place. This is a long-established condition for change in the Nordic traditions of study circles and research circles, for instance (Rönnerman & Salo, 2012). From the beginning of the twentieth century people in adult education in Nordic countries formed study circles as a mechanism for acting on people’s commitment for improving workplace conditions and knowledge to act as a democratic citizen in the society. In Sweden in the 1960/70s the commitment for development led to

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managers establishing research circles in industry (in partnership with universities). From this, action research was developed in the field of work science with a strong commitment for action by practitioners systematically interrogating their own practices and capacities as workers. The commitment to achieve individual practitioner development and workplace learning, at the same time create democratic processes for collective knowledge building, anchors the Nordic tradition of adult education. The commitment to creating workplace conditions for research-informed development led to the emergence of action research (Holmer, 1993), that in the 1990s, was extended to education (Holmstrand & Härnsten, 2003; Rönnerman, 2005). Re-capturing a ‘praxis’ orientation in educational practice and its development also proposed by Edwards-Groves and Grootenboer (2015) who argued that “the notion of ‘praxis’ and its connections to practice and practical action in sites should be considered as a foundation stone for thinking about the formation, enactment and sustainability of quality educational practices in schools” (p. 15). A praxis approach stands as a critical approach that also exposes a meta-awareness of the kinds of differentiated dispositions, judgments and actions enacted in educational circumstances, which as Kemmis et al. (2014) suggest can be evaluated only in the light of their consequences (this is, in terms of how things actually turn out). Such a view insists that education is more than knowledge and technique; it is critical (of itself) and deliberatively educational in the sayings, doings and relatings it produces and reproduces (Kemmis & Edwards-Groves, 2018). A praxis orientation necessarily locates education as a human, and therefore social endeavour, with enduring moral, political and historical dimensions and consequences in its production and reproduction. Critical educational praxis is an idea that reaches back in history to the times of classic Greek philosophers such as Aristotle, and to modernity through the ideas of Marx and Engels (1845), Dewey (1897, 1916), and Freire (1985). A neoAristotelian perspective, for example, locates praxis within an educational paradigm formed and differentiated by knowledges and dispositions which give rise to different kinds of actions, judgements and ethics. These form the theoretical, technical, critical and practical perspectives of teaching which simultaneously shape the language, activity and relationships in practices. This conceptualisation of praxis, grounded in the Aristotelian tradition, operates from a premise that allowing practitioners to interrogate and transcend the limitations of their inherited traditions to “develop their own way of seeing and understanding the world” (Freire, 1985, p. 31) enables the design of morally appropriate and geopolitically relevant educational practices. Consistent with post-Marxian understandings of praxis as ‘history-making action’, this view highlights action cognisant of moral, social and political consequences— good or bad—for those involved in and affected by it. Any change agenda in schools and/or school systems requires an underlying commitment to a “clear and defensible moral purpose” for the education that happens (Hargreaves et al., 2007, p. 10). Action research engenders a strong defensible praxisorientation, stemming from a commitment to doing education (for individuals and the collectives) in a world often reduced to complying to the constraints of performativity that currently resides in schooling. Commitments by individuals to respond

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to the local conditions form a strong foundation for collective professional development (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 158). Change in local sites must deal flexibly and responsively to the practice architectures that exist in sites “in order to maintain their commitment to the democratising and collective intent that underpinned their humanitarian principles and values” (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 156).

Communication—A Cornerstone for Participation and Intersubjective Meaning Making Communication is the centrepiece of the human experience. Communicating and interacting with others is a central part of locally enacted sociality that comes to life as people encounter one another through their interactions in practices of one kind or another. In professional life, communication (and the capacity to do so) is given shape by arrangements, or practice architectures, such as reflection groups, deliberative dialogues, coaching conversations, mentoring conversations or staff meetings. These communicative formations rely on the commitment for changing what happens in particular contexts and particular times, and have, for many decades, formed a central dimension of action research and professional learning. These approaches reflect a demonstrated commitment to communication, building upon Dewey’s advocacy for democratic ways of working (1916) whereby sociality is considered a pivotal practice in educational work. Alongside Dewey’s dialogic principles are communicative practices (such as study circles, research circles and dialogue conferences) that can be traced back to the continental traditions of folk enlightenment and bildung. Emanating from these traditions is an alignment to the key idea that dialogue is instrumental for learning, and to the critical work on communicative space and communicative action developed by theorist Habermas (1987). Communicative space refers to moments of deliberate interaction and communication whereby people come together in practices as interlocutors in dialogue with one another (in personal, social or professional experiences of the human lifeworld) (Habermas, 1987). A communicative space is also an intersubjective space whereby participants (as hearers and speakers) orient to one another in three realms, the: – semantic realm, as they strive to share meanings through language, create shared discourses and mutual understandings about their actions, reflections on actions and changes to practices; – realm of physical space-time, as they strive to make sense of the physical set ups, arrangements and activities they encounter in the space that require particular resources or material objects in their work and activities; and, – social and political realm, as they strive to make sense of their encounters with each other as they take on and experience different kinds of roles and relationships and so power, solidarity and agency (Kemmis et al., 2014).

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These three realms are found in a three-dimensional composition of intersubjective space that can be analytically separate but always empirically entwined (Kemmis, Wilkinson, & Edwards-Groves, 2017). In practice, these realms underly the formation of what Habermas describes as public spaces “whereby persons acting communicatively encounter each other in a situation they, at the same time, constitute with their cooperatively negotiated interpretations” (Habermas, 1996, p. 360). In this, dialogue partners share and simultaneously create intersubjective spaces forming “a linguistically constituted public space” (Habermas, 1996, p. 361). Moreover, this refers to not only about what is said aloud, but also connects to how one (i.e. one’s ideas, opinions or knowledge) is understood or heard (Edwards-Groves & Davidson, 2017). According to the theory of practice architectures (Kemmis et al., 2014), the notion of the public space connects to communicability and how sayings are understood (by hearers) and made comprehensible as persons, in their interactions, engage with one another relationally. As recognised by Groundwater-Smith and colleagues (2013, p. 148), communication in action research is a cornerstone which relates to intersubjective meaning making and mutually comprehensibility enacted in practices. Genuine communicative spaces require practice architectures (or culturaldiscursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements) that form the preconditions necessary for effective, democratic and respectful relationships to emerge. For example, democratic dialogues (Gustavsen, 2001), deliberative conversations (Englund, 2000), collaborative analytic dialogues (Edwards-Groves, 2003), critical transformative dialogues (Edwards-Groves, 2013), research circles (Rönnerman & Olin, 2014; Rönnerman & Salo, 2012) or dialogue conferences (Gustavsen, 2008; Lund & Furu, 2014) are examples of the kinds of communicative spaces where all voices are valued and mutually recognized, all contributions are considered and shared, and all opinions are explored, reflected upon and negotiated. This relates to how dialogues, when enacted democratically, form a space for mutual understandings between hearers and speakers, and equally so for writers and readers. Although this section is dominated by dialogue as key to the essential cornerstone of communication in action research, we cannot neglect McKernan’s point (1991) that communication in action research also involves the written word. According to him, ‘action researchers are writers too. They must communicate the life of the project/s and those who live and breathe them’ (cited in Christensen & Atweh, 1998, p. 329). As identified further by Christensen and Atweh (1998, p. 329), Cloake and Noad (1991) described the process of writing about action research is itself as communicative action in the sense that it too involves planning, acting, observing, reflection and replanning. Moreover, they suggest: Action research and the writing process are interdependent and iterative, and can be compared to cogs in a machine, in the way they interact to drive the machine along. If we view the action research process as a spiral of planning, acting, observing, reflecting and reviewing, the process of analysis and writing can be seen as cogs driving the action research up the spiral to its conclusion. (Cloake & Noad, 1991, p. 1)

Communication in oral, written or even in multimodal virtual spaces is not an abstract concept; these are representational practices (of speaking and listening, of

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writing and reading) that in everyday social life make possible a range of democratic ways of working that enable teachers to learn from and with one another (Muijs & Harris, 2003).

Communicating Democratically Englund (2000) develops Dewey’s notion of democratic ways of working in his work describing deliberative conversations. Englund summarises three characteristics of a deliberative conversations as interactive spaces where (a) different views are put against one another and different arguments are provided space, (b) there is an implication that there will be tolerance and respect for the other by learning to listen to the other’s arguments or points of view, and (c) striving for an agreement or at least temporary joint understandings (Englund, 2000, p. 6, authors translation). Characterising dialogues in action research directly connect to the ideas put by Kemmis et al. (2014), who state that in educational action research, dialogue partners engage in communicative action when they make a conscious and deliberate effort to reach (a) intersubjective agreement about the ideas and language they use among participants as a basis for (b) mutual understanding of one another’s points of view in order to reach (c) unforced consensus about what to do in their particular situation. (p. 35)

Participating in democratic dialogues with peers about issues of mutual concern has long been argued to have a powerful role in action research for renewing professional practice and advancing its sustainability and development (Carr & Kemmis, 1986; Edwards-Groves, 2008; Somekh, 2006). As a critical dimension of action research, meeting together in interactions through dialogic encounters provides a site based intersubjective forum whereby participating teachers have the opportunity to critique practices as a form of collective self-reflective enquiry (Carr & Kemmis, 1986). These intersubjective spaces are interactional spaces shaped in and through language (sayings in semantic space), through activities (doings in physical space-time) and through particular kinds of relationships (relatings in social space) (Kemmis et al., 2014). These intersubjective spaces also become a transformational space shaped in and through the dialogues that unfold in-the-moment of action and interaction (Edwards-Groves, 2013). For participants, openly communicating in intersubjective spaces generate opportunities for collaborative transformative dialogues which form an ongoing, productive, self-extending space for transformation (Edwards-Groves, 2013). According to her research, transformation is made possible by participants engaging in four interconnected and iterative phases of dialogue: 1. reflective self-dialogues—participants engage in self-observation, interrogation and critique of their lessons (reflection on transcripts, field notes or videos of teaching), 2. collaborative analytic dialogues—participants engage in critical and analytic discussions of reflections (written notes, and/or transcripts and/or videos) with

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others for the purpose of reconceptualising teaching as interactive practice and to frame or reframe a focused change agenda, 3. transformative dialogue and action—participants practise new practices over time, and enact critical engagement with new discourses with colleagues about their changes, 4. formative and reflexive dialogues—participants re-engage in critical selfreflection, and participate in ongoing collaborative analytic dialogues with supportive colleagues (Edwards-Groves, 2013, p. 6). As suggested by Edwards-Groves (2013) engaging in collaborative transformative dialogues is a resolutely empirical approach for action research that enables teachers to understand, reconceptualise and transform their practices. Through participating in such formative dialogues, professionals enter a democratic space that values difference. Participating in democratic conversations (or dialogues) is considered a form of learning the “best for the creation of knowledge” (Säljö, 2015, p. 74). These are also a forum for learning that provides a safe and open space for critique, argument and social exchanges between people with different ideals, perspectives and backgrounds; principles reminiscent of the continental idea(l)s of action research, collective action and collaboration.

Collaboration—A Cornerstone for Collective Action Collaboration and collaborative learning have long been regarded as a self-improving and democratic way of working in education, particularly with respect to teacher’s professional development (Gordon, 2008; Kemmis et al., 2014; Nehring & Fitzsimmons, 2011; Stoll, Bolam, McMahon, Wallace, & Thomas, 2006). It is possible when interpersonal communication is open, fair and equitable. Collaborative endeavours form a dimension of social life fundamental for democratic ways of working. As an education practice collaboration for the societal good is steeped in traditional ways of learning that rests on the recognition of the inherent value of workers coming together to learn together about their professional work. It connects to bildung; that is, a ‘free’ process of gaining general knowledge and of (folk) enlightenment that underlines the importance of interaction, discussion and dialogue in knowledge creation. As such, collaborating within groups is a dynamic and democratic way to promote and develop participants’ knowledge and experiences (Larsson & Nordvall, 2010). As suggested by Dewey, democratic ways of working require educational relationships that should be the model of all human relationships; and so, the point of all educational endeavours should be to protect areas of life that are functionally dependent on sociality, to preserve them from falling prey to the systemic imperatives of economic and administrative subsystems growing with dynamics of their own in a way which renders them dysfunctional. (Habermas, 1987, p. 372)

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Action research, by its nature, seeks to preserve spaces for collaborative ways of working. It is a social practice where its epistemological stance stems from the view that knowledge is created together with others in dialogues that produce spaces for critical collaborative thinking. For instance, in Sweden (like other Nordic countries such as Norway), action research was developed in the field of work science with a strong emphasis on understanding practices in collaborative ways. To reach these deeper insights and understandings of one’s practice different forms of collaboration was set up and experiences could be shared with others in conversations (Gustavsen, 2001; Rönnerman & Salo, 2014; Rönnerman, Furu, & Salo, 2008). Later these forms were transformed and used for action research within education where collaborative forms were emphasised and collaboration in partnerships between schools and universities were developed (Rönnerman & Salo, 2014; Rönnerman et al., 2008). About education, Dewey, for instance, argued that knowledge and experience develop through activities and interactions with the world and other people. For education to reflect a democratic way of working Dewey suggests that contributions can be made to an individual’s own community when he or she collaborates with others; it should mean something of key importance and value to their ‘collective’ lives. In 2005, Kemmis and McTaggart proposed participatory action research to be a practice that builds collaboration when practitioners are engaged in a mutual inquiry of genuine interest. Their collaborative partnerships, in time, open up communicative spaces for action (drawing on Habermas’s theoretical position described earlier) where “intersubjective agreement, mutual understanding of a situation, unforced consensus about what to do” (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005, p. 296) is possible. In doing so “it creates a model for a rational and democratic social order. The practice of collaboration in educational action research envisages a social order characterized by rational communication, just and democratic decision making, and fulfilling work” (Carr & Kemmis, 1986, p. 2000). From this, collective action is not only possible, but probable, since practitioners have opportunities to build their positions, arguments and knowledge with one another (Englund, 2000). Collaboration, and the collective action that follows, is made possible when practices and practice architectures enable communication; these cornerstones are mutually informing. As stated by Weeks and Scott (1993): That collaboration—an initial coming together in a sense of inquiry—is essential to the development of the critical friendships, the extra-contextual views and the collective sense of power and autonomy essential to truly critical analysis and outcome. Collaborative participant discourse generates a climate of sceptical, subjective inquiry, of professional interpretative judgment, of creative and proactive practice. In so doing, it initiates a problematic and dynamic interplay of the prepositional and the procedural, of theory to practice and practice to theory. (p. 7)

Collective action emerges from collaborative practices where a process of critical inquiry and communication “rich in reflective and critical analysis, rich in data with outcomes relevant to specific conditions and interactions” (Scott & Weeks, 1996, p. 244). Relationships, formed through collaboration, result in a collective sense of responsibility, power, solidarity, agency, legitimacy and professional resilience.

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These form distinctive social-political arrangements that mutually and simultaneously stabilise and strengthen the professional learning platform for participants to act collaboratively as they engage in research to improve their practices. Collaboration in action research is of a kind that requires practices and practice architectures that enable the recurrent examination of practices (the type that change demands). By creating communicative spaces that provide a ‘safe’ place for participants to share in the development of understandings and practices and strengthen possibilities for collective action, shared decision making, mutual comprehensibility, authenticity, truthfulness as well as moral rightness. This takes time and should not be swept into the mire of our fast-paced world.

Criticality—A Cornerstone for Critical Inquiry and Activism We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience. John Dewey (1933)

Critical inquiry and critical reflection are given primacy in contemporary professional learning. These two dimensions of professional development work form cornerstones for critique and action, and open the way for activism in education. Dewey (1933) captures this eloquently in the above quote that suggests that it is not simply the action or experience alone that provides the foundation for learning, but that it is the reflection on those actions and experiences that act as shaping practices for informing future actions. For instance, research circles emerged in Sweden in the 1960–70s as a practice aimed to develop deeper understanding about the political conditions affecting the working lives of people and what was happening in the industrial sector. These traditions are deeply entrenched in the need for the critical examination of conditions that shape practices, and have been taken up for progressing professional thinking and practical action in critical reflective practitioner research (e.g., Schön, 1983). Carr and Kemmis in their seminal work, “Becoming Critical” (1986) invoked criticality as necessary for educational thought and development. They press for criticality in education development as a virtue, and describe the utility of action research as a mechanism for, but not a research method (per se) transformation. Criticality in a practitioners’ consciousness provokes individuals to: first, develop their practices in critically informed ways; second, understand their own practices as critical pedagogical praxis; and third, understand, in critical ways, the particularity of the conditions (circumstances and sites) in which they practice (Kemmis et al., 2014). Criticality among practitioners requires reflection and inquiry underpinned by the, conscious consideration of the ethical implications and consequences of teaching practice, with self-reflection, deep examination of personal beliefs, and assumptions about human potential and learning. (Larrivee, 2000, p. 293)

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Intrinsically, reflective practices (Porter & Brophy, 1988) if they are critical, systematic and disciplined, become mediating practices that sharpen an individual’s understanding and development of their teaching practices in critical, praxis-oriented ways (Edwards-Groves, 2008). Kemmis and McTaggart (1988) connect these characterising dimensions of professional critique and activism to action research; to which they state is: a form of collective self-reflective inquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own social or educational practices, as well as their understanding of these practices and the situations in which these practices are carried out. (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988, p. 5)

From this viewpoint, collective self-reflective inquiry and the practice architectures that enable it, aligns with Freire’s (1970, p. 72) thinking about educational ideals for communitarian and activist ways of working. From our position, these ways of working are necessary with the current neo-liberal push for accountability, standardisation and performativity that pervade the work of teachers, and those in education more broadly, which at its core is a danger to democratic ways of working in education. These are stands taken up in the contemporary notions of ‘the extended professional’ (Stenhouse, 1975) and ‘the activist teaching profession’ (Sachs, 2004). Thus, to be critical, people in practices have the power, agency and capacity to act in, act on, and act for their profession. These views stand up for, and indeed solidify, teacher autonomy and legitimate professional responsibility for the kind of practical decision making required for responding to and being relevant in particular sites and situations. This, we argue, is critical educational praxis. For us, these views capture what epitomises ‘true’ professional action; one where teachers would never simply be actors in practices who did no more than follow a script, but that have the capacity (and courage) for responding to the circumstances and needs of those in the sites in which they work. Extended professionals or activist teachers are simply not operatives of the system governed by a particular policy push; but are agentic individuals who by contrast, challenge the status quo in the quest to do what is right in their situation. It is a site-based praxis-oriented yet critical response to educational issues and concerns, where inquiry can lead to critique, activism and even advocacy, if one so chooses. Such a stance yields the kind of democratic action where it is possible (and even obliged) to continually challenge one’s own and another’s practices and ideas. This stance promotes the kind of criticality that leads one towards both “a functional rationality (knowing how to do), as well as substantive rationality (knowing why and for what purpose)” (Groundwater-Smith et al., 2013, p. 80) given the nature of the circumstances at the time. But we also contend that it also leads to a critical rationality (knowing that one should respond or act). This stems from the realisation that teachers and students in classrooms, and teachers working together in their professional development work, encounter one another in practices in the real world, not just imagined worlds (Dewey, 1933; Stenhouse, 1975). In this real world, practices, sites and circumstances are not seamless or without the tensions, difficulties and challenges that arise from real everyday social and political life. For us, this calls

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for the kind of a critical rationality in practice and practice-based research that was foregrounded in 1986 by Carr and Kemmis: Critical educational research, including collaborative action research, views education as an ideologically-formed historical process. Its form of reasoning is both practical and critical; it is shaped by an emancipatory interest in transforming education to achieve rationality, justice and access to an interesting and satisfying life for all. It counters the liberal faith in wise judgment with ideology-critique aimed at exposing the ideological restraints on the thinking of practitioners and policy-makers, and at exposing the interests which are preserved by the structure of institutionalized education. Its view of policy is critical, since its treats policy as the expression of ideology and the interests of dominant groups, and its view of reform is emancipatory. It envisages no alliance between researchers and practitioners or policy-makers, except as may be necessary to initiate a process of critical and self-critical reflection in democratic communities of researcher-practitioners. (1986, p. 221)

Even though Dewey did not speak in the terms of bildung, he specifically talks about learning emerging from facing problems, issues or the unknown; he stated that “we only think when we are confronted with a problem” (cited from Säljö, 2015, p. 76, authors translation). In other words, learning is about considering, navigating, negotiating these new or troublesome situations by struggling with the problem or new experiences, then emerging on the other side with a solution, an understanding or proficiency. For Dewey, learning through an inquiry stance is about having to (i) engage with the problem in critical ways that show an active concern with the problem, and (ii) work systematic and transform the problem to something we understand and master. By this, he suggests, that our experiences are enriched. His view lays the ground for developing processes for educational inquiry that includes accommodating multiple pathways for going forward. In changing times, critical educational inquiry has manifested itself in a range of cycles or spirals of inquiry (for instance) which on the world stage have become hallmarks, or even blueprints, for educational change and development. These models (or frameworks as they are sometimes described) purport coherence around particular idea(l)s that offer education systems systematic approaches that yield the kind of educational change it desires (or demands). In many ways, the dimensions (or phases or steps) advocated in these processes for change can and should not be argued with; in fact, these generally promote the kinds of contextuality, commitment, communication, collaboration, criticality, collegiality and community we have presented as cornerstones in this chapter. One way to capture this trend, however, is by returning back to Kurt Lewin’s (1890–1947) early work, renowned for its contribution to social psychology and organisation theory. Lewin’s ideas, a German American psychologist, set in motion ways to conceptualise or frame the staged dimensions of critical and participatory development; presented here. 1. Conceive the problem or issue. 2. Label and/or understand the problem by trying to ‘nail’ what is problematic in the situation; what is the ‘right’ question to ask? 3. Deal with the problem by looking at connection between what you see and what can be imagined about the problem. From these hypotheses, ‘professional hunches or judgements’ can be formulated.

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4. Test solutions. If it does not work, formulate new hypotheses (ideas) from where you are situated. 5. Find a solution. Use multiple pathways or alternatives to help to reach a logical and reasoned solution. 6. Continue experiences focusing on the same problem that leads to established knowledge and an embodied action (or habit) that will arise in dealing with similar challenges (adapted from Säljö, 2015, p. 76, authors translation). Although, Lewin’s six steps of inquiry related to real life experiments, these are easily recognisable in and for action research if we consider ways action researchers respond (often in cycles of action and response) to evidence about their situation and practices in proactive and deliberate ways. In his experiment work, Lewin gathered together all partners involved in a situation to plan, conduct the research and evaluate results. In this way the person to whom it mattered was part of the whole process from the planning stages and could give voice to evaluating how a particular action occurred and how to revise it so that development was possible. In this way, the researchers participated as learners since they were in a position to learn from practitioners about how a certain action makes sense in practice. However, it must be noted that there also is a danger that the various models of inquiry take on a life of their own (so to speak), where individuals or collectives cast their professional learning as “doing inquiry” or “being a learning community” or “doing collaborative learning” in ways that render inquiry as instrumentalist. These models have often been presented as images so that practitioners can visualise the process of practical action (as a circle, cycle or spiral) as one that mirrors the more familiar teaching and learning cycle (planning, acting, implementing, observing, assessing, reflecting and evaluating, replanning etc.). There is a risk that the images become the model for ‘doing’ things in a more technical way that neglect the sitebased concerns raised earlier, and ultimately do not create deeper understanding or a more critical view argued for by Carr and Kemmis (1986, 2005).

Collegiality—A Cornerstone for Professional Sustainability Collegiality and genuine collegial learning can only come from deep engagement with critical ideas with others (Smeets & Ponte, 2009). From their perspective, criticality, collaboration and communication enable collegiality to develop as an evolutionary process. This is to say that being a colleague or being collegial in ways that enable a genuine learning-together can only be determined and experienced in practices, it is not an instrumental fragmented dimension describing the fact that people are working together. Furthermore, ideas about collegiality and collegial learning form a cornerstone for professional learning and action research that have emerged over time through practices associated with professions like teaching. Practices that enable collegiality have long been associated with action research, particularly in continental traditions that we have described elsewhere (see also Ponte

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& Rönnerman, 2009; Rönnerman & Salo, 2014; Rönnerman et al., 2008), notions that Dewey first emphasised early in the twentieth century. Collegial learning emerges in Dewey’s advocacy for the school as a democratic organisation where he considered it essential not just teach about democracy but let the work be conducted in democratic ways; that is, through communicating and collaborating agentically with others, striving for consensus by considering options from within the groups. In Dewey’s proposal, teachers and students (collectively) are called to review the validity of their subjective knowledge and to test their assumptions through discussions and analysis through collaborating in a shared communicative space. In the light of earlier thinkers, genuine collegial learning (Bryk & Schneider, 2003; Hayes, Mills, & Christie, 2003; Malloy, 1998) as a by-product of working collegially and collaboratively with others (see the extensive body of work by Hargreaves and Fullan) can be related to democratic dialogues, professional learning conversations and inquiry learning. In these activities proponents consider the importance of acknowledging both the hearers and speakers when arguing for a specific viewpoint, for instance. This position asserts that in practices that build collegial learning, it is most important not merely to agree but to make good arguments (for or against) to reach, what Kemmis and McTaggart (1988) describe as, “unforced consensus”. This is critical education. Unlike the traditions that shape the kind of collegial work that underpin a democratic way of working as it is understood in continental Europe (for instance), much of today’s discourse about professional learning, often reduces action research to be understood as its component parts. For instance, action research, or indeed critical participatory action research, is often discussed in terms of hybridised versions or clichéd accounts of action research that segment the component practices—like research circles, or regular professional learning conversations, or school-based implementation of published programs or policy agendas are taken to be ‘action research’. Sometimes traditional practices (like collaborating with others in programs of professional learning) are therefore often ‘dressed up as something new’ and reported globally as ‘best practice’. Collaboration forms a condition for collegiality. Collaborating with peers through participating in regular and focused dialogues about issues of mutual concern has long been argued to have a powerful role in renewing professional practice and advancing its sustainability and development (Carr & Kemmis, 1986; Edwards-Groves, 2008; Groundwater-Smith et al., 2013; Somekh, 2006). We also argue that collaboration, hangs together with commitment and communication to form collegial relationships that, in time, creates the possibilities for sustainable development in particular contexts (Blewett, 2006). That is to say, we argue in fact, that sustainability in the impact and influence of professional learning that emerges through collaborating with others in action research form the interconnected cornerstones (commitment, communication and criticality) that reciprocally form the practice architectures that make it possible. It is when practitioners are addressing issues about their site in genuine ways that then, and only then, can collegiality emerge as the sayings, doings and relatings of new practices are sustained—beyond the life of the project. This is a critical stance that considers the depth, length, breadth and relational dimensions of educational development (Rönnerman, 2013, p. 76) and afford long term sustainable change.

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Community—A Cornerstone for Democratic Ways of Working Spaces for professional learning and educational action research can only legitimately be described as a community when communication, collaboration, critical reflection and collegiality in response to site-based contexts or conditions are present. These cornerstones create practice architectures (or cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements) that make being a community possible. A community, for us, forms over time; it is a process of endless becoming (Edwards-Groves, 2013), and so it realistically does not happen instantaneously (like simply following a script, a model or a cycle). It requires practices and practice architectures that enable it to “become” what it ascribes to be in practice. We argue that communities are a process of becoming, and as Edwards-Groves (2013) showed participating in a group or community of professionals learning together is a dynamic intersubjective ever-evolving practice that “re-form(s) and renew(s) itself and its particular social arrangements in a continual process of endless becoming” (p. 24). Dewey considered the classroom to be one such space where teachers and students, in community with one another, participate in a democratic way of life; and that students learn how to participate in such a democracy by being and participating in one. The same is true for teachers in relation to their professional learning; participation as a professional group of learners (Astuto et al., 1993) enables teachers to learn democratic way of working. And, as we will show in later chapters, teachers, in community with others, learn to lead through participation in professional learning practices. Teachers working and learning together, sometimes in community spaces commonly or even colloquially described as ‘communities of practice’ (CoP) or ‘professional learning communities’ (PLC) ‘teacher learning communities’ (TLC),4 is an idea not restricted to contemporary times (see the work on communities and societies by German sociologist Tönnies, 1887). As described by Bolam et al. (2005), using the term ‘community’ represents a way of working that espouses democratic principles in its individual and collective capacity to promote and sustain the learning of all professionals in the school community with the collective purpose of enhancing pupil learning. A professional learning community is an inclusive group of people, motivated by a shared learning vision, who support and work with each other, finding ways, inside and outside their immediate community, to enquire on their practice and together learn new and better approaches that will enhance all pupils’ learning. (p. 1)

Here, collegial learning is considered a pivotal feature for establishing and sustaining professional communities where groups of teachers or other professionals come together to work on shared issues through professional projects of one kind or

4 These

concepts are well described in scholarly work by for example Bryk and Schneider (2003), Hord (1997), Lave and Wenger (1991), Lingard et al. (2003), Malloy (1998), Nehring and Fitzsimmons (2011), Stoll et al. (2006) and Wenger (1998).

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another. Collegiality in communities of people that work together has tight connections to a situated, site ontological view of professional learning, whereby practitioners learn in practices in collaboration with others (Lave, 2019). Thus, learning is not simply transferred from one entity to another but situated in and through practices. A community of practice or professional learning community is said to be many things to education and education development. These social entities are characterised by people coming together to participate in practices that strive for conditions that make a community, or being in one, possible. The assemblage of community-forming conditions are contextuality, communication, collaboration, criticality and collegiality that we argue are the cornerstones that constitute professional learning through action research. As Bolam et al. (2005) suggest, professional learning communities are established through coproduced communicative practices that promote and demonstrate: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Shared values and vision Collective responsibility for pupils’ learning Collaboration focused on learning Group as well as individual professional learning Reflective professional enquiry Openness, networks and partnerships Inclusive membership Mutual trust, respect and support (p. 2).

Similarly, in other literature, professional communities of practices are reported to “extol and establish a shared vision for professional learning, a shared responsibility, a guiding ethic of inquiry, the collective examination of teaching practices and related data, a reliance on dialogue, regular opportunities for collaboration, a commitment to learning excellence for all students and a primary focus on teaching and learning” (Nehring & Fitzsimmons, 2011, p. 515). These features characterise the conditions that forge a path for community and communitarian ways of participating, and is a continual focus of educational research worldwide. For instance, in a recent study in Sweden, Sülau (2019, p. 43–46) identifies six factors for successful professional learning communities, namely purpose and focus, relationships, collaboration, enquiry, leadership, and building capacity and support. These factors align with other research (presented above), but here we are specifically interested in leadership and capacity building in terms of trust. In contemporary literature, professional learning is often explained by drawing together combinations of the concepts of collegial, collaborative, collective and communities. However, in a Swedish study by Granberg and Ohlsson (2016), the separation of the terms collegial, collaborative and collective by their different meanings is necessary. For example, they argue that collective and collaborative learning concerns individuals working together to develop mutual knowledge, while collegial learning relates to a particular policy-driven, endorsed or designated method to achieve specific theories or teaching methods to be used individually classrooms. In the Swedish educational discourse, for instance, the concept collegial learning was introduced by the Swedish National Agency of Education to be used for broad

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national school development programs. The concept is used both as an aim and as a strategy. As an aim it seeks to achieve a different culture of learning in schools where teachers collaborate, and as a strategy to be used in development programs implementing a specific model to promote teacher learning. These programs concern different aspects of educational work, for instance enhancing numeracy and literacy development. The structure is quite regulated, and incorporates four steps: (a) individual preparation (reading texts), (b) collegial learning (discussing content with colleagues and planning a lesson/activity), (c) lesson activity (performing the planned lesson/activity in the classroom), and (d) collegial follow-up (discussing and reflecting on the performed lesson/activity) (Sülau, 2019, p. 106). The program implementation involves gathering teachers in groups facilitated by a colleague, who had previously participated in a short training session (vis-à-vis a train-the trainer model) provided by the National Agency of Education on how to promote collegial learning (Skolverket, 2020). Community, collegiality and communitarian ways of participating: In the current literature increased visibility is given to a constellation of communicative practices that describe how communities of practice or professional learning communities happen in and through action research. These communities of professional practice are defined by and cohere around a shared goal of learning by practitioners participating in communicative practices that may include, but restricted to, team learning, reflection groups, deliberative dialogues, professional dialogues, coaching conversations, mentoring conversations, professional learning conversations, staff meetings, dialogue circles, research circles, study circles, collegial conversations, inquiry cycles, spirals of learning, and/or action learning. Central to these ideas, or derivatives thereof, is participation (Kemmis et al., 2014), collective learning (Smeets & Ponte, 2009) and collaboration (Gordon, 2008; Kemmis et al., 2014; Nehring & Fitzsimmons, 2011; Stoll et al., 2006) within a professional community of learners (Astuto et al., 1993) with shared responsibilities, aspirations and goals (Bolam et al., 2005). These practices are critical for developing community and for establishing communitarian ways of working, but alone do not constitute action research. Therefore, it is important to caution that these communicative practices, which pervade the contemporary action research literature, are considered discerningly, strategically and deliberately so that the action research that shapes professional learning happens in systematic ways in accordance to the underlying principles of critical participatory action research. For us, driving change can be without substance unless it is built on strong democratic principles and a genuine focus on the critical functionality that reaches outside oneself to address questions and issues concerning practice. Teacher’s beliefs, and so practices, are “self-generating, and often unchallenged. Unless teachers develop the practice of critical reflection, they stay trapped in unexamined judgments, interpretations, assumptions, and expectations” (Larrivee, 2000, p. 293). Lauvås and Handal (2001) recognise the role of one’s colleagues in this challenge, by suggesting that

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teachers, as learners, also become ‘critical friends’ for one another in their professional learning endeavours. They extend this position by positing that high-level critique forms conditions for collegiality and vice versa.

In Summary: Seven Cornerstones of Action Research The cornerstones, described above, form an interconnected platform for considering the significance of the kind of in-practice individual and collective criticality that seeks out, challenges and critiques research and evidence through participatory approaches that empower teachers to act in, act on, and act for their profession (as we suggested earlier). 1. Contextuality—a cornerstone for site based education development 2. Commitment—a cornerstone for individual and collective change 3. Communication—a cornerstone for participation and intersubjective meaning making 4. Collaboration—a cornerstone for collective action 5. Criticality—a cornerstone for critical inquiry and activism 6. Collegiality—a cornerstone for sustainability 7. Community—a cornerstone for democratic ways of working. Added to this, each cornerstone has its own historical traditions, and constituted by its own particular practices, that have shaped their existence over continents and through time. For instance, as a sense of community can only be developed if those persons present genuinely are committed to collaborate or communicate with one another over time; are responsive to particular contexts; and being openly critical rest on one’s experiences of collegiality, collaboration and communication with others. These are ideas that connect to folk enlightenment. Each cornerstone is a practice architecture (or shaping condition) for the other; that is, each is ‘integral’ to and forms an indispensable intrinsically connected part of the other (see Fig. 2.1). Action research is not the same as collaboration, nor is it the same as for instance professional or collegial learning, critical reflection or teacher inquiry. Rather, we suggest, action research is formed by a constellation of integrated and interrelated practices derived from in a broad history of distinct education traditions. We stress that it is through participating in contextually relevant practices that are open for groups of people, with a shared commitment to learning, communicating, reflecting and collaborating with each other as colleagues that communities of practices actually become collegial and critical.

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Commitment

Collegiality

Communication

Contextuality

Criticality

Collaboration

Fig. 2.1 Seven interrelated cornerstones for action research

Reclaiming the Space for Action Research: Site Based Education Development for Learning and Leading Across this chapter we have picked up den röda tråden running through what we describe as the cornerstones of action research. These cornerstones connect contemporary practices of professional learning and action research to some of the historical ideas from which they have emerged. We consider each of the cornerstones—contextuality, commitment, communication, collaboration, criticality, collegiality and community—to be practice architectures for the practices of action research and professional learning. They are a guide, not a blueprint (to borrow from Stenhouse, 1975) that reframe current representations of action research that not only accord strongly with Deweyan democratic principles, but (at the same time) form virtues for education and its development in practice. To begin the chapter, we looked back in history to establish a coherent picture of the principles and particular kinds of nuanced practices that have underpinned the development and enactment of contemporary professional learning practices as they are experienced in action research. The focus on past traditions sets straight the context for the emergence of some of today’s ‘innovative’ approaches to professional learning—approaches often presented under the guise of action research but appear as isolated or hybridised practice fragments, often wrought by uncritical acceptance, where context and democratic ways of working are neglected or ignored.

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For example, it seems that some action research practices (such as dialogue circles, collaborative conversations or collegial learning groups) have been appropriated by programs of professional learning (perhaps as a commodifying or marketing strategy) have popularised them in ways that only remnants of action research are visible. These practices are taken-for-granted in action research but today often appear as independent professional learning strategies that, in essence, circulate incessantly as latest innovations oft sloganised and so popularised in the educational media. But unquestioningly and uncritically adopting these pursuits, the foundational and formative understandings about the traditional, and so democratic, ways of working are sometimes lost. As Rönnerman and Salo (2014) argued it is easy to get lost in practice when decontextualized appropriations make it difficult to get one’s hands on what the innovations actually mean for one’s own practice. Some innovations, masquerading as action research, reinvent practices as flavour of the month in ways that the rhetoric around their implementation reduces their relevance to clichés. We want to reclaim the essence of democracy in action research as a space for site based education development that creates conditions for learning and leading in education. In many ways the ideas captured in this chapter are not new. Where we differ, or perhaps extend understandings about action research, is that these cornerstones are intrinsically related to one another in practice; each forming shaping conditions (practice architectures) or perhaps pre-conditions for the other. Recharacterising the dimensions of action research as interconnected cornerstones recognises these as core virtues of action research that both espouse and demonstrate democratic ways of working. Taken together the cornerstones formed the foundation for the particular generative conditions that action research affords its participants, and indeed, how the practices encountered in action research lay grounds for leadership development of the kind experienced and accounted for by the participants in the study reported in this book.

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Chapter 3

Transforming Professional Practices: The Practice Architectures of Generative Leadership

Abstract In this chapter the distinctive conditions for creating what we have described as “generative leadership” are examined. Describing and understanding transformational practices in education—and the conditions that make it possible— has been a significant driver urging decades of work towards finding that characterising kernel that identifies, encapsulates and rationalises sustainable educational change. Indeed, transforming professional practices through action research has a long-standing history of work describing its distinguishing features, its efficacy and its influence. While this literature identifies professional learning as a means of stimulating change in classroom practice and pedagogy, improvement in student learning outcomes, connected to the benefits of teacher’s collective learning, it is rare for it to be empirically attributed to the development of teacher leading. The chapter centres not on ‘leadership’ alone, but rather on the conditions that enabled both a transformation of the self as teacher and a transformation towards the self as leader. Specifically, the practices—and practice architectures—that enable the generative power of leading for leading as provocative of the transformation of professional practices will be explored. This exploration makes visible the ecological in-practice connections between professional learning through action research and leading.

A Voice from the Field As a group of 12 teachers, we were called a collegial group but we were not even colleagues. This only came with coming together each fortnight for our sessions. The collegiality was what made it successful because we puzzled through the challenges together, we learnt more by making sense of the issues and solving the problems together, understanding that we were all challenged in different ways and being honest about it – same path but different tracks if you know what I mean. It was a vulnerable time, but through spending time and doing the hard thinking together our relationships grew. I teamed up with Lena – she became my collegial partner there and then; a connection that was critical for my, our learning. It was a very very different form of professional development for me personally because it was the first time I was committing to something that was ongoing. The other main part of it was that you were actually teaching every day, trying out the different things, working through, reflecting hard and questioning your own practices but at the same time not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It really was having the time to strengthen what you know, © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 C. J. Edwards-Groves and K. Rönnerman, Generative Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4563-8_3

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3 Transforming Professional Practices: The Practice Architectures … to practice, practising to make sense of it all, to get on the same page; talking the talk and walking the walk so to speak. Very challenging to be challenged by the professional development part of it but also by the teaching part of it by putting it into practice; it doesn’t just happen like it says in the books; it’s not that straightforward to be honest about it. But to make it real, make sense, we had to imagine it, see it and do it with the kids in our own classrooms – then the big one to reflect on it. The challenge was always put out by Heather, our facilitator; high expectations but at the same time giving us freedom and confidence that we could do it; taking turns to lead a session here and bring a reading for discussion there. Time in the project made me realise what it takes for real learning and deeply embedded change. It was the coming back time and again, to take stock, check in, critique, evaluate and readjust. And that we were expected to do an awful lot of reading – between session reading, this was central to the development part for us as individuals, to push ourselves as professionals. You didn’t turn up two weeks later and hadn’t done your work. You wouldn’t have been able to participate wholly and honestly in the session. It would have been incredibly embarrassing. So, it was a challenge and a responsibility; so, part of it was being accountable to the group, to the children, to the principal for letting you participate, and to yourself… Deep learning, deep engagement over time means holding yourself accountable at all these levels. I learnt that. I also think for me it was the desire to improve and the commitment to learn, these two things are different but ultimately fed my development. Heather helped me understand a little bit, no, a lot more really, about education - educating students and educating teachers. What worked was that there was something innate about her openness, her desire to support and to challenge, to step into that uncomfortable zone of uncertainty – that’s when we learn. So, say a child was difficult to move on, to get the vocabulary concept, then you did a little bit of focused PD on the concept itself, that was fairly challenging. For Heather she had the knowledge to be able to respond quickly to us, as you would say, “just in time”. Heather, was very dynamic, knowledgeable and extremely charismatic and above all, motivated beyond all belief. So, she regularly came to support us, sometimes demonstrate in our classrooms also to watch you teach on a one to one, as well as you taught for your peers. This taught us to observe closely, to really listen and to provide feedback that is relevant to what was actually going on, you know authentic feedback. Heather had extremely high expectations and you proceeded to perform, to change your teaching, to her expectations. There was no sort of cop out. I never ever thought of giving up or stopping but there were many, many challenges along the way, which is perhaps why it was more successful in some ways. To improve we had to do hard yards, stick at it over the course; to think, read and talk through our confusions, our struggles, problems to make new understandings, I mean develop our understandings, and to practice and trial the new strategies in ways that suitably relate to our students’ needs, and to do all this with support from Heather and each other, this gave us the motivation and the lift we needed to change. And basically, her leadership taught me how to lead other teachers down the track, I learnt what worked, and didn’t, from her. Diana, Middle Leader

Diana’s words open up the central ideas for this chapter about the conditions, or practice architectures, that are generative of professional transformation. In this chapter we propose that under particular conditions, action research (as experienced by teachers such as Diana) extends its reaches to transforming professional practice in two domains: transforming the professional self as a teacher, which in time as Diana suggests, is connected to transforming the professional self as a leader. Her words highlight that “deep learning” comes from “deep engagement over time”. So, according to teachers like Diana, to transform teaching requires both supportive

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and challenging practices that facilitated time, collegiality, commitment, responsivity, close observation, self-belief, personal accountability and perseverance, high expectations and sensemaking. These features of teacher learning were conditions influenced by practice architectures shaped by the leading practices of the facilitator, Heather. In her comments, Diana spoke about Heather’s character (dynamic, knowledgeable, charismatic, motivated), her disposition (innately open, supportive, challenging) and her practices (by orchestrating opportunities for thinking, reading and talking through understandings, practising, trialling new strategies, supporting, demonstrating, observing, responding, readjusting). While the literature overwhelmingly attributes action research, as a site in acting democratically for professional learning, with changing teacher’s teaching practices, stimulating change in classroom practice and pedagogy, with flow on effects for improving student learning outcomes and sometimes connected to the benefits of teacher’s collective learning, it is rare for it to be attributed to the development of teacher leading. This is the focus of this chapter. It is a focus that centres not on ‘leadership’, in and of itself, but rather the generative conditions that enable leading to emerge. In Diana’s words, Heather’s “leadership taught me how to lead”. The subtleties of her words direct us to pick up den röda tråden1 between professional learning through action research and leading.

Picking up den röda tråden Presented in this chapter is the theory of ‘generative leadership’ (Edwards-Groves & Rönnerman, 2013; Rönnerman & Edwards-Groves, 2012) that captures the dialectical relationship between action research and teacher leading in the values of a democratic frame. This relationship is demonstrated in the intersections between education practices, described by Kemmis et al. (2014) as the Education Complex of Practices. In this complex, researching, leading, professional learning, teaching and student learning are interrelated practices that can be understood as creating conditions or practice architectures for the other. Here, how researching (through action research or teacher professional inquiry projects) is connected to teacher learning is related to teaching is connected to teacher leading in an ecology of practices will be presented. The chapter examines the distinctive (internal dispositional and external facilitative) conditions and ecological connectivities for generating transformation. We explore the shaping practices—and the distinctive practice architectures—that enable the transformation of professional practices from researching to professional learning to teaching to leading.

1 We

remind the reader our use of the Swedish words den röda tråden, rather than the English words ‘the red thread’ to represent the metaphor. This reflects our deliberate move to show the interconnections between our ideas, our collaboration, our mutual respect and acceptance of our different languages (of which English is the dominant in the publication of this book).

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To do this the chapter moves from an already established body of literature describing action research and professional learning, as presented in the previous chapter, to rescripted understandings about its reaches. Action research is a diffuse practice. It generally begins with a commitment to self-education (Edwards-Groves, 2008); and exists with a rich promise of site based education development in as Carr and Kemmis (1986) proposed “its aim for changing three things: practitioner’s practices, their understandings of their practices and the conditions in which they practice” (cited in Kemmis, McTaggart, & Nixon, 2014, p. 63). How we understand these promises in ways that facilitate learning, development and change rests with understanding practices—and the conditions or practice architectures that shape them—and “how these are inevitably and incessantly bound together with each other” (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 63), and, as we argue are generative of leading practices in a democratic manner. To understand the practice architectures of educational transformation as experienced by teacher action researchers, the next section opens with our positions on learning and transformation; this is followed by a brief description of the theories of reproduction and translation to foreground the importance of site and temporality in learning, development and change. This section is followed by an account of intersubjectivity and the role of sensemaking (Weick, 1995) in and for learning, development and change. The chapter then considers practice architectures and interspatial media of sensemaking, and concludes with an exploration of the culturaldiscursive, material-economic and social political arrangements for transforming the professional self as a teacher, that in turn are generative of leadership.

Transforming the Professional Self: The Practice Architectures of Learning, Development and Change Education aspires to be transformational. In education, learning, development and change form transformational courses of action that require individuals to be both supported and challenged, as Diana above suggests, to step into that uncomfortable zone of uncertainty. It is in this uncertain, unsettled, unfamiliar or even inharmonious space that learning, development and change is possible—that’s when we learn, as Diana recognises. For Diana, and the other teachers in our study, the vulnerability, accountability and responsibility that comes with the challenge to struggle, to be confused, be pushed and to push themselves (sic) is integral to the learning. As a logic, therefore, learning, and so, transformation is a not seamless harmonious process, but one that requires negotiating uncomfortable spaces in practices that shift individuals towards surety, confidence, knowing and resilience. Lave (2019) view that learning is problem solving (p. 115) provides one explanation for these comments by Diana: …there were many, many challenges along the way, which is perhaps why it was more successful…to improve we had to do hard yards, stick at it over the course; to think, read and talk through our confusions, our struggles, problems to make new understandings, I mean develop our understandings, and to practice and trial the new strategies in ways that

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suitably relate to our students’ needs, and to do all this with support from Heather and each other, this gave us the motivation and the lift we needed to change…

Here, Diana gives voice to a more hidden notion about learning: that learning is the struggle. In many ways her view sensitises us to how professional learning emerges from action research as a productive struggle (Hiebert & Grouws, 2007). More central is the tenet that professional learning is an individual and collective profession building practice that takes commitment, time and focus with deliberate effortful intent whereby professional knowledge is developed in practices furnished with persistence and resilience. This is a complex proposition that suggests that making new self-understandings happens in social practices imbued with persistence, challenge, problem solving, practicing and trialling, and balanced with support from others. From this, our position on learning and transformation is situated; and one that aligns with Lave (2019) who maintains that “possibilities for learning lie in difference” (p. 141). And as our research shows, experienced in difference by way of the contested, unsettled or contradictory happenings that occur across time and space. It is in varying social settings, like in teacher professional development sessions or in classrooms, learning is the shift in practices that evolves as “a collection of problem-solving situations” (Lave, 2019, p. 115) threaded together over time. For all intents and purposes, this shift is not simply an individual endeavour: the transformational shift is a social endeavour formed under conditions where the cornerstones are valued and reside—contextuality, commitment, communication, collaboration, criticality, collegiality and community. These cornerstones, outlined in the previous chapter, are conditions which generate possibilities for learning. These learning possibilities lie in practices (the sayings, doings and relatings) that are enabled and constrained by practice architectures produced and reproduced intersubjectively through language and activities, through engaging with other in various kinds of relationships, and in and across physical locations. Learning happens in ‘real’ time and over historical time. This means professional learning practices are influenced or shaped by practice architectures which at the same time both enable and constrain—support and challenge—educational transformation.

Understanding Educational Transformation: Producing, Reproducing and Translating Practices Educational transformation is a complex notion implicated in practices and practice architectures which enable and constrain its outcomes and possibilities. The concept of transformation has been connected to theories of reproduction (Lundgren, 1983) and translation (Røvik, 2016) where practices ‘travel’ across time and space (Hardy, Edwards-Groves, & Rönnerman, 2012). Our intention is not to linger in these bodies of work, although we recognise their scholarly importance for understanding learning, development and change. As Kemmis and Edwards-Groves (2018) state,

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3 Transforming Professional Practices: The Practice Architectures … Education always transforms society, even as it reproduces it; and even where education aims to transform some aspects of society, it also reproduces others. Neither reproduction nor transformation happens in the absence of the other; they are dialectically related2 —that is, they are mutually constitutive aspects of each other. (p. 77)

Described here is the interrelationship between reproduction and transformation; education is made comprehensible when viewed as a locally situated practice. A site ontological perspective (Kemmis et al., 2014; Schatzki, 2002) assists in grappling with accounts of education practices seeking to understand what is happening. An ontological view of practice valorises happeningness (Heap, 1985) or “actual realtime practices as in the ‘saying’ or ‘doing’ of something or ‘relating’ to someone or something in the here-and-now” (Edwards-Groves & Grootenboer, 2017, p. 34). In practices, sayings, doings and relatings happen in the present (as they are being done) unfolding in particular social and spatiotemporal realities—ignited by the in-situ actions of those present (Edwards-Groves & Grootenboer, 2017, p. 31). As practices flow through time and space in moments of reproduction and production, they might also be interpreted or translated in ways that make sense or relevant in new occasions of practising. Thus, salience, and searching for it in occasions of professional learning, development and change, is critical for understanding educational transformation (Edwards-Groves, 2017). In practices, then, individuals draw particular practices into relevance in the act of saying, doing and relating at the time of practising (Edwards-Groves, 2017). Here, translation theory (Røvik, 2016) is helpful in drawing attention to the nuanced particularity of the way practices and ideas are interpreted (never duplicated), consequently being taken up uniquely and distinctively by being dispersed among organisations among different actors in different places in different ways. For example, although participants in a particular action research project are all teachers, their unique teaching circumstances (community or student demographic, student age levels, knowledge, skills etc.) will be different and so their professional learning and development requires different practices. As Diana indicated, this means being on the same path different track with different challenges along the way but practiced in a way that responds to their own kids (sic). From this, then, transformation is not a straightforward replication, transmission or translation; rather every practice in professional education: 1. is an act of reproduction and at the same time an act of production (as mutually informing and overlapping as depicted by Lundgren, 1983) and of translation (interpreting and reinterpreting as depicted by Røvik, 2016), but also 2. is always not only a process of reproduction but also, at the same time, a process of transformation (Kemmis & Edwards-Groves, 2018, p. 77). 2A

dialectical relationship is a relationship of mutual constitution or interconnection, like the relationship between teaching and learning, in which the practices of the teacher influence the practices of the learner, or the relationship between the caterpillar and the chrysalis, in which each is necessary in the lifecycle of a butterfly, or like the relationship between war and peace, in which war is always a stage in the process of peace breaking out, and peace is a stage in the process of war breaking out (Kemmis & Edwards-Groves, 2018).

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Thus, transformation is evident both at the micro level in the moment of practising, and at the macro level over historical time. Turning to the theory of practice architectures we understand that practising is comprised of enacting sayings, doings and relatings. This happens when reproducing (mimicking or repeating language, activities and ways of relating from past performances or representations of the particular practice) and producing (new in the moment) knowledge, skills, values and dispositions. Transformation reveals itself in practices that are always made anew with slight adjustments and modifications made on each occasion of their practising (Kemmis et al., 2014) even though remnants of past practices always exist in the sayings, doings and relatings evident on each occasion. Diana speaks about this as practising new practices but at the same time not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Thus, practices are translated (rather than merely transposed or duplicated) in response to, and in light of, an individuals’ interpretations, knowledges and dispositions, and account for the local contingencies, exigencies and circumstances that already exist in any particular place at any particular time. Broadly, then, transformation is iterative at the same time it is generative as professional trajectories change over time. As practices are reproduced and produced as mutually produced courses of action, individuals are translating—and so connecting, interpreting and comprehending— what sayings, doings and ways of relating that might be new (for them) into moments of doing (something new then). For teachers in professional learning, like Diana, this is about getting on the same page—talking the talk and walking the walk. To do means they are entering into a process of sensemaking or intersubjective meaning making. In the next section we examine the role of sensemaking in transformation.

Conceptualising Intersubjective Spaces for Sensemaking in Professional Transformation Ideas about transformation in teacher professional development need to be nested within understandings related to human sociality, practices and intersubjective meaning making (Kemmis, Wilkinson, & Edwards-Groves, 2017). These three principles underly the seven cornerstones described in the previous chapter; they are synchronously functioning and influential in the accomplishment of transformation. The cornerstones (contextuality, commitment, communication, collaboration, criticality, collegiality and community) and the principles that guide them, are experienced in situ as integrated, interconnected and co-existent practices. From this viewpoint human sociality, practices and intersubjective meaning making essentially reside within a practice theory perspective that gives regard to a site ontological approach. Principally, as people come together as interlocutors (like the teachers who became middle leaders in our study) for the purposes of participating in particular practices (like professional learning or researching) they form distinctive kind of intersubjective spaces. Intersubjective spaces are described by Kemmis et al. (2014)

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as “the space that lies between people” (p. 4), constituted three-dimensionally in semantic space, physical space-time, and social space. Accomplishing intersubjectivity means making sense (in real time in situ) of these spaces in relation to the cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements that are influencing (at the time) the conduct of practices (a point described in more detail in a subsequent section). Human sociality thus makes different forms of communicative action, meaning making and relationships possible. Intersubjective meaning making (in contrast to notions of subjectivity, individualism, self-orientation) places its emphasis on the fundamental dimension of the socialness of the human experience. For individual participants, as inherently social beings, participation in practices of any kind means “being-with” others (Duranti, 2010, p. 13); and in order to get things done there is a need for shared or mutual understandings (or consensus) about what language to use, what activities they are doing and where, and how to relate to one another. As action researcher Margaret said, success hangs on us as a group showing the difference, and being responsible for working through it together, listening and watching and really trying to understand what each other means. Language both displays and invokes intersubjectivity (Duranti, 2004), but so too do meanings evoked from being-in the physical and material space and relating to others and the material world in that space. Language, activity and relationships with others form semiotics (systems of meaning making) for intersubjectivity and “sensemaking” (Weick, 1995). Thus being-in places and being-with others means individuals’ and collectives’ practices are shaped by and provoke subjective sensemaking through participation in different intersubjective spaces.

Participation as Sensemaking in Education Practices Broad ideas about participation in practices can be said to spring from seminal works by thinkers such as Dewey (1997), who ascribe to a view of ‘education as communication’ whereby meaning making, knowledge building and communicating are accomplished through interaction and dialogue—that is, accomplished intersubjectively between people. Similarly, Vygotsky (1978) orients us towards learning, development and change as intrinsically socially interactionally constructed. For Jürgen Habermas, interaction and dialogue are mutually constituted forms of human sociality “whereby persons acting communicatively encounter each other in a situation they at the same time constitute with their cooperatively negotiated interpretations” (Habermas, 1987, p. 360). Habermas (1987) further contends that these situations are: a linguistically constituted public space. This space stands open, in principle, for dialogue partners who are present as bystanders or who could come on the scene and join those present. (p. 361)

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Building on the thinking of these ideas, Säljö (2015) also argues learning is always situated, taking place through communication in interplay with one’s actions and social interactions. Schatzki (2002) goes further to suggest that participation in practices is the site of the social. To consider these orientations about participation and how they relate to sensemaking in practices, the next section draws on the theory of practice architectures that recognises three different kinds of simultaneously existing arrangements—cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political—and realised through three interspatial media (introduced in Chap. 1).

The Practice Architectures and Interspatial Media of Sensemaking Sensemaking is considered to be a critical feature of communicating, collectivity and collaboration in professional learning (Thurlow, & Mills, 2009), and requires opening up communicative spaces for the learning to occur (Rönnerman, EdwardsGroves, & Grootenboer, 2015). Augmenting a practice view of sensemaking means considering how human sociality and intersubjective meaning making, as entangled dimensions of professional learning, development and change, are made apparent as people are co-producing practices by participating in them as Edwards-Groves and Grootenboer (2017) suggest. This is why the happeningness of practices is critical for understanding practices and practice architectures. Participation in particular situations and circumstances (and an individual’s interpretation of these) enable or constrain the ways teachers and facilitators orient to and understand one another in three interactively constituted realms. This accords with the view of Kemmis et al. (2014), who say that participants, in practices, synchronously orient to one another in language in semantic space, in doing activities in physical space-time and through relationships in social space. Participants’ orientations in these interspatial media reveal and, at the same time, require intersubjectivity and sensemaking. Here we consider sensemaking as embodied at the same time it is linguistically, discursively, temporally and relationally constituted. Therefore, in action research practices, teacher participants’ and facilitators’ practices both shape and are shaped by the semantic, the physical space-time and the social spaces that comprise the work they do as they encounter one another in their professional learning activities (for example). Each of these spaces or media are practice architectures for the other, intricately connected and influential in the happeningness of their encounters. In the next sections, we consider ways sociality and intersubjective meaning making in these three interspatial media are practice architectures of sensemaking as individual teachers participate in action research for their professional learning. We consider the notion of intersubjective meaning making as a central dimension of sensemaking; importantly for us it aligns closely with the notion of interthinking

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(Littleton & Mercer, 2013). Interthinking involves the ways that people (as interlocutors) in interactions with one another use dialogue to share ideas, and to think creatively and productively together about matters of common concern (Littleton & Mercer, 2013). This means creating spatial arrangements for critical transformative dialogues (Edwards-Groves, 2013). Critically, these arrangements for interthinking in professional learning form part of an individual’s practice trajectory towards leading; the connections between professional learning and leading can be traced through the voices of the teachers who became middle leaders that are presented throughout the section.

Cultural-Discursive Arrangements, Sensemaking and Transforming the Professional Self as Teacher in Semantic Space …So, like this means creating the chance for everyone to share what they know or don’t know… share understandings about what we all mean by the information, or the new terms and concepts or strategies in the program we are implementing. Like shared or modelled writing, or even guided reading are concepts that we take for granted, we do them every day, but as it turns out we all have slightly different interpretations about what these strategies actually mean in our own classroom teaching. So that means part of the process is also delving into understanding the theories that ideas or strategies come from, to at least have a shared sense of the language used in the program and especially the curriculum. So, it’s about deliberately building in opportunities for professional conversations for knowledge building through knowledge sharing and all the dimensions of that, it’s about the concepts, the theory stuff, our interpretations of the professional readings, and sharing each our own knowledge and experiences about what it all means… Ivy, Middle Leader

Sensemaking in semantic space involves the discursive construction of meanings including the deconstruction and reconstruction of sayings evident in ideas in language, in thought and discursively produced through talk-in-interaction. In semantic space, then, interactive participants, like Ivy, share meanings through the medium of language, discourse and thought to accomplish saying and thinking particular things that make sense in the practice (a teacher dialogue circle, a professional learning conversation, a lesson, a critical mentoring conversation, a staff meeting). This is a matter of sayings. Sayings function in the semantic realm, of understanding and comprehension. Ivy, goes on to put this notion in these terms, …I think an incredibly important part of facilitating is helping everyone get on the same page. I know it’s kinda cliched to say that, but it’s true ‘coz otherwise how can anyone be expected move forward in their learning if we are all thinking in parallel, don’t understand one another. We at least need to work out what everyone is talking about, to understand what each other means by their particular ideas… this recognises and validates everyone as we all have something to add to the collective thinking actually…

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Thus, to participate in practices participants need to strive for semantic congruence; for mutual intelligibility, comprehensibility and agreed understandings or consensus about what is meant (for them there at the moment, and in relation to the practices they are discussing, reading about or enacting). For instance, teachers and middle leaders might participate in professional development focused on improving writing vocabulary; and so, to understand one another’s perspectives or ideas (or as Ivy colloquially put it, “to get on the same page”) specific language and discourse enters the semantic space and emerge in their sayings (and thinking). Particular words enter their discourse and meaning making such as vocabulary, linguistic features, language structures, plurals, cohesive ties, and so on. Opening up the communicative space enables shared understandings and intersubjective meaning making and in the dimension of semantic space influences the physical-temporal and social ‘sensemaking’ possibilities. That is, in the semantic space, sensemaking is made possible through sayings as people communicate with one another, as they go about their activity or work, and in the particular words they use to demonstrate their recognition and value they hold for each other in the practice. According to Ivy, recognising and validating everyone are a necessary part of relational realm tied to how practice works in semantic space. These aspects of professional learning simultaneously form cultural-discursive arrangements where particular sayings, doings and relatings come into being a part of the sensemaking machinery of the practice.

Material-Economic Arrangements, Sensemaking and Transforming the Professional Self as Teacher in Physical Space-Time Having the opportunity for inter-class visits, moving around the different classrooms to see how different teachers use the technology for writing and the ways they use the new modular furniture to set up the students in different groups for the different purposes in parts of the lessons helped me see the teachers trying it out in action, to see how it works; to see how it made a difference to the ways the students interacted with each other in their writing conferences. I think these professional learning walks are an important thing to do… like the additional reading and sharing kids writing work, and like getting us to record our lessons and transcribe parts of it to share is a really good professional learning strategy… it’s all part of the puzzle that gave me the courage to try it out myself; a good move that I am now using in my own facilitation. Blake, Middle Leader

Sensemaking in physical space-time involves embodied construction of meanings including reconstructing and deconstructing activities. That is in doing activities in real time, in an actual physical space like professional learning walks or inter-class visits, individuals bring to life their renderings of practices as they produce and reproduce, make and remake practices in sensible, relevant or salient ways (EdwardsGroves, 2017). In physical space-time, then, as participants engage interactively with

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one another through the medium of activity and work, they use particular resources, physical set-ups or material objects to accomplish their doing. This matter of doings, means being in a particular physical space in a moment in time, of doing particular activities among different physical arrangements or set-ups, and using particular material objects or resources to accomplish the doing. It considers how these material objects or resources are used and configured or how/where bodies are positioned in relation to one another in the physical space (Stigliani & Ravasi, 2012), and ultimately how material objects, resources and physical set-ups are arrangements that influence the happenings or sayings, doings and relatings. These are materialeconomic arrangements that shape what is possible in the doing of activity or how people can communicate and relate to one another in mutually understandable ways. Specifically, to participate in practices participants need to strive for engagement and intersubjective sense making in the material world in the here-and-now of the doing of the activity. For instance, to carry on the example above about professional development focused on improving writing vocabulary, teachers do particular (and maybe different) professional learning activities using a range of particular material resources, books, internet sites or programs and ways the physical set-ups arrangements in the room or interpersonal configurations like teachers working in pairs or alone. Like for Blake, particular activities influence the conduct of professional work for those involved in professional development; for example, ways he and other teachers participate in professional learning walks, engage in supportive professional learning conversations, share student writing samples, make inter-classroom visits to observe other teachers and students, video-record and share their own writing lessons, read professional teaching journals, or be in their own classroom, the staff room or another teachers classroom or a different school, and so on. Likewise, Birgitta connects time and sensemaking in her comment: it was over time, so we had time to digest in between. Similarly, in her comments middle leader Marina indicated how essential principal and system support was for providing the material-economic resources for her and other teachers participate, but at the same time the system gave us the release days, the time to attend the ten sessions without that it would have been impossible. Time, space and particular materials need to be available and understood for professional learning activities to happen. This intersubjective dimension of physical space-time influences the semantic and social ‘sensemaking’ possibilities.

Social-Political Arrangements, Sensemaking and Transforming the Professional Self as a Teacher in Social Space We are this small inner circle, we strengthen each other. …We had each other and discussed together, and helped each other with the case studies, we read a lot, read all the books included. I thought it was great to meet in peer groups, it was of course very supportive and you saw the link to your own work very, very clearly. I think that was because we were three together who got along well and that we had this discussion while the course was going on.

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We learned what was possible in the course, and then when we discussed it together, raised the idea that we’re going to take this further and we talked to our managers [to develop a new facilitator team for our school]. First it was mostly me who was doing it but eventually became my whole department involved… The project was kept alive for a long time and I think to this day I tell others about it. Birgitta, Middle Leader

Sensemaking in social space involves the relational construction of meanings including how one understands the power, solidarity and agency experienced in the relationships encountered and created in the conduct of practices; and how people come to understand what they are doing by the nature of the relationships they have with others. This is a point implied by Birgitta (above), who considered that it is through interpersonal relationships that work is strengthened by empowering groups of teachers to work in solidarity with one another to make sense of the work they are doing and aiming to do. She is not alone in this view. Louise puts this idea in this way, it was always a learning together thing. Power and agency are also considered critical to the relational dynamic of professional learning and leading by Anette (middle leader), who framed the idea about how the relational worked for her as she participated in an action research course in this way, from our team we get legitimacy. In social space, then, as participants encounter each other in their professional learning discussions and activities, they do so through the medium of relationships. To accomplish interacting with one another, they relate to one another and the world in particular ways. Middle leader, May, makes sense of the social realm in this way: …getting deep learning that sticks is about the relationship stuff, the support challenge stuff – I believe really strongly in that you must support and challenge, but you can’t do that until you have a relationship, but the paradox is that with the support and challenge the relationship also deepens, it’s hard to separate out… but the bottom line is we need to understand how we work together, then we can challenge and be challenged, this leads to learning with and from each other.

As May, like Diana above, suggests, support and challenge both relies on and determines the kind of interpersonal relationships that provoke deep learning. This is a matter of relatings—of having particular kinds of social encounters that require and display particular kinds of relationships and roles (co-learners, co-participants, peers, teacher-student, parent-child, facilitator-participant, speaker-hearer, principal-staff member) that withstand and facilitate the challenge required to change. Gretel, in her comments next, orients to how particular facilitator-participant relationships make solidarity and agency possible, that promotes professional learning and facilitates knowing and practicing leading. As the facilitator you too helped me to keep seeing that I could do this and meet the challenges along the way… our relationship was crucial for my development, you were supportive at the same time pushed me, pushed me in my thinking to try out different strategies. It was this, as well as knowing I needed a mindset that I was going to be developing along with my participants. And so, this really made me look at what I was doing with it [as a facilitator] and I knew I had to change what I was doing, how I was developing relational trust. We worked together, but I had freedom to try out things my way. How you led me, helped me to lead them if I can say it like that.

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What Gretel is saying here is that participation in professional learning practices require participants to attend to the relational realm; and understand their own roles in (developing and nurturing) particular kinds of relationships as they relate to one another, as they support and challenge one another in their professional learning; as individuals learn and lead. For instance, in simple terms, ways teachers relate to their colleagues, the principal, the middle leader, the facilitator and the students in different ways in the different dimensions of their professional development work matters. In her comments, Ruth also speaks of how making sense of and attending to the relational is generative of professional learning and leading. We had to understand one another, where we were coming from… it’s a mutuality because I believe that the teachers whom I work with can do this, and so I’m going to dig deeper into myself to help them believe in themselves and transform their practices and give them a voice. There’s that lovely saying when you work to bring out the best in others, you’ll bring out the best in yourself, so in that search to help others you also become a better person. Ruth, Middle leader

These middle leaders’ comments show how sensemaking relies on particular ways of relating with others. This is influenced by the social-political arrangements that, in practice, reflect different positions of power, solidarity and agency. Other examples include, a facilitator being a critical friend or even supervisor of the participant teachers, the teacher requiring students to write the samples as evidence, the teachers as colleagues working towards achieving whole-school change, the principals controlling how much time and resources teachers have for their professional learning, the middle leader facilitating or directing conversations, teachers having the choice and agency to design their own action research project, and so on. This dimension of social space also shapes the semantic and physical-temporal ‘sensemaking’ possibilities in the practices of middle leaders and teachers.

Generating Leading in Three-Dimensional Intersubjective Space The three interspatial media, described in the previous section, form an integrated, three-dimensional intersubjective space that enable and constrain how leading is generated. Ideas about the inseparability of these three intersubjective realms of sensemaking (semantic, social and physical space-time) and how together they create conditions generative of professional learning and leading, is encapsulated in these comments by middle leader Marci: The reason we learned was because we were building our knowledge over time, revisiting the ideas, the strategies, every meeting – well for us it was every fortnight. So, we developed in our teaching because of the process cycle of a little bit of input for our learning, a little bit of practice and a little bit more theory; a little bit of learning, a little bit of practice and little bit more theory and that’s what worked. We weren’t given this “Great come in, take all this in in one day – get it go home and practice it, do it, now you have the silver bullet”. We were just given a little, bite-sized chunks – I guess it was nicely scaffolded – now when you look

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at it, it was obviously a constructivist model – so you were scaffolded at your level where you were. You were never made feel that you would fail. I felt always nicely supported. I mean we must have done some truly silly things when I think about it, but at the time nobody ever made us feel like that. And the learning from that stood me in good stead in the later programs I actually facilitated myself, I think we continued to model that very strong support – never ever ever were we criticised – certainly challenged but there was never – I don’t ever remember being criticised after a teaching session. That ways of facilitating became my own mantra… Plus, my own determination and continual drive for learning more, and the processes you used taught us and, in fact set me down the path toward taking on the middle leadership role, to help others myself. Marci, Middle Leader

For Marci, and others participating in action research, it seems the practices of their professional learning became the practice of their own leading. These words show how educational transformation is brought about by sensemaking in particular kind intersubjective spaces that create conditions of possibility for learning and leading to emerge. Over time, these spaces formed cornerstones for open, participatory, supported, communicative spaces that individuals and collectives created for themselves as they embarked on educational learning, development and change. Kemmis et al. (2014), referring to Habermas, describe these kinds of communicative spaces as the “public sphere” (p. 37) involving people “striving for democratic intersubjective agreement, mutual understanding and unforced consensus” (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 35). These spaces are not mutually exclusive, discrete or dislocated from one another. On the contrary, they are multidimensional and mutually constitutive, each forming, reforming and transforming the conduct of the other. To take a social view of learning, therefore, shifts the focus of attention to a site ontological view of social phenomenon (Schatzki, 2017). The implication here is that a practice perspective offers alternative insights on learning, where learning is not simply an individualistic cognitive process, it is viewed as socially and dynamically constituted in sites among people in democratic ways. The voices from the field presented across the section show how particular kinds of practices and practices architectures generate professional learning that, in time, generated leading, or middle leading as described by Grootenboer, Edwards-Groves, and Rönnerman (2014) and Rönnerman, Edwards-Groves, and Grootenboer (2018).

Dynamic Interdependence Between the Individual and the Collective in the Public Sphere In the words that began this chapter, Diana opened us up to ideas about the role of the individual in shared or collective professional learning and leading. Although the practice theory perspective presented so far rests largely on a democratic and social view of professional learning, it does not discount or dismiss the role of an individual or one’s personal agency in this endeavour. This section highlights ways an

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individual’s learning stance must be considered in the grand project of professional learning. This is not simply a matter of recognising the individual as separate to the collective. As our study showed, the conditions generative of professional learning and leading always appear in dynamic interdependence created by individuals with a shared investment in, and responsibility for, the project undertaking, in their coming together to form distinctive kinds of collectives. The section proposes ways individual and collective professional learning emerges in dynamic interdependence between personal and external domains. Empirical material locates, for example, an intrinsic desire to develop or improve as a professional, as one that comes from within, where one’s inner-personal disposition stands as the initiative for professional change. A notion encapsulated in this statement by Kristina who said: There’s a desire to learn something new, to have to challenge myself and gain more skills; that’s what attracted me. Her comments directly orient to a personal stance which nourishes the possibility for learning. Rachel’s words, too, encapsulate this position; in particular she raises the idea that an individual’s disposition, or sense of self-responsibility and personal commitment to the education of students, is a necessary and determinative foundation for collective educational transformation. There’s an innate searching to always do a better job for the kids, to add a bit of zest to my teaching and their learning…. It works because you know it gets in your belly because you have got the time you need to make things happen. It [action research] gives you time to really deepen understandings over time, you get time to make mistakes, you get time to experiment, you get time to learn something, to play with something and then reinterpret it, deepen it, come back into a group of colleagues who are also playing with it and experiencing it. Rachel, Middle Leader

This excerpt highlights how one’s learning stance, or as Rachel said an innate searching, that gets in your belly, formed a consequential condition for professional learning. Ideas about doing a better job for the kids, adding a bit of zest to teaching and learning balanced with external material-economic arrangements like time and coming together in group activities, create interdependent conditions (in her experience) to deepen understandings, make mistakes, experiment, and interpret practices. Likewise, Annemaree’s explanation about her experience in action research make explicit connections between the individual and the collective in the public sphere. For me it was for my personal learning so that I could continue to work on my skills in my own way in my classroom and in a way at my own pace – so a lot of it was about the kids firstly, but also a lot of it was about me and the way that I went about my teaching; and it was also to challenge me because I was kind of at the stage in my career where I had finished studying and so I wanted something else that could actually keep me learning so that I didn’t just stand still, I was ready for something more… A lot of critical reflection on what you’re doing, what you have learned; how you are going to go and use that within your classroom… but you are not doing it alone, I guess it’s the all-around support you get from everyone – the facilitator, the principal, and your colleagues… it all comes together. Annemaree, Middle Leader

Annemaree’s comments specifically draw out how her personal readiness, her stage of career, want for something else that could actually keep her learning so that

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she didn’t just stand still, that she was ready for something more, along with her personal agency to participate in the learning in her own way in her own classroom and at her own pace were critical features of substantiating her involvement in the public learning event. Here she describes how her personal learning stance was fed by collective experiences, not doing it alone but in ways that come together with the all-around support from everyone in the particular action research project she was involved in. The need for self-understanding through challenging and questioning one’s own practices formed a critical place in self-improvement for our informants like Annemaree and Cassie (next). This notion of self-understanding as individuals engage in a systematic process of subjective and intersubjective sensemaking was articulated by Cassie in this extract. It was just that whole having to look at my practice. Look at, really reflect on what I was doing and why? And what was the basis for it? Was I just doing it because I’d always done it or I was just doing it because it was easy or I just knew what I was doing so I just kept doing that? So, it really made me look at what I was doing to make sense of it and I knew I had to change… I was open to learning and ready for it, and how it was designed to come back to work with other teachers was a challenge, because you have to be open to opening yourself up in public, and that can make you vulnerable. But in fact, that’s the bit that helped me dig more deeply to see what was needed, and not in a superficial way, but in a more profound way…I see this way leads to long-lasting change because you are developing deep knowledge, well it did for me. Cassie, Middle Leader

Here, Cassie’s personal receptiveness to change balanced with working with others in the public sphere led to a deeper comprehensibility of the practices she was reflecting on, trying to make sense of . As she indicated, being open to learning and ready for it provided the impetus for developing deep knowledge and longlasting change. In many ways, these teacher participants identified self-questioning as a key driver for developing a meta-awareness of their own practices. Significantly, in common across these extracts, and in the sentiments expressed by all the middle leaders we interviewed in Sweden and in Australia, was the recognition that this was not a solo exercise. But, to the contrary, it relied on the need to work with other teachers and being open to opening yourself up in public. Whilst this part of the process was such that it can make you vulnerable, this element was considered the bit that helped individuals [sic] dig more deeply to see what was needed. These ideas point to a consciousness of commitment nestled with the intricate, but irrefutable, interconnectivity between the practice of individual learning in the public sphere. As Rönnerman and Edwards-Groves (2012) established, and these extracts show, that for transformation there needs to be a dynamic balance between external conditions (what one encounters in the practice and the sites of practice) and internal conditions (what one brings to the practice). Both are necessary for a generative experience as a teacher learner. This requires reciprocity of a kind which unifies and validates nurturing external and internal conditions for professional growth and change. As the previous sections showed, trajectories from learning to leading transpire where balances of theory-practice, challenge-support, direction-autonomy,

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instruction-creativity, scaffolding-independence, disposition-mandate, individualcollective, leading-learning were evident as people came together in the public sphere. These in-practice couplings capitalise on internal and external conditions, experienced in what we described as the cornerstones of action research for professional learning, that set some teachers down the path toward taking on the middle leadership role, to help others, as Marci (above) said.

The Cornerstones of Action Research for Professional Learning in Practice The preceding sections have provided a frame against which to consider how teachers experience, and understand, action research as professional learning. The ideas presented have centred on how internal and external conditions are practice architectures that influence the practices teachers encounter and produce in their learning, and how these practices open up intersubjective spaces for sensemaking that is manifested in the language they use, in the activities they engage in and in their interpersonal relationships. These spaces establish grounds for transforming the professional self as a teacher through professional learning, and powerfully prefigure possibilities for leading. As a point of confluence, in this final section we bring together accounts from participants in our study to illustrate how, in practice, they orient to and make sense of the inseparable dimensions the cornerstones of action research (outlined in the previous chapter) as these relate to their own transformational experiences. The section explicates the regard held by participants for the place the cornerstones have in professional transformation through action research. We draw out the point through a series of excerpts from our interviews with Amelia, whose comments were typical of those expressed by all the participants in Sweden and Australia. We begin with her remarks about the importance of personal commitment and contextual responsivity. For me, it began with a need to improve for the sake of the kids learning. I think the fact that it’s not just a bag of ideas that you go and grab, take back to your classroom and forget in week; it’s more – like you’re actually committed to changing and developing your practice over a longer period of time, rather than just having, implementing a great idea, so it’s a lot more strategic and focused on what was happening within your classroom, supporting the learning needs of your class and how your respond to that…

Amelia’s words give relevance and substance to a site ontological perspective where professional learning through action research practices is realised in the particular contexts that matter to the participants involved. For all of our participants, it was a genuine commitment to improving their teaching practices for the benefit of their own students in their own classroom sites. Lave and Packer (2008) suggest that learning, as it is described here, is an “ontological transformation” of people engaged in practices. Recognising and responding to one’s own site and circumstances incentivises site based education development (Kemmis et al., 2014). Thus, from a site

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ontological perspective, change is defensible by its concern for what happens in sites in response to circumstances and needs. As Amelia continues, she identifies how communicating, collaborating, criticality, collegiality make building community possible: All of those things kind of seemed to mesh together with the professional dialogue, practising, trialling and reflecting, analysing and critiquing professional reading and the teaching itself, you seem to do a lot of them without actually even realising how important they were for learning… So, I guess actually learning with the other teachers, being together, pushing each other and learning from each other set us up to be a real collegial group. Making sure people are feeling welcome; making sure that you know those relationships are built from the start, this means the way you communicate in the group situation and with others, especially with providing meaningful feedback without judgement that was professional but honest and driven by learning. Doing activities like focused observations in other teacher’s classes; seeing the way that other teachers actually implemented their program; the knowledge and theory base that it came from – like there was a lot of theory behind the discussions… that building of the community over the project so that you actually have other people who are going through the same things; so you are building that community of people you can talk to and you can correspond with. If you are feeling like “this isn’t going anywhere” you actually had that community of people that become your colleagues - you became really close enough to trust…

Amelia’s comments indicate clearly how participating in professional learning through action research practices means entering a shared endeavour (you actually have other people who are going through the same things). Drawing this out for her means: • communicating (through professional dialogues, discussions, corresponding with others, providing meaningful feedback), • collaborating (learning with the other teachers, being together, pushing each other and learning from each other), • criticality (reflecting, analysing and critiquing professional reading and teaching), • collegiality (making sure people are feeling welcome, relationships built from the start, communicating without judgement, being professional but honest and driven by learning), and • building community (trusting and forming ongoing strong relationships). These features of her experience mesh together to form an inextricably interrelated path towards her ontological transformation, as she makes plain in the extract. As she understands it, the accomplishment of ontological transformation means: …in fact, it takes all these aspects to make it work… all the pieces fit together in the big picture… and in the end laid the groundwork for me to take on leading the group myself. It’s only later when you actually become a facilitator that you realise all the bits that are actually in there and how they fit together.

The dynamic interplay between cornerstones provide a productive space, generative of professional learning, in the first instance, and of leading in the second. This is a space “rich in reflective and critical analysis, rich in data with outcomes relevant

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to specific conditions and interactions” (Scott & Weeks, 1996, p. 244). This is also a space where relational trust is established, resides and nourished. As we have reported elsewhere (Edwards-Groves, Grootenboer, & Rönnerman, 2016),3 holding the practices of action research together in a school is relational trust. Facilitating a culture of professional learning, and the trust that it demands, is a critical issue for middle leaders as they lead practice change among teachers in their schools. And although not explicitly a focus of this book, the perspectives of teachers and principals with whom middle leaders work are important for understanding the impact for school based learning. In our earlier research (Edwards-Groves et al., 2016), studying perspectives of teachers (25), school principals (3), executive teachers (3) and district consultants (3), we reported their perspectives on middle leaders’ practices, roles and impact of their facilitation of action research in their schools and districts. Analysis of their accounts revealed how middle leaders were instrumental in developing the trust necessary for teacher development. They reported that middle leaders, because of their positioning in the middle were critical agents for facilitating and nourishing the conditions for establishing and maintaining a culture of relational trust. This, they argued, enabled the distinctive kind of supportive middle leadership critical to transforming professional learning through action research in productive, positive and sustainable ways. We argue, it is these conditions that make it possible for other potential middle leaders to emerge in the future.

Conclusion: Learning to Leading—A Generative Journey The voices from the field presented across this chapter illustrate that the accomplishment of professional transformation from professional learning to leading is a generative journey. Its success and efficacy lie in the possibilities for practitioners to participate in sensemaking practices that promote site based education development responsive to an individual’s context. Whereby each practitioner’s circumstances, knowledge and experiences are acknowledged in, and drive forward, an individual and shared commitment to, and responsibility for, learning and development. Facilitating individual and collective change, means understanding professional learning requires bridging across individualistic and social-practice perspectives without oversimplifying the contribution of either. This means for teachers that their individual participation and intersubjective meaning making is fostered through open communicative spaces where sensemaking is achieved discursively, practically and through trusting interpersonal relationships. With relational trust along with mutual ambition that both generate and cohere collaborative ways of working, the energy and momentum for change is instantiated. It is through collaboration in open and 3 To

consider teacher and principals views in more depth, readers are encouraged to refer to the publication: Edwards-Groves, C., Grootenboer, P., & Rönnerman, K. (2016). Facilitating a culture of relational trust in school-based action research: Recognising the role of middle leaders. Educational Action Research, 24(3), 369–386. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2015.1131175.

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communicative spaces that a foundation for collective action and decision making is formed. This, in turn, makes possible the development of avenues for the kind of spaces necessary for promoting and withstanding critique, challenge, questioning, deep analysis, and critical reflection and inquiry; the kind that deep and long-lasting professional learning demands. Together these elements pave the way for genuine collegiality to emerge as a forum for sustaining longer-term professional relationships and enduring practices that secure a strong foundation for education and its development. Collectively, these facets of practice rely on inner-personal and interpersonal conditions that, in practice, are inextricably interdependent and form cornerstones for building a strong community of practitioners where democratic ways of working are truly realised. As our data show, these cornerstones provide a currency generative of learning and leading; these simultaneously afford spaces for sensemaking, in all its realms, for practical action and professional transformation. As shown, such spaces for professional learning are influenced by practice architectures—both historical and ‘in the moment’—that have a flow of influence on learning and leading practices in the future. From this, we argue the practice of action research with its democratic values is connected like a red thread to professional learning, to teaching to leading. This notion forms the foundation for the theory of generative leadership.

References Carr, W., & Kemmis, S. (1986). Becoming critical: Education, knowledge and action research. London: Routledge. Dewey, J. (1997). Demokrati och utbildning (N. Sjödén, Trans.). Göteborg: Daidalos (Original work Democracy and Education published 1916). Duranti, A. (2004). Agency in language. In A. Duranti (Ed.), A companion to linguistic anthropology (pp. 451–473). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Duranti, A. (2010). Husserl, intersubjectivity and anthropology. Anthropological Theory, 10(1), 1–20. Edwards-Groves, C. (2008). The Praxis-Oriented Self: Continuing (self) education. In S. Kemmis, & T. Smith (Eds.), Enabling Praxis: Challenges for education (pp. 127–148). Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense Publishing. Edwards-Groves, C. (2013). Creating spaces for critical transformative dialogues: Legitimising discussion groups as professional practice. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 38, 12(2), 17–34. Edwards-Groves, C. (2017). Teaching and learning as social interaction: Salience and relevance in classroom lesson practices. In P. Grootenboer, C. Edwards-Groves, & S. Choy (Eds.), Practice theory perspectives on pedagogy and education: Praxis diversity and contestation (Chap. 10, pp. 191–214). Singapore: Springer. Edwards-Groves, C., & Grootenboer, P. (2017). Learning spaces and practices in the primary school: A focus on classroom dialogues, Chapter 4. In K. Mahon, S. Francisco, & S. Kemmis (Eds.), (2017). Exploring education and professional practice - Through the lens of practice architectures. Singapore: Springer. Edwards-Groves, C., & Rönnerman, K. (2013). Generating leading practices through professional learning. Professional Development in Education, 39(1), 122–140.

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Edwards-Groves, C., Grootenboer, P., & Rönnerman, K. (2016). Facilitating a culture of relational trust in school-based action research: Recognising the role of middle leaders. Special Issue: Partnerships and Recognition, Educational Action Research, 24(3), 369–386. https://doi.org/10. 1080/09650792.2015.1131175. Grootenboer, P., Edwards-Groves, C., & Rönnerman, K. (2014). Leading practice development: Voices from the middle. Professional Development in Education, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 19415257.2014.924985. Habermas, J. (1987). The theory of communicative action, volume two: Lifeworld and system: A critique of functionalist reason (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hardy, I., Edwards-Groves, C., & Rönnerman, K. (2012). Collaborative learning as a travelling practice: How practices of learning travel. Educational Practice and Theory, 34(2), 5–22. Heap, J. (1985). Discourse in the production of classroom knowledge: Reading lessons. Curriculum Inquiry, 15, 245–279. Hiebert, J., & Grouws, D. A. (2007). The effects of classroom mathematics teaching on students’ learning. In Handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning (pp. 371–404). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Kemmis, S,. & Edwards-Groves, C. (2018). Understanding education: History, politics and practices. Singapore: Springer Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R., & Nixon, R. (2014). The action research planner: Doing critical participatory action research. Singapore: Springer. Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2017). Roads not travelled, roads ahead: How the theory of practice architectures is travelling. In K. Mahon, S. Francisco, & S. Kemmis (Eds.), Exploring education and professional practice—Through the lens of practice architectures (pp. 239–256). Singapore: Springer. Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, L. (2014). Changing practices, changing education. Singapore: Springer. Lave, J. (2019). Learning in everyday life: Access, participation and changing life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lave, J., & Packer, M. (2008). Towards a social ontology of learning. In Klaus Nielson et al. (Eds.), A qualitative stance: Essays in honor of Steinar Kvale (pp. 17–46). Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. Littleton, K., & Mercer, N. (2013). Interthinking: Putting talk to work. Oxion: Routledge. Lundgren, U. P. (1983). Between hope and happening: Text and context in curriculum. Geelong, Victoria: Deakin University Press. Rönnerman, K., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2012). Genererat ledarskap [Generative leadership]. In K. Rönnerman (Ed.), Aktionsforskning i praktiken—förskola och skola på vetenskaplig grund [Action research in practice] (pp. 171–190). Lund: Studentlitteratur. Rönnerman, K., Edwards-Groves, C., & Grootenboer, P. (2015). Opening up communicative spaces about ‘quality practices’ in early childhood education through middle leadership. Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 1(3). Rönnerman, K., Edwards-Groves, C., & Grootenboer, P. (2018). Att leda från mitten—lärare driver professionell utveckling [Leading from the middle—Teachers driving professional development]. Stockholm: Lärarförlaget. ISBN 978-91-88149-33-6. Røvik, K. A. (2016). Knowledge transfer as translation: Review and elements of an instrumental theory. British Academy of Management. Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12097. Säljö, R. (2015). Lärande—en introduktion till perspektiv och metaforer. Malmö, Svenska: Gleerups. ISBN 978-91-40-68826-2. Schatzki, T. (2002). The site of the social: A philosophical account of the constitution of social life and change. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Schatzki, T. R. (2017). Sayings, texts and discursive formations. In A. Hui, T. R. Schatzki, & E. Shove (Eds.), The nexus of practices: Connections, constellations, practitioners (pp. 126–140). Abingdon, Oxon, New York: Routledge.

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Chapter 4

Being and Becoming a Middle Leader: Journeying into the Space of Leading

Abstract This chapter focuses on middle leading and how it evolved through the professional life journey of a group of teachers who had participated in action research. Leading professional learning in schools is a professional education practice that involves both teaching students in classrooms and leading school-based professional learning, often through facilitating long term action research projects. Specifically, the chapter considers how teachers journeyed into this space of middle leading, an impetus triggered by their own dispositions, commitment to developing education as a societal good, and importantly, their own professional development experiences in action research. For them, learning to lead was found in learning to learn. The chapter represents a coherent view of the experiences and practices of these educators who, by their commitment to learning, inhabited their professional space in a different way as each moved into a middle leading role. According to these teachers, their own participation experiences in action research redefined their professional trajectories. In retracing their own professional histories, becoming a middle leader seemed to flow from facilitation and mentoring practices that strengthened their own personal teaching know-how, their capacity to critically reflect on and articulate (justify and reason) professional understandings, and encouraged an individual and collective responsibility to learn and lead. Over time, such practices unearthed in these teachers, a deeper personal and interpersonal confidence that set leading in motion. Action research led them to their educational leading place, ultimately shifting their identities as educators.

A Voice from the Field … this journey into leadership was a surprise to me – I didn’t intend for that to happen; my goal was to improve my teaching but I firmly believe that it was the processes and time in the action research that pushed me this way – to leading it myself. Staying in the classroom as a teacher, leading the school’s professional learning from that position is seen by some people as going backwards, or stagnating, but I see it as going up… and what’s more I like the satisfaction of contributing to the change agenda here, being a change maker, so to speak …

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4 Being and Becoming a Middle Leader: Journeying into the Space … From my own professional development experiences [a yearlong action research] that I participated in some years ago, I had to learn as a leader to use what I have learnt and developed over many years from my own mentors in the past [Harriet], to create an environment for others to learn. I have come to understand the leadership and facilitating part of it by being involved in it – as a teacher practising the very things I am supporting others to do – this is what it takes to create a climate for professional learning. It is about looking inward and outward at the same time … about knowing oneself and being prepared for the challenge of supporting others to know themselves …and for challenging them to be critical about what they are doing too. It is about having an instinctive nature for continual development… being open and committed to share in the responsibility for it, not in a passive way, but being proactive about it, being on the front foot to seek out ways to be better… …my capacities as a leader stem from my capacities as both a learner and a teacher – they are tied together actually. How I see it, my professional leadership is sustained by a reciprocity between both teaching and ongoing professional learning … in one way, one continually flows into the other… back and forth so to speak… for me facilitating is teaching is learning is leading – I can’t see the difference. Rosie, Middle leader

Threading through Rosie’s words is a view of the generative power of professional learning that is produced and reproduced in situations, in real time and over historical time through long term practices such as action research. Rosie equates action research with her professional development, which upon reflection she attributed to her practical development as a teacher and a leader; that is, leading that is a shared transformative educational practice (Edwards-Groves, Wilkinson, & Mahon, 2020). That professional development, of the kind we are suggesting in this book, is shared (social, collegial and dispersed), transformative (capacity building, generative, change focused) and educational (for the good of individuals, collectives and for society) speaks to the foothold action research has for the practical development of teachers. Therefore, educational research and the actions that it demands, is, as Carr (2007) argues, a practical science that requires a heightened criticality among practitioners of practices that ultimately enables sustainable professional development (Carr & Kemmis, 1986). Rosie suggests that leading professional learning in schools makes change possible, and that contributing to change, being a changemaker (as a learner, teacher, researcher and a leader), in schools involves a reciprocity that empowers and changes others (peers, students, system directors, community members) at the same time is empowering and changing one’s self. As she speaks about learning, teaching, action research, facilitating and leading, Rosie speaks of how they are inextricably linked. The links between these practices raises the notion of entanglement; this provides a way of representing the tightly woven overlapping relationship (and reciprocity) between the multiple dimensions of her educational work (for instance she describes, teaching and leading the learning of others, learning, professional development, professional leadership, facilitating). Previous chapters have followed the pathway from professional learning to leading as expressed in the accounts of the participants in our study. We emphasised how particular practice architectures of action research create cornerstones

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(that form conditions) generative of professional transformation in four domains of the educational practicescape in schools: • transforming the professional self as a learner (as an investment in self), • transforming the professional self as a teacher (as an investment in self for others), transforming the professional self as a researcher (as an investment in self and others), and • transforming the professional self as a leader (as an investment in others). These cornerstones give rise to particular practices that are core to generating the change that is desired, or morevoeer demanded, in schools (Edwards-Groves, Grootenboer & Attard 2019). We use the term practicescape1 here to represent the focus on practices (and its sayings, doings and relatings) that drive the project of activity, interactivity and action in specific places (sites) like schools or preschools. The permeability and interconnectivity between these dimensions of transformation leave open room for tracing both the generative nature of professional learning to leading learning through action research and the conditions or resources that enable this to evolve. This next chapter follows the professional practice journey for changemaking for middle leaders like Rosie. It draws attention to the interdependence among particular clusters of practices for being and becoming a middle leader, and the ways particular practices interact with and influence each other, so that one practice (like action research for professional learning) produces outcomes or products (like improved teaching and student learning) that are taken up in other practices (like leading).

Following den röda tråden This chapter follows the professional education journey into the space of leading; in particular middle leading and the practitioner partnerships that recognisably support school-based development and change (Edwards-Groves, Olin & KarlbergGranlund, 2016). When we speak of professional education, we visualise den röda tråden2 stitching together all aspects of a teacher’s life from researching to teaching to learning to leading, not in a linear sense but from our view through a tapestry 1A

compound word form we derived from the use of ‘practice’ (here the site-based complex of education practices—student learning, teaching, professional learning, leading and researching) and ‘scape’ (meaning for example prospect, perspective, outlook, vision, aspect, vista, sight, panorama, overlook, or scene; https://www.dictionary.com/browse/scape), denoting an extensive interconnected view of practices that comprises the everyday happenstance and activity of a site like a school or preschool; thus a practicescape is “a picture or representation” of such a view (as specified by the initial element, here, practice). Our use of this term deliberately orients more specifically to the dynamic vibrancy and happeningness of place-based activity, adding texture and movement to representations of practice that might otherwise remain hidden, latent or taken-for-granted in more static terms such as ‘landscape’. 2 We note the use the Swedish words den röda tråden to represent the English words ‘the red thread’. This is a deliberate move to show the interconnections between our ideas, our collaboration, our

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of entwined and interconnected strands. This view is traced through the sentiments expressed by Rosie who anecdotally suggested that education practices (learning, teaching, researching, and leading) flow through and across one another without discrete boundaries separating or organising them. It is in open democratic ways of working with others, as Rosie implied, that develops an active, proactive and critical stance for sharing in the responsibility for education, a view shared by all the participants in our study. In essence, Rosie’s words resonate with those expressed by leading scholar Groundwater-Smith (2017), who described (of herself as she reflected back over the history and composition of her professional life), the inarguable inseparability of aspects between one’s personal and professional selves. She said, That at one and the same time, my professional self and my personal self are both distinguishable and indistinguishable. I can describe these selves separately, succinctly, and with reasonable accuracy, but I know each one infuses the other. (p. 76)

Groundwater-Smith provides us with a reasoned platform for untangling the complexity of the history and composition that comprises the dynamic interplay between professional education practices that one experiences across their professional life. Tracing the professional histories of the educators in our study, as we have attempted to present in this book, assists us to get inside the actual practices of professional learning, teaching and leading that are provocative of professional development in its most coherent logical form (Grootenboer, Edwards-Groves, & Rönnerman, 2020). Like Hardy and Edwards-Groves (2016) suggest, historicising practices is critical for revealing ways that particular practices of leading professional learning travel through practices, and across time and places (Hardy, Edwards-Groves, & Rönnerman, 2012). Understanding professional education practices as both residing and developing together, and mutually forming, informing and transforming the other as part of one’s professional learning journey, provides a new way for being able to describe the ways that education practices are entangled with one another. This entanglement is suggested in Rosie’s comment when she said professional leadership is sustained by a natural reciprocity between both teaching and professional learning … in one way, one continually flows into the other… for me facilitating is teaching is learning is leading—I can’t see the difference. These words illuminate how education practices are ecologically related. They shed light on the slipperiness, inseparability and interflow between aspects of an educational life, blurring the boundaries of the Education Complex of Practices (Kemmis et al., 2014), showing how tightly these practices are infused, as Groundwater-Smith said. And critically, as we have substantiated, rescripts the promise of action research as its influences extend far beyond the ‘official’ life of the ‘project’. Importantly, and further, this work makes a significant contribution to the literature on leadership development, in particular middle leading, and action research since it follows the happenings, the professional journeys, of a mutual respect and acceptance of our different languages (of which English is the dominant in the publication of this book).

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group of Swedish and Australian teachers whose participation in long term action research triggered, in them, learning how to learn, and subsequently how to lead. In this study, we focused on ‘lived’ cases of transformation reported by these Australian and Swedish teachers we followed over an extended period of time as they became middle leaders. They reported how particular action research practices produced, reproduced and transformed their professional learning practices into teaching into leading as a flow in vivo.3 These practices came to exist within the living (experienced) activity of these teachers, not as discrete activities but as shaping whole entities of practices like teaching, professional learning and leading learning in their schools and preschools. After Schatzki (2002), we take the view that leading, and so middle leading, is a site of the social. This chapter begins with a description of what middle leading is, and considers the journey into the space of middle leading as a process of endless becoming. To more closely examine the journey into leading of teachers like Rosie, we draw on data from interviews with teachers to discuss middle leading as critical educational praxis. We then follow key intersecting features for being and becoming a middle leader, including: middle leading as critical educational praxis, middle leading as a practice-changing practice; the journey into middle leading; professional learning and leading as entwined evolutionary practices; tracing the conditions for leading and learning to lead; being a changemaker; and finally, arriving at a definition of generative leadership. These features are not flimsy but anchored firmly in practices and practice architectures that created conditions for leading to happen. Each section presents these concepts of leading derived from the voices of educators—in turn, has depended on, and been informed by the theory of practice architectures (Kemmis et al., 2014) and ecologies of practices (Edwards-Groves & Rönnerman, 2013; Kemmis et al., 2012; Rönnerman & Edwards-Groves, 2012).

Middle Leading as Critical Educational Praxis This chapter follows on from Chap. 3 focused on professional learning to examine leading, in specifically middle leading. It picks up the dynamic shuttling between dialogic, material and social resources required for practising leading, leading that, we suggest, reflects critical educational praxis. Praxis-oriented professionals continue to extend themselves across their career in their commitment to selfeducation and its impact on the learning and education of others (Edwards-Groves, 2008); they reach beyond the limits of a more technical view of educational work, their actions are wise, ethical and prudent in light of circumstances at the time. In the words of Kemmis and Smith (2008, p. 4) educational praxis is “action that is morally committed, and oriented and informed by traditions in a field”. It is action that aims for the good and benefit of those involved directly there and then (the leadership 3 We draw on the Latin word in vivo for “within the living” to capture the concept that people’s lives

are lived in practices; after Glaser and Strauss (1967), Schatzki (2010).

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team, teachers and students at the school) and for the wider good for humankind (the parents and the community, and for the future good of civility and society). Praxis resides in egalitarian ways of working, sharing in the responsibility for learning and development, and the commitment to doing so in active, proactive and critical ways, and described in Chap. 2 (this volume) as cornerstones of action research. This is stressed in Rosie’s point, that being open and committed to share in the responsibility for it, not in a passive way, but being proactive about it, being on the front foot to seek out ways to be better. From this we recognise that part of the thread we are following, means developing what we describe as an ethos for leading as critical educational praxis. To illustrate this concept further, we return to Rosie who said about leading professional learning: … it gives me a true feeling that I am challenging the status quo, getting everyone to question their practices, to think deeply about what they are doing and why… and seriously trying to improve mine and the other teachers’ teaching … you know you’re using your skills and knowledge for doing something beneficial, and right, for the development of everyone here, to make things better for the kids now but also for their future, and their teachers too … and you know it’s making an impact, it’s working when it’s just as valuable for the leadership team and even includes the parents…

Wound through her comments here, are suggestions that being a middle leader means enacting practices that are ‘critical’ (challenging the status quo, getting everyone to question their practices, to think deeply about what they are doing and why), ‘educational’ (seriously trying to improve, that you know, that you’re using your skills and knowledge for the education of individuals and collectives, now and in the future, making an impact) and ‘praxis-oriented’ (doing something beneficial, right, for the education of everyone to make things better, that it is valuable). On this view, middle leading can be understood as educational work that is critical and praxis-oriented, a view which strikes accord with Smith’s (2008) notion of a praxis stance, and aligns closely with the notion of critical pedagogical praxis (Mahon, 2016). Understanding leading in this way, as ‘critical educational praxis’, is firmly located in the broader field of educational leadership but with a shift towards a site ontological practice-based perspective. The focus on leading as a practice is emerging as a field of study in educational leadership and social science. It is an approach that attends to what leaders say, how leading is done, and the distinctive ways a leader relates to others in particular sites for, and occasions of, leading others. This view considers practices of leading, rather than more prominent approaches that characterise roleincumbents’ traits, and roles and positions in an organisation (Grootenboer, 2018; Kemmis et al., 2014; Wilkinson & Kemmis, 2015). As Kemmis et al. (2014) argued, understanding the theoretical and practical realities of the ‘site’ is important for understanding practices, like middle leading. Theoretically, they said, there is the need for a site “to be understood in existential and ontological terms as an actual and particular place where things happen, not just as a location in an abstract and universal matrix of space-time” (p. 179). To explain further, they say,

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It is the place where things happen – where people meet and engage with one another in practice amid the practice architectures that make those practices possible. The site of a practice is the phenomenological reality that always and necessarily escapes standardisation in curricula, standards, assessments and policies. The site is not only a matter of happenstance (where practices happen to take place and where things happen to be arranged as they are), nor only because the site is the specific location in which participants’ practical deliberation and their practical action takes place.

Thus, understanding the phenomenological reality of middle leading means examining the nature of the ‘practicescape’, the actual place, where things actually happen. This means locating the site as the locus of realisation of educational leading. So, to unravel the values threaded through professional education development means considering the happeningness of practices (Edwards-Groves & Grootenboer, 2017) that enables us to see people in orchestration with one another as they enact practices and importantly their accounts of it.

Middle Leading as a Practice-Changing Practice Leading, and so middle leading, is a complex and dynamic multilayered site-based practice. And so, understanding the journey into this practice space requires peeling back the layers to examine how one becomes a middle leader. The term middle leader is widely used in countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States, and has been increasingly the subject of more intense and focused research. For example, Harris, Jones, Ismail, and Nguyen (2019) recognised that research across the globe, particularly over the last ten years, has increasingly centred on leadership responsibilities, action and the roles of different middle leaders (p. 269). In Canada, Hargreaves and Ainscow (2015) use the term to recognise the key people responsible for organising and building networks in regions of large-scale reform. It is a term also taken up in policy documents from the Ministry of Education in New Zealand (2012) to represent the middle and senior leadership tasked with the purpose of improving educational and social outcomes for all students. Middle leader is also associated with teacher leaders, a term used by Muijs and Harris (2006) when referring to school improvement in the UK. There, teacher leaders are appointed by the principal. This view differs from ours in that the middle leaders emerged through long-term action research. Our emphasis, and focus, on middle leaders and their practices comes from the fact that each of the participants in our study became responsible for leading professional learning in their schools, but at the same time maintained their roles as classroom teachers (Grootenboer, 2018; Grootenboer, Edwards-Groves, & Rönnerman, 2014). Grootenboer, Rönnerman, and Edwards-Groves (2017, p. 248) describe the duality of the educative practices of middle leading in these broad terms; middle leading is exemplified by:

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To illustrate how middle leaders, themselves, express these multiple dimensions of their work, we pick up comments by Beth who said: The whole learning experience was, and still is, a long-term process that keeps going because I am always learning, always striving to learn and to do it [lead] better. But it is a process that gave me the chance to become the teaching voice in the ears of the school executive team; and to sometimes change the whole direction for supporting the teacher’s development. They generally supported me in my approaches and trusted my ideas about how to manage the process because I had the on-the-ground knowledge and expertise in literacy teaching so to speak… And for me, at the same time as I moved between my own teaching and facilitating the learning of the other teachers in this school, I did so knowing I can make a real difference to the students’ learning and teachers’ teaching practices, and even in some ways to the parents and the wider community, also trying new things like opening up channels of communication with them too, like with our showcase sessions after school, the tips for parents in the newsletter that we brought in – tips as in T-T-I-P-S, Teaching Tips and Information for ParentS (haha), the open class learning visits, and the ‘listen-and-learn lunches’ that they are all invited to too. It’s a genuine collaborative exercise with everyone on board… you can’t do it or go it alone if you want deep learning that sticks.

Beth’s insights, describing her experiences of leading from this middle position between the school executive team, and the teachers and students at the school, direct us firstly to this view of middle leading considered by Grootenboer et al. (2020, p. 28), that positions middle leading practices as site-based pedagogical leadership. We take this view since, as a priori, middle leading is for the pedagogical development of teachers for enacting highquality pedagogies with students as they learn in lessons. It is a practice-changing practice generated as site-based and site responsive.

For Beth, her leading is site-based (in this school), pedagogical (focused on the students’ learning and teachers’ teaching practices) and a practice-changing practice (making a real difference, trying new things, change the direction, deep learning that sticks). Middle leading, therefore, is realised in practices; but as she indicates practices are not static. What Beth is orienting to are the ways that her middle leading practices are enabled and constrained by practice architectures (EdwardsGroves, Grootenboer & Rönnerman, 2016, 2018; Grootenboer, Edwards-Groves & Rönnerman, 2015; Rönnerman, Grootenboer & Edwards-Groves, 2017). Moving between being the teaching voice in the ears of the school executive team, and changing the whole direction for supporting the teacher’s development, and her role as a teacher and a facilitator directly relates to the dynamism, interconnectedness and multifacetedness of education practices. This is evident as she constantly shuttles between: • the dialogic in semantic space (made apparent in the particular kind of sayings, knowing and thinking, expressed in the comprehensibility and relevance of the language used there in the site at the time),

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• the material in physical space-time (made apparent in the particular kind of doings and activities, resources and physical set-ups used there in the site at the time), and • the social space (made apparent in the particular kind of relatings found in the roles and relationships between those present and the wider community there in the site at the time). Secondly, Beth’s descriptions illustrate how leading practices relate to practice architectures. Specifically, she orients our thinking to how particular education practices (like teaching, student learning, leading, professional learning, community education) shape, and are shaped by, other nuanced site-based site-responsive practices (like sharing learning in showcase sessions, newsletter TTIPs, open classroom visits, ‘listen and learn’ lunches), and that (at the same time) these both become, and are influenced by other, practice architectures at the site, including: • cultural-discursive arrangements like on-the-ground guild knowledge of teaching, being the teaching voice or disciplinary expertise, or language of facilitating and literacy teaching; • material-economic arrangements like professional learning that is conducted over time, creating opportunities and activities for sharing learning projects, or opening up channels of communication (e.g. newsletters, class visits and parent sessions); • social-political arrangements such as being given the chance, being supported by the school executive, having the power to be able to change the whole direction for supporting teachers’ development, being trusted to manage and facilitate, issuing invitations more widely to parents and the community to join the school activities, or bringing everyone on board. It is the practices (what she said, what activities she did, and how she related to others including the school executive team, the students, teachers, parents and wider community members) and the practice architectures (the conditions) that influenced (enabled and constrained) her middle leading. In Beth’s situation, for instance, her middle leading created site-based conditions that opened up communicative spaces for everyone, these made sustainable future action a possibility (as suggested above by Grootenboer et al., 2017) because, as she said, the practices found there have facilitated deep learning that sticks.

The Journey into Middle Leading: A Transformational Process of Endless Becoming Much is written about the purposes, personality, practices and positionality of educational leadership, less is known about how leading and leadership emerges in practices. This section specifically focuses on how middle leaders themselves understand their own journey into leading, what were the experiences that led them to this middle position, learning as a teacher and facilitating the learning of colleagues as a leader. In

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accounts of their professional transformation, our participants recognised the multilayered, highly complex and interactive environment that critical participatory action research holds in creating a new professional learning practicescape relevant for securing the kind of long-term learning, development and change we have shown. It is a process whereby practitioners practices hinge on the practicescape of education in their local site of practice (the school or preschool), and at the same time, pivots around the foundations one builds for themselves in their careers to shift their professional trajectories. This is a point recognised in Rosie’s opening comment, this journey into leadership was a surprise to me—I didn’t intend for that to happen; my goal was to improve my teaching but I firmly believe that it was the processes and time in the action research that pushed me this way—to leading it myself . It is a sentiment similarly expressed in the following excerpts, which also highlight the critical importance of participating as a teacher learner in the first instance, which was an experience that led, unexpectedly, to developing leading capacities. Melanie says: …honestly without that [participating in the program] I probably wouldn’t have gone where I am now. It gave me the leverage, the confidence and courage to continue on with this way of working with other teachers in the system…

Foremost for both Rosie and Melanie, like each of the teachers interviewed in our studies, was the identifying that the development of leading professional learning actually hinged on their participation in the long-term action research program. They refer to that participating in an action research program gave them the ‘leverage’, ‘courage’ and ‘inspiration’ required to move from their initial goal to improve teacher to continue with leading professional learning in their own school system. As Marianne said, this meant ‘grabbing’ the moment: …we had not really thought about either from the beginning of the course but it was probably something that we saw that in order to continue to spread the good work, we knew someone must be the engine for it and there was nobody else, so it’s just that it was up to us to try to grab it. Both of us had read this about how a group like this develops, and, I dared to have a go to try being a discussion leader…

As indicated by Marianne, taking part in the long-term action research programs herself—as a teacher working through the processes and challenges of professional learning created the impetus to shift her career directions. In the quote Marianne refers to a kind of journey she did not know would happen when beginning the program, but that her growth over time gave her confidence in daring to step up as a leader. She also refers to the culture-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements prefiguring the practice of the preschool she wants to develop. Furthermore, she identifies her of having the courage of taking on an active leading stance after taking part in the program, ultimately wanting to take part in the improvement of the preschool. Enabling conditions for development of leading professional learning practices emerged as ‘leading practices’ for our participants. Recently, Edwards-Groves et al. (2020) described this journey into leading as part of a shared transformative educational practice whereby:

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The professional education journey can be considered as a constant coming-to-be in the endless happeningness that characterises our professional world.

The sections in this chapter look closely at particular leading practices that formed part of the professional education journey into leadership of teachers like Rosie and Beth, and the other middle leaders we introduce. The metaphor of ‘the journey’ was used commonly by our participants in both Australia and Sweden to represent the pathways, experiences and direction of their careers; and is one also used by leading Swedish scholar Gustavsson (1996) to describe the processes of bildung (in Swedish bildning). Bildning is a central concept in, for example, the Nordic tradition of folk enlightenment in education (Rönnerman & Salo, 2017). Bildung describes an education tradition, in continental Europe and in the Nordic countries (Ponte & Rönnerman, 2009), related to human growth and the ongoing development of knowledge that changes and grows human beings (Liedman, 2002). It has been described as ‘formation’—referring to the formation of both persons and societies. And considers the relationship between the known and the unknown, and the processes of ‘coming to know’ through life’s experiences. For instance, you leave your house with certain experiences (the known) and go out into the world where you acquire other experiences (the unknown), and when you return you are not the same (that is, you have gained experiences and grown as a human being). Bildung refers to an open and emancipatory process of gaining general knowledge in life and of (folk) enlightenment; and underlines the importance of interaction, discussion and dialogue in knowledge creation (Ponte & Rönnerman, 2009). Confronting the unknown brings one closer to critically reflecting on oneself, and thus provides opportunities to examine and re-examine everyday perspectives, challenges and issues (Gustavsson, 1996). Bildung is a lifelong journey; a lifelong process of learning and becoming, ‘a constant coming-to-be’ as put by Edwards-Groves et al. (2020). Thus to consider bildung in relation to leading and learning to lead, means couching it terms of ‘the endless happeningness of practices’ of learning and becoming. This humanistic but critical view of leading is one captured in the reflections of Jana, who said of her own experience, do we ever arrive at being a leader? in reality for me it is a process of endless development and ongoing learning. Her first question, rhetorically poses whether one actually ever arrives at being a leader, and interestingly draws strong resonances with the metaphor of a journey and its destination; but in the reality of her own experience she answered her own question. The use of the words “endless” and “ongoing” in her response resonate with the traditional ideas of bildung as she lays out the interminability and constancy of learning across one’s life. Jana’s response frames her position as leading being a lifelong learning journey. Jana’s sentiments are similarly recognised by Beth (presented in an earlier extract), who reflected that this whole learning experience was, and still is, a long-term process that keeps going because I am always learning, always striving to learn and to do it [lead] better. But it is a process that gave me the chance to become the teaching voice in the ears of the school executive team. In Beth’s terms, that learning to lead involves a “whole learning experience”, a “long term process”, that it “keeps going”,

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that she is “always learning”, and “striving”, “that it was a process that gave her a chance to become” is important for illustrating the processual nature of learning to lead. But moreover, her insertion, “and still is”, indicates a view that it is ongoing, uncompleted journey. For Beth and Jana, their ideas about process, of being, and of becoming a leader strongly align. Importantly, their words provide grounds to reframe the more common corporatised conceptions of educational leadership4 to consider the interrelated processes which enable leading and leading practices to emerge. To further strengthen this idea about the inextricable connection between leading and learning, we introduce another middle leader, Rachel. Her description, next, brings to life these ideas as she speaks about recognising and supporting a sense of share collegial responsibility for leading: …there’s that lovely saying when you work to bring out the best in others, you’ll bring out the best in yourself, so in that search to help others you also become a better person, so when I lead I learn, if you don’t then you are only an organiser or manager… it is mutually beneficial because I strongly believe that the teachers with whom I work can do this and so I’m going to dig deeper into myself to help them believe in themselves, to transform their teaching practices and give them a voice… like handing over some of the responsibility to them to lead a discussion here or there, or maybe to select the readings and facilitate the book talk, or to summarise or write up the learnings from the group reflections, or list the key take home messages for the whole group at the end of the session, or whatever, these things really help them to get a sense that they are sharing in the leadership, and that at the same time learning as well…

Rachel’s point suggests that middle leading is a two-way generative process. Her insights illustrate a doubleness in how becoming a leader is a process in and of itself (when I lead I learn) and that, at the same time, is a process of facilitating practices which create practice architectures, conditions, that make it possible for others to learn and to lead. For example, she specifically mentioned local practices such as, handing over the responsibility to them to lead a discussion, to select the readings, to facilitate a book talk, to summarise learning or write up the reflections, or to identify the key take home messages, are practices that really help them to get a sense that they are sharing in the leadership, and that at the same time learning. Along with these specific activities, we also find in Rachel’s account, evidence that a communitarian ethos undergirds middle leading practices, for instance she identified (in her own practice) that ‘bringing out the best in others’, ‘believing in teachers’, ‘supporting their transformation’, ‘giving them a voice’, and ‘sharing the responsibility’, create conditions that open up possibilities for leading to emerge; that is, leading is generative of leading. We argue, this is because from their position being a teacher ‘in the middle’ (between the school executive team and the classroom teachers) their 4 For

instance, see, for example, Raelin (2016) and earlier work on for example, transformational leadership (Burns, 1978), and distributed leadership by Gronn (2000) and Spillane (2006) which highlights to whom leadership responsibilities are distributed. Our intention here is not to diminish the large body of work describing, theorising and presenting models of leadership in education, by putting them in simplistic terms, but rather to show how leading is a practice, not always nominal but one that emerges from practices.

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leading forms practice architectures that shape education for all at their school; it is a practice that augurs 360°. In particular, as our participants have exemplified, their practices influence the educational directions and approaches (like facilitating action research) to the school’s improvement agenda, to teacher’s professional learning, to teaching change, to student learning, and to teacher’s leading. To this we claim a broader social good; that middle leading is generative of education for individuals (bring out the best in oneself and other individuals) and for collectives (groups of teachers, students and the wider community). Rachel’s comments, like Rosie, Jana and Beth above, show us how becoming a middle leader is an endless learning process; that it is part of ongoing development and growth because humans are always in the practices and experiences from which we learn (a process of bildung). It is striking that their words also highlight the idea that the middle leader is a learning leader, and make a clear distinction between the humanistic interpersonal nature of middle leading and the kind of leadership more focused on organising or managing. The thrust of our argument in this book is supported by Rachel’s words, here, that show us how action research, and so facilitating and middle leading, is generative of leading, and is experienced in practices which provide the learning ground for leading practices to emerge. To conclude, in this section we detect a reciprocity in action research (or mutuality as Rachel so aptly put) which provide grounds beneficial for learning to learn, learning to lead and leading to learn; its processes and practices prefigure learning how to learn (in the professions), and in its wake lays the groundwork for learning to lead, for becoming a leader. This practical and generative notion of practices is one also set out recently by Lave (2019, p. 138).

Professional Learning and Leading as Practices that Transform: Making Leading Practices One’s Own A key to understanding middle leading, is revealing how leading practices are made and remade, produced and reproduced, over time and in different places. The view that education practices like leading, or teaching or learning can be understood as a dialectic process of as Kemmis and Edwards-Groves (2018, p. 77) observed, “reproduction of the knowledge, skills, and values of people and societies at particular times have included noticing, not only: 1. that every act of reproduction is also an act of production, but also 2. that education is always not only a process of reproduction but also, at the same time, a process of transformation.” In a broader sense, “education always transforms society, even as it reproduces it; and even where education aims to transform some aspects of society, it also reproduces others. Neither reproduction nor transformation happens in the absence of the other; they are dialectically related—that is, they are mutually constitutive

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aspects of each other” (Kemmis & Edwards-Groves, 2018, p. 77). These processes are perpetually overlapping, in motion, and generative of one another. To capture this movement and transformation of practices being made and remade, produced and reproduced, over time and space, we consider the concept of professional learning and leading as entwined evolutionary transformative practices that in a figurative sense travel (Hardy et al., 2012; Wilkinson, Olin, Lund, & Stjernström, 2013).5 The concept that practices travel is useful for understanding how over historical time and physical space particular practices are taken up, appropriated, reproduced and made one’s own in the in-practice flow of day-to-day educational work. To help us explain this further, we turn to Bakhtin’s (1981) description of language development, who said: The word is language in half someone else’s. It becomes ‘ones own’ only when the speaker populates it with his [sic] own intentions, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the work does not exists in a neutral and impersonal language…but rather exists in other people’s mouths, in other people’s context, serving other people’s intentions; it is from there that one must take the word and make it one’s own. (p. 294)

Recasting Bakhtin’s perspective in relation to practices assists in providing a pragmatic attempt to explain the parallels we found in the accounts of the teachers in our study; it is a view that aligns with the notion of ‘prefigurement’ from the theory of practice architectures. In this vein, practices (experienced in sayings, doings and relatings) are prefigured but not necessarily predetermined as they are reproduced. They are half someone else’s because they are prefigured by other practices, by past experiences and the historical, intellectual and cultural traditions that form a discipline or field or society; but these conditions cannot actually determine the in-practice flow of how things turn out (in their reproduction) at the time given the peculiarity and particularity of different sites. So when someone appropriates practices of one kind or another, in their practising they adapt it to (i) the project of the practice they are occasioning at the time (like a literacy lesson or a teacher professional development session on technology use), and to (ii) both their own semantic, material and social intentions and the conditions and circumstances present in the site. In her comment, middle leader Marlena orients to the notion of appropriation through the idea of modelling; she notes: …I also wanted then to keep on with this, to help other teachers, as I knew this worked. How Roni [action research facilitator] led the group that’s what I did too here in the preschool…

5 Although the concept of ‘travelling’ is connected to another well-known practice theory, the theory

of translation (see Czarniawska-Joerges & Sevón, 1996; Røvik, 2016), we use it here to illustrate the notion of the “journey” that is a central focus for this chapter. We extend the notion by considering that it is not only that ideas (sayings) travel (by being unpacked and repacked in a new context), but equally so do activities, use of resources, and material arrangements in physical spaces at different historical times (doings), and ways that people in practices develop particular kinds of roles and relationships as they shift and transform as leaders leading others (relatings) as they meet for professional learning. Although similar to translation theory, we use the concept to show the generative dimensions of happenings over time and space.

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Middle leaders like Marlena make appropriation the key trigger point for their leading development. Marlena suggested here that modelling the leading practices that worked for other leaders (like Roni) is important for laying the groundwork for learning to lead themselves. In her leading, she wanted to keep on doing the particular practices she learnt from Roni. Thus, developing and extending one’s own leading practices happen as particular practices are modelled by others and then appropriated—travelling over temporal space (doing as others did in the past, as Roni did) and geographical sites (on new occasions, in new physical spaces, in new sites like at different stage level at the preschool). So, here we see how leading practices ‘travel’ across time and space (in the figurative sense), making it possible for next generations or iterations of practices to be carried across time and place (Schatzki, 2010), practiced and made ones’ own. That is, leading is a process of coming-topractices-by-practising. This generative dimension of practices is also signalled in the explanation offered by middle leader Marianne: …Roni [as the facilitator] inspired me and gave me the language about how to facilitate… I learnt from the demonstrations and she was incredibly unpretentious, it gave both a feeling of a group and allowing all to express ourselves, to come with our own ideas or views or values. My leadership of the groups have become a reflection of it [previous experience], either for my questioning and approaches around it [through setting up Pedagogical Mondays]. Roni as the facilitator was probably the model and example of how to facilitate myself…

Marianne mentions how her learning to lead involved coming-to-know-in-practice through a process of appropriating the practices ‘modelled’ ‘demonstrated’ and ‘exemplified’ by Roni; for example, in sayings (gave them the language), in doings (showed ways to work in groups, setting up Pedagogical Mondays) and relatings (provide arrangements that gave participants the feeling of groupness and allowing all to express themselves, their own ideas, views or values). Through appropriating, then taking up aspects of Roni’s leading for herself, Marianne recreated practices in the situation she was in, in the way she created, for example, an open communicative space for professional learning among colleagues within her own school-system. As Marianne indicated, her leadership practices, vis a vis specific questioning and facilitation approaches like setting up a teacher sharing session called Pedagogical Mondays, were a reflection, and appropriation, of her previous experiences (with Roni). That is her practices were reproduced versions of Roni’s practices. Roni’s practices were, therefore, practice architectures for enabling the development (reproduction and transformation) of Marianne’s own leading. Marianne described this travelling or conveyance as a process of transference: …it’s like a collective transfer of knowledge to another place; the course gave me that opportunity. I felt I had something to draw on, I had a different knowledge to do it…

Interestingly, Marianne mentions a “collective transfer of knowledge to another place”, shifting or conveying understandings and practices to another role—her role as a leader. This transformation took place in an intersubjective space. The teachers participated in the practice of action research where meaning subjectively for themselves through the intersubjective realm of “being-with” others were transformed. In interactions with other teachers in the course meaning making occurred in semantic

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space when sharing ideas and understandings in the medium of language; in physical space-time when they engaged in actions and interactions using resources in the medium of activity and in the socially and politically space when they encounter each other in different roles and relationships in the medium of solidarity and power. For instance, when the teachers met in communicative spaces during the course the space enabled them to share their experiences and deepen their knowledge (sayings), to actually meet one another in physical space (doings), and build relationships with other teachers (relatings). To illustrate this notion further, we consider middle leader Beth’s description of how she developed what worked for her as she learnt to lead; she said, …I’ve developed all of these resources - personal and professional - in my own journey, and I know that these have been important for developing my style of leadership… at first I was doing as Grace [action research facilitator] did, copying well trying anyway… but that didn’t work out exactly the same, as things are different with this bunch of teachers, they all have different ways and years of experience… So this meant trying different ways, then adjusting it here and there to suit the needs and learning styles of teachers in my group, and fitting it in my own presentation style… but I know what worked for me with how I experienced the professional learning sessions, how I like to learn, so I also use and adapt these for the teachers I am working with now…but in the end it’s like hitting the jackpot and you have got these little gems that work well or remodelling hand-me-downs or inheriting a treasure you want to share…

In copying and adjusting, using and adapting past practices experienced in interactions with more expert/experienced others (like Grace, the action research facilitator), Beth describes ways that making particular practices her own is evident when she populated practices with her own intentions, voice, activities and ways of relating. For instance, when she took up, tried out and remodelled practices in ways that fit in with her own style (way of practising) and responded to the site-based conditions (for instance, to suit the needs and learning styles of teachers in the group). But Beth also recognised that practices cannot be simply replicated, or lifted up and relocated in other practice sites at other times, because on different occasions of practising “things didn’t work out exactly the same”, that “teachers are all different, they all have different ways and years of experience.” Her practices were not simply reproduced, they were reproduced with variations that were responsive to the site, to the circumstances and conditions present at the time. As Bakhtin (1981, p. 294) said, “prior to a moment of appropriation, practices do not exist in a benign, neutral or impersonal linguistic, material, social space …but rather exists in other people’s mouths, in other people’s contexts, serving other people’s intentions”. It is from there that one must take up practices (the language, the activities and the ways of relating) and make them one’s own. This means that a practitioners’ practices are made one’s own when, for example: • as a speaker, produce and reproduce sayings—populating it in their own accent and vernacular, when they appropriate the words for their own purposes, adapting it to their own semantic and expressive intention and as they engage in interlocutory meaning making;

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• as an actor, produce and reproduce doings—doing activities that are initially mimicked, recreated and adjusted to be appropriated as one’s own in physical set-ups designed and resources used to suit the here-and-now of the action and activity; and • as a social being, produce and reproduce relatings—interacting with power, in the kind of relationships that afford relational trust, solidarity and interpersonal agency. So, it is in ‘new’ occasions of practising that remnants or traces of other practices that have been ‘picked up’ are on display in practices. This is a view that shows how learning to lead is a dynamic living and generative practice formed through conveyancing and evolutionary processes of coming-to-know-in-practices, coming-to-practices-by-practising—reproduction and transformation. New practices become ‘ones own’, therefore, when practitioners, like Marlena, Arianne, Marianne and Beth, produce practices conveyed from other people’s practising (like Grace and Roni’s practice of leading). These, then are taken up and reproduced in their own practices produced anew (in new sites and on new occasions) and populated with their own intentions, their own language, activities and ways of relating with others, and happen in their style, in their own place, and set in their own responses to the practice architectures in their own setting.

The Leading Edge: Recognising and Responding to Relational Density When facilitators and the teachers with whom they work come together in practices, on each and every occasion they are making practices anew (then and there for the first time). As speakers, actors and social beings, practitioners are engaging in, for the most part, interactions, activities and relationships that strive for intersubjective meaning making. To arrive at intersubjective meaning making requires from the outset, agreeing to make collective efforts, as Kemmis and McTaggart (2005, p. 296) said, to achieve “intersubjective agreement, mutual understanding of a situation, and unforced consensus about what to do”. But even with best intentions at the time, practising new practices is a vexed issue because practice architectures influence what happens then and there in the moment of practicing. Being in practices with others is rarely without its challenges, tensions and frustrations. Therefore, part of the process of coming-to-know-in-practices means also recognising that arrangements at practice sites are always “relationally dense” (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 216), in both the ways that people relate to others at the time (in the interlocutory sense of interpersonal relationships, roles, and the power, solidarity and agency these afford) and the ways people relate to objects and the physical world (in a societal, civic and material sense). For instance, as Beth’s account (next) shows, this process is not without wrinkles, contradictions, and personal, interpersonal and professional struggles:

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…it was hard to get it right, like I’m trying to copy her strategies and methods like a recipe, but it’s not that simple… there was a lot of trial and error, and more trial and error, so there were a lot of nerves because you are putting yourself out there for scrutiny… this is hard to admit but one thing that is a real challenge though through this is dealing with the resistors, the blockers, you know sometimes I felt like I was on the edge about to topple off… that’s just so frustrating for everyone especially when you are working so hard trying to turn around some teacher’s lack of confidence or perseverance with the technology, then you get the problem of managing people’s expectations, those that want the quick fix without doing the hard yards, revving up some people’s laissez faire attitude or lack of commitment to even giving it a go, well trying to bring people on board is sometimes a real balancing act, meeting them half way is a big part of getting that right, it’s difficult sometimes I can’t lie… so yes it was always a bit of a risk finding what works for me and the teachers in my situation and that can be tricky, and yes there were a few tense moments to be honest, haha…

Leading, as Beth infers, is complicated by relational density. As she recounted her experiences with other teachers, learning to lead for Beth was not seamless, nor without contention; it was “hard”, even “tricky”, and involved “a lot of nerves”, “a few tense moments” and feelings like she was “on the edge”. For her, learning to lead was a complex evolving process of repeated “trial and error” and opening herself up for “scrutiny”, both personally and professionally in the public domain among her colleagues and her principal. It was necessary, and challenging to find what worked for her as well as for the teachers with whom she worked in her school, and that this is “sometimes a real balancing act” that requires “meeting them half way”, or coming to consensus as Kemmis and McTaggart said. Navigating this terrain of uncertainty and unease meant, for Beth, managing the relational challenges that come with leading practice change among your colleagues in your own school. This is an example where collegiality emerges over time, it is not a forgone conclusion simply because you are in the same school. The reality of her frustrations are palpable, as she related examples where achieving intersubjective meaning making can be compromised by difficulties experienced by, for example, dealing with resistance, teacher frustration, lack of confidence or perseverance, people’s expectations, bringing people on board, motivating lax attitudes, lack of commitment or concerted efforts to try. For Beth’s leading, this means understanding that practices are not simply picked up and, in a neat glossy bundle, transplanted or inserted into other occasions of practising fait accompli. It is one that is “always a bit of a risk”, one not amounting to a more benign, almost formulaic procedure-following exercise like following the prescription of “a recipe”. This means part of the practice of middle leading involves openly accounting for, and grappling with, the relational density and complexity of leading practice development; a point to which May agrees next: …as a facilitator you are just a guest in their learning zone, so it must be about respecting that and that PD is not about handing over the goodies, on the contrary is about building their capacity. So, the bottom line it’s about unlocking learning for them, supporting them go further… to do this you must be prepared to consider all points of view in the process, this means trying to bring them out, tease out what they know and unpick the theory behind what they are saying, get at what is driving their decision making, this means being a really good listener… and be open to be challenged too, that’s hard sometimes, but always remember that they are not blank slates… so a big part of it having broad shoulders, no really it’s about

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flexibility, and sometimes conceding, because at the end of the day you have to persist in trying to get to that shared understanding, get on the same page kind of thing…

Here, May validates the earlier points raised by Beth, as she is unpicking or teasing out (using her terms) some of the complexities of facilitating professional learning. Her phrase being “a guest in their learning zone” cuts across what it means when people come together as interlocutors “to get to that shared understanding, get on the same page”, and reminds us that as learning professionals, teachers “are not blank slates”. For the middle leader, this means knowing that teacher learning cannot transacted as a simple transmission by “handing over the goodies”, it is about “building their capacity” through intersubjective meaning making actuated by being a good listener, and being respectful, open, flexible, persistent and concessional, or as Beth said “meeting them half way”. In this sense, teachers and facilitators of action research (like middle leaders) are practitioners of the professional learning, coinhabiting a shared intersubjective space evolving discursively in physical space-time as interactive events (Edwards-Groves, 2003, 2017). Excerpts we presented in this section draw critical attention to what we call the leading edge; it is the edginess that comes with being a teacher and a leader at the same time. The features of middle leading drawn out here recognise the tentativeness and tenuousness that comes with the realities of facilitating professional learning. Taken together, middle leader views show the edginess of happeningness, that it is an ever-changing interactively generated dynamic, one not without contestation or contradiction. Their accounts cannot be overlooked or trivialised when describing middle leading, since their stories add another layer of complexity of professional learning, learning to lead at the same time leading the professional learning of their colleagues as well as working to improve their own teaching. Furthermore, as McLaughlin, Watts, and Beard (2000) caution, just because professional learning is happening in schools, it doesn’t mean it’s working; what is necessary is an edginess in middle leading that is focused and committed to the ways that action research can be taken up to improve practices in sustainable ways at each school site.

Tracing the Conditions for Leading and Learning to Lead: An Ecological View The professional transformations we studied focused not on individual practices in isolation but on a network of educational practices that are interdependent in an ecology of practices at each school. Leading for site-based education (of students, teachers, school executives and communities) must be open-eyed to understanding how practices organically and interdependently connect with one another in ecologies of practices at the site. In an ecological view, leading “only has force and value if it connects and engages with what happens in the site and what happens for the site – for its people, its community and the practices that hold them together” (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 179). Alongside this, certain site-based conditions, arrangements, need

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also to exist to activate and facilitate its possibility. For example, as Cassie describes next, the support of the principal at her school was a high leverage arrangement that enabled her leading. …I’m not exactly sure how I kept on going but it was something to do with Marilyn [the principal] I don’t know why; she was so supportive and encouraging me all the way even giving me some extra time to prepare so I could share my learning with the staff. I found it really hard because it was a little bit confronting at first, I remember the first few sessions I just came back and I said to Marilyn, “Oh no I don’t think I can do this Marilyn.” She said, “Oh don’t be ridiculous of course you can, I know you can do it”…

Here Cassie explicitly attributes her learning to lead to the supportive arrangements put in place by Marilyn, the principal. It was evident that Marilyn’s practices provisioned the encouragement and support for Cassie to take on leading. Giving her resources like “extra time to prepare” and to “share learning with the staff” provided material-economic arrangements that made it possible for Cassie to “keep going” and to persevere when it was “hard” and “confronting”. Equally Marilyn’s comments created social-political arrangements that enabled Cassie to feel confident, agentic, in the leading role. Schatzki (2012) described these arrangements in this way: The activities that compose practices are inevitably, and often essentially, bound up with material entities. Basic doings and sayings, for example, are carried out by embodied human beings. Just about every practice, moreover, deals with material entities (including human bodies) that people manipulate or react to. And most practices would not exist without materialities of the sorts they deal with, just as most material arrangements that practices deal with would not exist in the absence of these practices. Because the relationship between practices and material entities is so intimate, I believe that the notion of a bundle of practices and material arrangements is fundamental to analysing human life. (p. 16)

The notion of a bundle of practices, as Schatzki described here, emphasises how practices, like those Cassie is describing, are integrally, and inevitably, bound up with site-based social and material arrangements. For example, in a coordinated way, Marilyn’s practices of support for Cassie hang together in a ‘bundle’ or network of interlinked leading practices; that is, Marilyn’s leading practices are ecologically related to Cassie’s leading practices in the school site where they work. This idea of leading practices being ecologically connected in bundles of practices is also suggested by Annemaree; for instance, her comments stating “all of those things seem to mesh together” and that “all the bits fit together” are illustrative of the coordinated interconnected effect that particular practice architectures have on leading: …the high level of discussion, like having critical dialogue [sayings], distributing professional reading, setting up focused reflection circles and peer group visits [doings and relatings] - all of those things seem to mesh together and you seem to do them without actually even realising at the time. It’s only later when you actually become a facilitator that you realise all the bits that are actually important and how they fit together… That was one of Rachel’s [action research facilitator] good ones that I now use – making sure that teachers are challenged and questioned – never answering a question – always asking another one in place, I use those kinds of things to ensure that everyone works hard to construct their thoughts and ideas, no one is left off the hook… Also, I guess that helps with the building of the community so that you actually have other people who are going through the same challenges, so you are building relationships in that supportive community of people you can talk to…

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Here, the ecological principle of cycles is evident in the distinctive way in which Annemaree describes how traces of historically-experienced practices enter new sites of leading in cycles of practices reproduced over time. She identifies how specific discursive (discussions, critical dialogues, making sure that teachers are challenged and questioned, never answering a question, always asking another one), material resources and physical set-ups (distributing professional reading, setting up focused reflection circles and peer group visits), and social arrangements (ensure that everyone works hard to construct their thoughts and ideas work building relationships in that supportive community of people you can talk to, to ‘build the community’) cycle through leading practices over time—from Rachel’s practices through hers. Rachel’s practices were practice architectures for Annemaree’s leading. By this we can also identify how particular practices flow, in an ecological sense, through practices and practices related to it, in the complex of education associated with leading professional learning among others. We see here that, for example, ideas and practices concerning “challenging participants”, “designing peer group visits”, and developing “collaborative relationships” flow into new occasions of the practice that secure comprehensibility, continuity and connectedness in collaborative communication for all people involved in the practice at the time. As Annemaree highlights, such practices sustain participants so they will stay sufficiently engaged in the practice and practise the practice for themselves in the future. There is an interdependency between leading practices as they are produced, reproduced and transformed over time. Excerpts from the participants presented across this chapter, identify traces of the interdependency between practices which have cycled and flowed into new networks of leading; this dynamic interrelationship is where we find generativity. In their accounts, Cassie and Annemaree orient to the ways in which the sayings, doings and relatings of professional learning experiences ‘hang together’ in the distinctive cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements (at that particular site) and cycle through their own facilitation practices as they reproduced them for themselves. For Annemaree, like the other participants, there is evidence that practices become embodied as she led professional learning in her own right. It appears the professional learning arrangements, as practice bundles, exist as traces in the particular practice architectures or arrangements of sayings, doings and relatings that the [new] facilitators established when setting up their own collegial groups for example. Additionally, the distinctive forms and contents of pedagogical discourse (e.g. Annemaree’s questioning arrangements) and distinctive kinds of professional dialogue and learning arrangements (e.g. focused reflection circles) cycle from one professional learning group to another. Further, critical reflexivity through engaging in analytic, critical and sustainable conversations for these teachers bridged the theory–practice nexus (Edwards-Groves, 2008). What was observed is that particular dimensions of practice (like modelling, trust, relationships, being daring, taking responsibility) have cycled from the practices experienced with the original facilitator through the dialogue, the activities and the ways of relating with

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the other teachers involved, into the practices of the new facilitator as they were appropriated and reproduced practices over time. That is leading practices are generative, and as they hang together we can observe a cyclical and ecological transformation.

Dispositions Revealed in Practices Our perspective of practice is that it manifests itself in situ as a social human endeavour that is responsive to the particularities of the site and circumstances. Rather than a focus on leadership traits, our view prioritises leading as a practice (Wilkinson & Kemmis, 2015). This view of leading and leadership is found in understanding the dynamic interdependencies of the linguistic, material, social worlds, as leading comes to exist in practices in local settings. We note, however, that a practice perspective does not preclude or reduce the role that one’s dispositions, desires, commitments and intentions play in their actions, activity and interactions; but as we suggest, dispositions for learning and leading are revealed and enabled in practices. For example, middle leader, Harriet, who facilitated action research about improving literacy teaching and learning in her school became attuned to leading dispositions among some of the teachers she worked with; she said: …in both our sessions and what happened in between, it was a sense I got from their preparedness to jump in. You get an instinct about their commitment to their own learning, just by the way they get on with it, lead the discussions, and be willing to share reflections from their journals… it was shown in how Beth like used her initiative and then had some deep inner personal resilience to try something new or different over and over again if it didn’t work… like you could hear it in the way she explained what she was doing, Olivia and Rosie too… they could describe what they were doing, trying, in detail… and the way they challenged themselves and others too to dig deeper and be critical… they were clearheaded about the evidence they collected like the videos and work samples, you know they were systematic about it, and the way they critiqued and annotated student work samples. It was obvious that their capacity to be critical of their own teaching, what they were doing and needed to change, was evident from the start you know, this is important for being a learner – I think it comes from deep within them… I could go on and on…

In Harriet’s view, leading and learning dispositions are tightly coupled; and as she suggested, were revealed in the practices of the teachers as they went about their own professional learning in the first instance. Harriet’s instincts about teachers’ potential for leading is furnished with a list of dispositional practices. As this excerpt showed, Harriet noticed particular dispositions as teachers (Beth, Olivia, and Rosie) practiced their own learning in practices; for example, she mentioned preparedness, commitment, willingness, initiative-taking, personal resilience, and their capacity to be clear-headed and systematic, explain in detail, be challenged and be critical. Her comment that “it comes from deep with them” and “deep inner personal resilience” recognises how the know-how, wisdom and insight to lead comes from a disposition of introspection and receptiveness; that, as she said, was “important for being a learner”. Harriet then went further to draw out the generative nature of professional learning through action research when she said “the prospect for growing leaders,

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like Olivia and Beth and Rosie too, building their capacity, their skills and knowledge in a really organic way like this, is really exciting”. This example illustrates how leading and learning to lead are contingent on the twofold dynamic interplay between the arrangements at the site and the internal dispositions of individuals. Middle leading, action research and professional learning here are mutually accomplished through the practising of practices in sites over time whereby conditions support and nourish change and development (although not always without resistance and contestation), which also hang on to den röda tråden. The ecological notions of cycles, flows, networks and dynamic interdependence between external arrangements (that influence practices in the practicescape) and internal dispositions cue us into the need for principals, system directors and policy makers to recognise the conditions that facilitate learning, and learning to lead, over time (Rönnerman, Edwards-Groves, & Grootenboer, 2015). It is a perspective that offers us a way to capture the complexities of the change practices of professional learning and leading professional learning, and provides new insights into these key educational practices.

Being a Changemaker Rosie, in the words that opened this chapter, orients us to how an inner personal drive and passion (disposition) for improvement (of her teaching at the outset) set her learning journey to leading. For her, action research and the professional education it facilitated, emboldened her as both a learner, teacher, researcher and leader—evident when she said in quite an impassioned way: I like the satisfaction of contributing to the change agenda here, being a change maker. She is not alone in this pursuit of facilitating school improvement and change; contributing to the change agenda at in their local sites became a central driver for the professional work of the teacher action researchers in our study. Marianne agrees: …after my course I wanted to be part of changing the pre-existing culture here at my preschool. I’m pretty critical of the preschool culture. Not all preschools, of course, but I see so much to improve. And yes, I wanted to help drive that change. Not being that great of a supervisor but it was like, that it was the idea of being with and driving that change…

The idea of being a changemaker is reflected in Marianne’s comments. Her desire to be part of driving the improvement and change agenda was made apparently clear. For her, stepping up to take responsibility for changing the pre-existing practices in a culture that she too was critical of demonstrates her commitment to education at the preschool she was part of. The site, and facilitating change in local contexts, was also highlighted in the next excerpt, where Rachel resoundingly, draws out a site-based, site-responsive rationale for leading change in her school and the school district. …leadership comes back to voice that comes from working with your peers in groups, having that deep understanding about things, having deep and focused conversations that are not in a vacuum but based on real things and a deep belief in the need for change and why it is important for the students in this school… all those experiences you get through participating in programs over time with your colleagues gives you the drive to go further - to make it

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happen… So you not only gain the words to put forward your thinking about education, and that stuns everyone, then they follow you along the path to make the change happen… Voice doesn’t mean necessarily spoken words; it’s much deeper than the words, it’s the strength, courage, belief, conviction, no compromising with those things that matter when you take up your position with the district… Teachers wanted support long term so I designed the program in response to what the teachers were saying and pushing for … from them I got the power to do the crying and the screaming and the ranting to the office to get the program approved; then the approach to change came to be funded…

Change and the strength, courage, belief and conviction to make it happen reverberate across this excerpt. Being a changemaker, for Rachel, meant getting power and voice is encapsulated in this comment: through participating in programs over time with your colleagues gives you the drive to go further—to make it happen. She identified ways that change was site-based and site-driven and arose from working with peers, having deep and focused conversations that are not in a vacuum but based on real things and a deep belief in the need for change and why it is important for the students in this school. As we have shown in this section, it is not sufficient for only external conditions to be supportive of change, nor is only an internal motivation, disposition, praxis-orientation or desire to change practice (to teach differently, to lead or learn to lead) but also gives you the drive to go further with no compromising with those things that matter when you take up your position with the district to make change happen, as Rachel says. In this section we featured the voices of Marianne and Rachel that strengthen our argument about generative nature of action research. As we have argued, there is a need to recognise the dynamic interdependence between the external and internal challenge, accountability, resistance or tension and the hospitable (supportive or nourishing) conditions experienced by participants that, in time, drives them to develop capacities to act differently—to act as a leader for learning among others (Rönnerman et al., 2015, 2018). This, as described by some, is journeying into being a changemaker. Here, understanding the principles of ecologies of practices is important because when one practice in an ecology of practices becomes developed and strengthened—for example professional learning in this instance—the other parts of the complex of educational practices may also be developed and strengthened for example as we have shown—leading learning. For our participants (teachers leading professional learning as middle leaders), what was required was both the internal and external conditions to exist in a dynamic balance each strengthening the conditions for the existence, development and sustainability of the other. This formed the practicescape of generative leadership.

The Practicescape of Generative Leadership: Arriving at a Definition As we illustrated in this chapter, becoming a middle leader is generated through a twofold transformation. It is about investing in the self (as a learner, teacher and researcher) when taking part in action research and the professional learning it facilitates, and an investment in others in leading (Edwards-Groves, Grootenboer, Hardy

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& Rönnerman, 2019). For this to happen the conditions at the site have to nourish their journey into leading. Our studies also show how the teachers’ capacities and commitment were build up throughout the action research program in intersubjective spaces and their conviction of the ways to conduct professional learning at their own site. We argue that there is consistently strong evidence to suggest that practices of professional learning and middle leading exist and develop as interconnected practices connected to one another in the experiences of the participants in our studies. Yet, although teacher learning and middle leading practices are different practices, they are dependent upon one another and dependent upon their relationships with the processes and practices of the professional learning program, the school or system practices in which they exist. In fact, our studies show these practices echo and reflect one another (not always without contradiction or resistance) in activity space time and across historical time with important implications for sustainable systemic change. Bringing these ideas, described across the chapters, leads us to this definition of generative leadership as a process in and of sustainable change in schools and preschools: Generative leadership refers to leading practices that generate leading; this involves the transformation of the professional self as a leader that emerges from a dynamic reciprocity between learning to learn and learning to lead, and how action research builds capacity among people to emerge as leaders in their own practicescapes.

This definition reflects the intricate shifts—indeed shuttling—between professional learning, teaching, researching and leading learning practices; this is what we also refer to as den röda tråden of being and becoming professional based on democratic values. These practices were both evolutionary and entwined; and the development of practices in one domain both influenced and was influenced, shaped and reshaped, by the development of practices in the other.

Conclusion: Learning to Learn—Learning to Lead: A Rescripted Promise of Action Research Bringing the ‘voices from the field’ into conversation with theory of practice architectures allows us to gain a more complete understanding of the complex nature of leading and learning to lead through the generative processes offered by action research. For the Swedish and Australian teachers in our study, learning to lead emerged from learning to learn. For them, the ‘lived experiences’ of participating, as teacher learners, in action research was a powerful enabler for being and becoming a middle leader. Their leading practices developed when both the external and internal conditions were supported and nourished in the sites forming transformations in the education practices ecologically connected in ecologies of education practices. It is their stories that interestingly created the impetus for following den röda tråden in this

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book. And for us, our findings and work in action research that act against neoliberal impediments to change in sites, remains an area ripe for additional research. As this chapter shows, action research, and the conditions that facilitate the generation of leading capacities, is a critical aspect of the development of middle leading. New ways of “being” (as transformed practitioners living the practice) develop as practitioners become more familiar with the practice and more expert or accomplished in it as they “took on leading for themselves”. Not only do practitioners develop as they become more accomplished in practices, the practices themselves (such as leading practices) also evolve and develop—first as translations, appropriations and reproductions, then as transformations to exist as new ways of being a teacher, a learner, a researcher and a leader. Middle leading practices develop through enactment (doing), evolution (doing with variations and contextual accommodations), and transformation and embodiment (doing differently as your own). In summary, this chapter adds definitional character as it highlights the complexity, dynamism, multilayeredness and sociality of middle leading. Bringing together the perspectives of the middle leaders contributes to Edwards-Groves et al.’s (2020) description of leading as a shared transformative educational practice, but more specifically, illustrates how middle leading is a site-based, site-responsive, pedagogical, practice-changing practice that genuinely and openly strives for critical educational praxis. These features of middle leading practice are resolutely entwined with the seven cornerstones of action research previously.

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Chapter 5

Generative Leadership: Investing in Action Research for Leveraging Leading

Abstract This chapter considers the need for broader policy-driven systemic investment in professional learning and action research. We have argued across this book that action research, that is critical and participatory, is practice of promise and possibility. Investing in action research is an investment in the development of the educational practicescape involving teaching, professional learning, student learning and leading (both practices and capacities)—this, ultimately, is an investment in the future of education. In order to build the profession, there needs alternatives for stabilising and maintaining the engine room of education—that is the need for building education from the site out. This chapter positions the pivotal direction for building education hinges on recognising and acknowledging through action, that an investment in long term professional development through processes such as action research—with its more putative benefits for teaching and student learning—is also an investment in leadership. This is professional and educational leading generated over time and leveraged through participation in site based education development, as we have shown in previous chapters of this book. We argue in this chapter that outlaying resources that substantially and predominantly consider the site, is an approach that leverages leading from the middle that simultaneously establishes the educational ideals of professional and practical leadership, educational professionalism, individual and collective agency for activism, educational and social sustainability. The multi-directionality and multifaceted nature of these practices form a hallmark of critical educational praxis. This is a position that leverages capacities for leading rigorous democratic education with critical participatory action research as a key platform in its endeavour.

A Voice from the Field We are missing the point and the opportunity to achieve more sustainable change and development if we don’t fund such long-term work, to give the teachers release to do it, to support the facilitators implement it. We never know just what it might deliver. My ideas about how its importance stemmed from my own experience of being through it myself - of doing the PD with Clara-Maree in this long-term way, then taking on the facilitation myself later on.

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What was impressive were the flow on effects - that teachers were leaders in their own right; now taking this on in a serious way with the other teachers in their school. I’ll never forget that day canvassing to get the system to agree to the money and they did which was fantastic. Now we have a commitment that sprung from those teachers like Jana who did that first long-term project with me, no longer is the one day here and there or getting a grab bag of ideas acceptable. It is not enough, not enough for the future of the kids or the teachers. So, for us who had been through it, it was necessary, in the end it was worth investing in – for our teaching, our student’s learning which we kind of expected, but most astonishingly for our own leadership development. Harriet (Middle leader, facilitator of action research)

Capitalizing on the attention to the connections between teacher professional learning, teaching and leading made by Harriet, we are drawn to consider the threads that promote, hold together and form the fabric of a viable and strong education landscape. These threads—consisting of teaching, professional learning, researching, leading and student learning—are the wefts and warps of the Education Complex, each filament generating a change in the other in an ecology of interrelated educational practices. As recognised by Harriet, for enduring change it is no longer acceptable to succumb to the mediocracy of expedience by getting “the grab bag of ideas”, or doing the “one day here and there” or one-off professional learning session, or ignoring the impact of “teachers leading in their own right”—a practice generated by investing in long term professional education and site-based development. In fact, her assertion that “we are missing the point and the opportunity for more sustainable change and development if we don’t fund such long-term work” must be listened to and accounted for at the policy level. Namely, an investment in professional learning and action research of the kind presented throughout the chapters of this book, is an investment in the development of leading (practices and capacities), and ultimately an investment in the future of education.

Securing den röda tråden To keep alive democratic ways of learning and leading in education, this chapter turns to reimagining what education practices are worth investing in and why. Across the chapters in this book we have presented our research findings tracing a red thread across the professional education journey of teachers who became middle leaders. Following the journey of these teachers allowed us to discover and tell the story of generative leadership (Edwards-Groves & Rönnerman, 2013; Rönnerman & Edwards-Groves, 2012). These research stories provide insights that have implications for re-setting the policy agendas for transforming education. As Cherryholmes (1993) stated: Research findings tell stories. Often they are about putative causes and effects. Sometimes they are descriptive, sometimes explanatory. Research findings tell stories that are, more or less, insightful and useful in shaping what we think and do…they are more of less useful helping us to understand our social world as we navigate our way through it. (p. 2)

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Our findings, strengthened by stories from professionals in the field, help us navigate the journey into leading, particularly through the democratic processes of action research; their voices provide helpful insights for understanding what is needed for transforming leading practices in education. Harriet’s words imply, strongly, that in order to build the profession, there needs an acknowledgment that an investment in long term development through professional learning processes such as action research is critical. With its more putative benefits for teaching and student learning, our research shows how action research in schools is also an investment in school leadership and, in particular, leading practices that are generated with and over time. This is the essence of den röda tråden1 we have followed in the journeys of these teachers; it is a journey of a democratic sustainable practice-centred education. In Chap. 2 we identified how seven cornerstones of action research, both founded and fulfilled democratic ways of working for these teachers, were generative of conditions that secured educational leading in schools and preschools. As part of this journey, Chap. 3 discussed particular practice architectures that are generative of professional transformation in two domains: transforming the professional self as a teacher, and transforming the professional self as a leader. Chapter 4 focused on becoming a middle leader and considered ways action research, as a practicechanging practice, is a learning ground generative of leading—in particular middle leading. This final chapter draws on site ontological view, arguing that an investment in middle leading in school sites is an investment in the future of education—locally, nationally and global; it emphasises the need for responding to and capitalising on the professional wisdom of teachers and leaders drawing out a range of factors for consideration.

Investing in Site Based Education Development The site matters in education; and thus for action research in educational settings like schools and preschools. The particularity of the site, and understanding and responding to the practices and practice architectures that exist there, sits at the core of action research and professional development. Emerging from the constellation of action research practices presented in Chap. 2 (this volume) we have assembled a picture of ways particular cornerstones—contextuality, commitment, communication, collaboration, criticality, collegiality and community—form a solid base for site based professional development. As middle leader Jana says, what we do has to be relevant to the learning and development needs here; there can be no other way. Her understanding of what is necessary in and for educational practice emerges 1 Across

the book we have used the Swedish words den röda tråden, rather than the English words ‘the red thread’ to represent the metaphor to show the interconnections between our ideas, our collaboration, our mutual respect and acceptance of our different languages (of which English is the dominant in the publication of this book).

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from the context of her own circumstances; it is the engine room for practices, and for changing practices. This is to say that education cannot be other than closely responsive to the nuances, peculiarity, and particular needs and circumstances of students and teachers in sites. Kemmis et al. (2014, p. 12) agree, concluding from their four-year longitudinal study, that to transform education means: To have education and not just schooling at every local site … depends profoundly on those people’s efforts in their own sites. Revitalising education in the twenty-first century, we believe, depends not just on better curriculum, teaching or assessment ideas or programs, it depends on engaging the people at each site, in each school or school district – or in any other educational institution – in a process of site based education development.

For us, engaging the people at each site means investing in the people and their practices at each site. This site ontological view, according to Kemmis et al. (2014, p. 12) and after Schatzki (2002, 2010), means that the development of education and educational practices must be attended to—and to this we argue invested in—at each local site, being appropriately and effectively responsive to the local needs, opportunities and circumstances of students, schools and communities in the diverse local situations in which they reside. Jana continues, …it begins with the children, what they need at the moment. This is the catalyst for doing something, rousing my need to develop as a teacher for them, so they can grow and develop… in many ways my concern for the kids led to the development of my leadership and mentoring skills I learnt in the first place from Harriet [action research facilitator], it’s all wrapped up together, rooted deeply in that critical starting point … but, at the end of the day, knowing that it must always come back to the kids…

Here, she stresses how the transformation of education practices (here learning, teaching and leading), what is known, developed and learnt, arise from the site (from that critical starting point beginning with the children, what they need at the moment), reappearing and returning in practices (back to the kids) in newly developed or adjusted formulations of learning, teaching and leading. Learning, teaching and leading practices are wrapped up together, thus, are transformed as a bundle as they return to the site itself in, and because of, learning, teaching and leading practices. Each practice intricately and ecologically connected to the other. This highlights the need for investing in action research as means for investing in teachers developing their teaching through reshaped practices of professional learning, which as we have argued and Jana points to is an investment in leading. Recently, following Wittgenstein (1958) Kemmis et al. (2014) formulated this understanding of practice development in this way, that learning and knowing ‘arises from, represents, recalls, anticipates, and returns to their use in practices’. This view reflects the situated and contingent nature of practices; and empirically, as practices temporally happen in the real-time flow across physical space-time draws attention to the situated context and particularity of the conditions enabling and constraining learning-in-practice and knowing-in-practice (then and there). It is proposition that demands a shift for policy makers and those investing in education development to consider the role and critical importance of the particularity of sites as the engine

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room for educational practices and the changes required to develop, improve and transform them. In action research, this means as Jana along with our other participants, middle leaders, recognised that: • practices, and changing them, must always be rooted deeply in that critical starting point connected to the site; • the direction and focus of change should arise from what is happening and needed there; and • that the process for changing practices calls into action (through representing practices in a range of semiotic modes e.g. textually, orally and intertextually, and anticipating consequences, possibilities, pauses and pivot points for change) new formulations of sayings, doings and relatings as they return back to the site as practices a new. By taking a site-ontological view of practice where a site-focused change agenda is driving the work of educators, the practice architectures of action research are understood and accounted for in the investments in teacher learning for middle leading.

Leveraging Professional Learning to Leading: Driving the Policy Agenda for Building Leading Capacity Our research findings mark out action research practices as worthy of significant future investment for accomplishing and sustaining site based education development. Specifically, the potential for illuminating and supporting the development of middle leading cannot be downplayed. Thus, the focus on the leveraging middle leading through action research offers ‘education’ a transformative future that is grounded in realistic and relevant pathways for change. As Fullan (2015, p. 28) states, Learning from the Middle represents a new and powerful way of thinking that frees us from outdated and limited models that depend on top-down versus bottom-up thinking. It liberates a greater mass of people to become engaged in purposeful system change, and ultimately to own the changes that they create together.

Although Fullan refers to the middle, here, as relating to regional or district levels, we agree that learning and leading from a middle position (but rather for us in local schools and preschools themselves), has the potential to liberate people to productively, actively and with agency drive the change agenda in local sites and the systems that manage their work. This is a point captured next by Harriet: Not only did I improve my teaching, it gave me the courage to lead the charge, to push it with the system. I thought this was an approach to PD really worth fighting for and I was prepared to put my head on the chopping block and keep pushing for funding, for time to support teachers experience action research for themselves… we had people like Jana and Kelly who

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were leading the way in their own schools, together with me, gave this amazing presentation to Sean [the system director] about the benefits of that long term PD to them as teachers and how it had really impacted on student learning in their classrooms – and the significance carving out a space for action research has had for our own leadership, it’s about building capacity … this is not only good for the schools but is a huge benefit for the system… And in a climate where the status of teachers is waning, this is a serious attempt to elevate teacher’s capacities and their confidence, and importantly their profile in the community, the media. And what was striking, Sean was really listening, listening to us.

Alongside recognising the immense potential for generating leading capacities organically from the site as described here by Harriet, the need for support and openness to listen by ‘external’ policy makers like Sean is critical for securing and designating the funding required for driving education development—teacher by teacher, site by site. What this illustrates is that driving change from the middle, as Edwards-Groves, Grootenboer, Hardy, and Rönnerman (2018) argue, is generative of change in multiple practices, at multiple levels and in multiple sites. Harriet’s remarks also draw specific attention, astonishingly, to an extensive assemblage of impacts on, and benefits, for student learning, teaching development, personal and professional agency, collective agency, professional learning, leading, and the system, and include the commensurate benefit for raising the status of teaching in the broader community. In her commentary, Harriet succinctly encapsulates how carving out space for action research, with its purpose and aspiration of building capacity, leads to far reaching impacts and deeply embedded significance for a broad array of education practices in the sites in which she worked. Next Harriet opens up the idea further, extending her reasoning in a subsequent comment drawing on her own sensibilities and sensemaking capacities as a middle leader leading the professional learning of her colleagues, she said: …because we were working together for a year, I could identify possible people like Cassie, Marina, Jana and Kelly who were potential leaders – it was a strong feeling I got from the deep pit of my stomach, my long experience told me intuitively they were right for leadership, for leading the professional learning themselves – I could see it in what they did and how they got on with people bringing them in to the conversations; they were decisive in their responses; they were quite humble too, and it showed in the unassuming way they just got on with it; there was a strong willingness to take risks not only that though there was a deep knowledge of the curriculum, and you could see that they were particularly flexible when new information comes to light; you could really see their flare for leading in their creative approaches and responses, but above all so caring and respectful of everyone in the group… the prospect for growing leaders, their skills and knowledge in a really organic way like this, really exciting. I take seriously my own place, role in this process actually; in fact it is untapped potential if we ignore these basic human gut feelings, to be blunt. But Sean [system director] trusted that, my instinct here, and that was amazing.

Drawing on a strong feeling [she] got from the deep pit of [her] stomach, a basic human gut feeling, Harriet, an experienced middle leader, recognised the critical role that she had in identifying the untapped potential future leaders. What is also particularly interesting in this description are Harriet’s perceptions about leading professional learning in schools. For her, the particular “sensed” traits right for leadership incorporate, in summary: inclusivity, decisiveness, humility, willingness

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to take risks, deep knowledge, flexibility, creativity, care and respect. That her depth of professional wisdom and experience, professional instincts and intuition, were emboldened externally by the support and trust from the system, the director Sean, to make a commitment to fund future such projects (with a five-year commitment). Jana, next, also grasps this connection to her own leadership learning practices as requiring a serious investment, pressing the point that leveraging leading potential through professional learning relevant to and emerging from site-based wisdom, needs and responses. She says: Many of us we wouldn’t see ourselves perhaps as all-knowledgeable managerial leaders as much as say being learning teachers; and I see myself in that teacher mould. So when people say oh you’re a leader, I kind of can’t see it. So that idea of what leadership is, knowing how to lead, what a wise leader knows, that it sort of comes with its own set of characteristics which sometimes aren’t even relevant – I think I developed as a leader because it was over time but more importantly to me made a difference here at my own school, with my own class. To me they’re [the leadership characteristics] relevant only if it supports others to develop in their teaching, and more importantly, in the end the children develop and learn because the teachers responded and changed as a result – then it is successful… for me these are linked and that’s where the accountability lies, and that a system’s investment portfolio must be focused there by involving us in the decision making for funding this kind of PD if they are serious about improving the learning, the results.

Jana draws a clear distinction here between leader as manager and leader as learner. She suggests her place as a middle leader relates to the nature of her contribution in supporting educational change and development in her school—that, its importance lies in its responsivity and relevance. She also recognises professional leading knowhow is generated over time in situ. The notion of systemic support and accountability oriented to by Jana in this excerpt, suggests that development and success is locally decided, locally realised, locally measured and locally relevant; that is—to use her language in an earlier excerpt, deeply rooted in the site. Similarly, middle leader Astrid (next), brings to the fore distinctions between managing, leading and mentoring in her consideration of the affordances that action research processes provide a communicative space for sustained critical examination of practices. She also attests to the benefits of action research on sustainable education development since its long-term complexion provisions putting down deeper roots. Of course, I am (now) every bit the leader in my preschool and it’s not always easy to be a leader, but you can see how in the long term it happens. I realized something happens in development as it (action research) proceeds, it has deeper roots if you do it long term … I help them examine themselves and see that it is not so difficult … it happens actually as something that benefits both myself as a teacher, in the mentoring, and it benefits the kids and it benefits the parents, I get the feedback from the managers, and helps me to understand the big picture and push it at the policy level. I see it as a great educational effort we have made together when you get the teachers to ensure the long-term, and one can actually work with all objectives simultaneously, as a whole, so it becomes, it becomes a long-term project where it suddenly does not become tough and something’s happened with the children. It’s pretty amazing.

The notion of reciprocity is raised as Astrid draws out amazing far reaching benefits for herself as a teacher and leader; the other teachers with whom she works and

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mentors; the managers who provide feedback, contextualisation and encouragement; the students and the parents; and the objectives achieved collectively through a great educational effort … made together. For Astrid, action research is a site-based longterm investment that forms an historical sequence of events that set in train support for teacher learning and the education of children, which in turn, is an investment in middle leading. She continues: As a leader I have to be seen; that there is someone who, particularly at the nursery where the principals cannot see the virtues of the business, that there will be a driving force and influence as headmasters get it and realize the virtues and see opportunities, how to work with the business side of it. And so …now I have been lobbying around there and them, they were so positive.

But for Astrid, the kind of deeply rooted change and long-term professional learning ascribed here requires middle leaders push it at the policy level, to act on (drive and lobby for) the virtues of the business case—the systemic commitment to investing in action research as, and for, professional learning, leading, teaching and student learning. Collectively, these words from Harriet, Jana and Astrid portray a convincing narrative that forms an inflection point for re-setting the funding agendas in schools and school systems. They direct us to the benefit of action research for local individual and collective action for building individual capacities within, and beyond, the collective (Rönnerman, 2019). To this point of capitalising on the local, Goldenberg and Gallimore (1991) concluded: The success of school innovation and reform is at stake in the interplay of local and research knowledge. The empirical analysis of this interplay is as challenging as any other confronted by educational researchers. If we take this challenge seriously, we can have a profound effect on … children’s achievement … But taking this challenge seriously will require changes in the local cultures of researchers, as well as those of practitioners. (p. 12)

It is the promise of having a profound effect of children and their lives that is at stake in education innovation and reform. The voices of the middle leaders in our study compel us (and more importantly system directors, policy makers, educationdevelopment legislators and researchers) to take the need for such an investment seriously. The seriousness of the challenge, highlighted by Goldenberg and Gallimore, can be taken together with the experiences and insights from the middle leaders presented in this book. This position demands an insistence that the school community itself has real influence in decision making in ways that, for instance, allow action research facilitators, the school based middle leaders, be involved in purposeful and strategic recruitment of potential future middle leaders in schools and preschools. A point also made clearly by Harriet (earlier). The schools and preschools in which middle leaders work are practice building organisations that aspire to be educational in all its complex of practices—leading, teaching, professional learning, and student learning, and as such future directions and actions for change must account for practice-led policy shifts as framed by these middle leaders. It is a fallacious assumption and critical local resource overlooked to consider otherwise.

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Investing in Action Research as a Practice of Promise and Possibility Action research is a practice of and for education. Education, in all its complex forms, is a practice of promise and possibility. As a practice of professional development, action research promises new possibilities through its double purpose “to prepare people to live well in a world worth living in” (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 27). In the previous sections, we have laid out arguments for recognising and responding to the generative power of action research for incentivising individuals (learners, teachers, researchers, leaders) and collectives (groups of teachers, students, middle leaders, researchers) to make a difference to the social world—a practice for human flourishing—Eudaimonia. Whilst this might seem a glib statement, our data show that action research creates distinctive cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political conditions (practice architectures) that make it possible to provoke changes in all dimensions of the Education Complex of Practices. But surprisingly, as we have found, in the conditions generative of leading. As our informants assert, failure to recognise the untapped potential for developing educational leading risks education development itself.

Understanding the Investment: Why This, Now? In contemporary times where particular neo-liberal public management regimes are gripping education systems with a stronghold so intense that teachers’ professional work and development are constrained under the pressure of endless reforms, accountability, performativity and measurement, there is, instead, a pressing need for considering alternatives to education development as argued by Hardy, Salo and Rönnerman (2015). The impositions on teachers and leaders’ work have, as Kemmis et al. (2014, p. 19) say, become routinised as ‘New Public Management’, colonising every sphere of public administration in much of the world. It has done so at the risk of education, doing so as it has de-legitimised the authority of governments and their departments that many professionals now experience a substantial portion of their working lives as persons who live out the roles of operatives of the systems in which they work, rather than as persons who are moral and professional agents with the collective moral and professional agency, autonomy and responsibility to practise their professions (Kemmis & Smith, 2008, p. 5). In the education profession, it is a threat to the life and practice of education, which is everywhere beset and harried by the endlessly administered and institutionalised process of schooling. (Kemmis et al., 2014, p. 19)

Against this tumultuous trend we believe action research processes (experienced as the cornerstones we described in Chap. 2) offer an alternative position. It promotes and adds virtue to the practice of teachers researching in their own communities, resulting in distinct benefits for their own understandings of the complexity and

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diversity of practices that meet the needs of students. Added to this, the longer-term benefits of re-characterising and transforming one’s professional self through the shift towards teachers becoming middle leaders through the generative processes of professional learning cannot be understated. Action research practices rise from and return to education in new forms of critical educational praxis. For teacher action researchers, what is learned from research activity in their professional community may or may not have a direct bearing on the goals or practices in which the teacher is centrally interested. However, as we have illustrated, the importance of the research, may be derived equally from its indirect effects, giving the teacher a more subtle or nuanced view of the complex conditions in which they and their students reside. This, in turn, may lead to the re-organisation of pedagogical approaches or learning activities that allow such diversities to come into play in a way that is more productive for classroom learning. Equally, unexpected outcomes, like learning to lead as we illustrated, may yield a welcome benefit. These current circumstances and practices, thus, give rise to questions examining: what, in education, is worth investing in? why? why action research? To answer questions about why this now, we draw out features of action research practice that reframe its benefits for education and strengthen the rationale for a more systemic investment, adding to the main argument we have made that action research is generative of professional leadership, where we begin next.

Generative of Professional and Practical Leadership Engendering leading practices has been a central theme across this book, as the voices from the field have pointed out. Action research was experienced by our informants as a site-based site-responsive practice that organically illuminates—gives rise to— teachers who also might be potential leaders. As Harriet above ascribes, the provision of enabling conditions that nourish the possibilities for leading the learning of others is a matter of interest and concern “worth fighting for” in education, and by educators, across the globe. Strongly grounded in learning for leading, Harriet’s understandings presented in the opening of this chapter for example, direct us to take seriously the need to invest in long term site based education development, as described by Kemmis et al. (2014). It is a practice that opens up the possibility for teachers, and we claim for other professionals, to move towards leadership in practical even natural organic way. And as suggested by the accounts of the teachers who lead the learning of others, middle leaders, it is a practical, site-based aspiration and transformational practice worth investing in—one that secures a robust and resilient learning culture and a robust and resilient leading culture. This is a culture where people share professional know-how, share in the responsibility for leading and learning, experience agency and solidarity through leading and learning, are committed to and contribute to site based education development through their leading and learning, and are supported externally in these endeavours. It is a generative practice concerned with building, nourishing and solidifying an educational mindset among all people, at all levels, in all practices, in school sites.

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Generative of Educational Professionalism Elevating the status of education, and the teaching profession more specifically, emerged as a critical consequence of participating in action research. Indeed as our data show, action research has the scope to lift and acknowledge educational professionalism differently, an idea Sachs (2010) pursued well over a decade ago. Our study illustrated that action research has the potential to not only preserve, but promote, the integrity and site-based wisdom of teachers in their own settings as well as in the wider districts in which they work. Foremost, because of its processes committed to facilitating action for change over time (described in a subsequent section in terms of length, depth, breadth and relationships), it reveals (and builds) individual people’s capacities and characterising dispositions for practising leading. Harriet highlighted some examples, including a person’s ability to be: inclusive, decisive, humble, a risk taker, a learner, knowledgeable, flexible, creative, caring and respectful. We note this is not an exhaustive list of traits, but as Jana stressed, these are only relevant if a difference is actually made to teachers and students in the site itself. Interestingly, many of our informants discovered these distinctive features about leadership and leading in themselves across their own action research journey into middle leading facilitated by the action research process. Of the process, Sachs (2010) identified a platform for rethinking the practice of teacher professionalism built on the following five characteristics that correspond well to the cornerstones we described earlier: learning, participation, collaboration, cooperation and activism (pp. 31–35). The platform for characterising teacher professionalism in this way is enabled and constrained by practice architectures within and beyond the immediate practice landscape specifically through different reforms, policies and curricula. Learning and development both for students and teachers need practice architectures that enable teachers to participate, collaborate, communicate and cooperate in communities in their local context. However, in recent times, teachers’ work is no longer simply concerned with teaching students. Instead, the last few decades in the quest for improved student learning, the emphasis has shifted towards teacher learning experienced as often broad scale one-off approaches aiming to support teachers to keep abreast of changing social and political conditions, technological advances and innovations, policy directives, curriculum realignments, pedagogical trends, national testing and accountabilities, or accreditation (Biesta, 2007; Hardy, Rönnerman, & Beach, 2018). Policymakers, system leaders and principals worldwide would be well advised, as we argue, to consider action research approaches as a forum that facilitates professional learning and development since these ideally allow time and space for teachers to meet (forming particular material-economic arrangements), communicate and collaborate in developing education together (forming particular culture-discursive arrangements) in ways that are directly relevant and responsive to particular school sites. We strongly maintain that action research must be considered seriously on national and local agendas by politicians and system leaders both as a productive and solicitous approach for developing the relationships, individual and collective power,

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solidarity and agency (forming particular social-political arrangements) needed to reform, restructure or advance education.

Generative of Individual and Collective Agency for Activism Agency is both an individual and collective matter. According to Kemmis and Edwards-Groves (2018, p. 106) Individual people are knowing subjects and active ‘agents’ who can change their social locations as they participate in the process of constructing and reconstructing their own social realities (thus also reconstructing the broader collective social reality of a society)—although some people have greater capacity to make such changes than others. Education is one of the arenas in which individuals exercise this agency to change their social locations—for example, through study and developing particular knowledge, skills, and values.

In this view, agency as it is manifest in action research traverses the individual and collective dimensions of educational work. Consequently, it is not only an individual matter but is also realised collectively via interactions between the human and non-human or material world (for example, funding teacher release to attend professional learning, or providing material resources and new technologies, or organising teachers to meet collaboratively on a regular basis), and “foregrounds the transformative potential of practices and of the practitioners who enact them” (Kemmis, Wilkinson, & Edwards-Groves, 2017, p. 249). The development and activity of personal agency is threaded through Harriet’s comments, for example, that indicated ways action research processes afforded particular social-political conditions that generated professional capacities, the “courage to lead” to “push it with the system”. That she was “prepared to put her [my] head on the chopping block”, to “keep pushing for funding” evoke the strength of conviction for this “approach really worth fighting for”. The suggestion here closely aligns with Kemmis et al. (2017, p. 249), who describe agency as afforded by: Particular arrangements [that] set up the conditions of possibility for some practices rather than others, but whether a practice will be performed remains a matter of human agency – although sometimes conditions are so oppressive that they leave people little choice about what they can do. More usually, however, circumstances allow participants to innovate or experiment in what they do and how they do it – leaving room for creativity, and for participants to demonstrate forms of agency that are more radical or emphatic. Our agency lies in coming to understand the constraints within which we operate but also that, when appropriate or needed, we can open up opportunities to imagine and enact alternative conditions that make new practices possible.

So when, Astrid, like Harriet, stress actions about “lobbying”, being “a driving force”, or having the confidence to “push it at the policy level”, or Jana’s suggestion about “involving middle leaders [us] in the decision making for funding” they are underlining the critical importance and influence of the personal and collective agency derived from their experiences of action research. These accounts illustrate how agency is “the capacity of people to act with commitment and intention, perhaps

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on their own behalf and in their own interests, but also on others’ behalf, and in others’ interests” (Kemmis et al., 2017, p. 249). Middle leader Cassie went further to describe their actions “as opening the flood gates”. For her, a small trickle turned into a torrent “once we were supported by the system and the funding was in place, it grew and grew from there, from the one small project in one school to action research hubs popping up across the district”. Their agency provoked perhaps more radical or emphatic actions, activity and activism (individually and collectively) that altered the professional learning arrangements in their particular school and municipal or system sites. Ultimately, it was their actions, activity and activism to take the fight for funding to the system directors, it was their commitment and courage to push it that convinced authorities to fund. Individual and collective agency, here, is recognised as critical for educational transformations; and as we have shown there appears to be reciprocity between leading and agency. Agency is not a commodity distributed to the teachers by, for example, the principal; rather it is developed and consolidated over time by the teachers where their commitment and desire to improve teaching and learning practices keep them striving for better outcomes for both the teachers and students in their local school. What we show are the ways action research provisions a socialpolitical affordance that gives rise to the reciprocity between agency-for-leading and leading-with-agency. And as suggested by the excerpts we presented above, leading-with-agency is a kind of activism which reaches beyond the immediacy of the enacted happeningness of practice, to a type of “generative politics” (Sachs, 2010, p. 138) where middle leading takes on a new political dynamic. Generative politics is a dynamic that, as Sachs (2010) says, draws attention to the multidimensionality of trust (also reported in Edwards-Groves, Grootenboer, & Rönnerman, 2016) as it extends from micro local site-based dimensions of leading, to trust in more macro societal and systemic political influences. This means in a practical sense, an investment in the practices advocated in this book is an investment in teachers that, in turn, has the potential to generate agency for professional activism (after Sachs, 2010, p. 138), but even in more creative, emphatic and radical ways (as suggested by Kemmis et al., 2017, p. 249).

Generative Educational and Social Sustainability Sustainability is a concept that encompasses issues of environment, and social and economic development. In Chap. 2, this volume, we argued for seven cornerstones (contextuality, commitment, communication, collaboration, criticality, collegiality, community) of importance in education that offer hope and assurances for sustaining professional learning. Here, we take this a step further by outlining four interrelated

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factors for determining sustainability in education: length, depth, breadth and relationships2 (Rönnerman, 2019) to further elaborate on how action research enables sustainability in education. The first factor length relates to time participating in long-term professional learning programs (such as action research over time), instead of the pop-up PD kind that offers a quick dip-in-and-dip-out-and-get-a-grab-bag-of-good-ideas where it is harder to make the jump from program-to-practice. Rather, the action research programs, like those the teachers in our studies (in both Sweden and Australia) were involved in, are conducted over at least a year. For example, during the program participants are provided time and space to participate in activities at their site (doings). Learning is at their own pace and in their own space and involves coming together regularly in communicative spaces (relatings) for collegial communication and critical reflections around the development and understandings of their practices (sayings). These gatherings are made possible by time, for example, in the schedules and teacher release organised by the principal (material-economic arrangements). Time in the program is mediated (or enabled and constrained) by the material-economic arrangements that allow (or not) teachers time to trial, adjust and practise their practices, gather sustained evidence of change in their teaching and the students learning, refine their thinking, experience the development of a community of professional learners, develop confidence and professional know-how, and ultimately provides the opportunity to develop leading. It is a necessary factor for transforming practices (as pointed to in Chap. 3). The second related factor is depth, which connects to how deep enduring learning requires a substantial length of time. Depth and ‘depthing professional know-how’ is enabled and constrained by practice architectures. For example the materialeconomic arrangements that provide conditions for providing (i) adequate time for a deep-dive into exploring issues for concern and development, (ii) a range of relevant resources, and (iii) physical space for participants to come together (doings) as interlocutors engaged in interactions (relatings) and conversations geared towards intersubjective meaning making (sayings). This provides a semantic space that enables practitioners to deepen knowledge and professional knowings, refine their thinking, develop a shared language, extend their reasoning, read professional literature, engage in journaling, critique evidence, showcase findings and share experiences (perhaps by writing up their action research in a small report for others to read, discuss and reflect on). This range of activities (doings) creates a semantic space for developing knowing-in-practice deepened by the particular cultural-discursive arrangements that afford such ‘depthing’, and ultimately is a necessary condition for transforming intellectual engagement and knowledge. The third factor is breadth, which relates to taking part in communicative spaces where deep thinking and critical reflection (sayings) with others (relatings) takes place (doings). Breadth is enabled and constrained by practice architectures that 2 These

factors of educational sustainability draw on Chap. 4 (by Rönnerman) in the book “Facilitating Practitioner Research” by Groundwater-Smith, Mitchell, Mockler, Ponte, and Rönnerman (2013).

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afford the development and dispersion of practices when practices of professional learning, teaching, leading and researching transform over time and space (Hardy, Edwards-Groves, & Rönnerman, 2012). Emerging in the social space, mediated through power, solidarity and agency, open communicative spaces evolve when all voices (and their ideas, opinions, agreements, issues, tensions and arguments) are listened to and heard in a true dialogue where democratic ways of working are kept in the foreground. These social spaces are open, collegial, critical and communicative when interactions deepen and widen understandings about practice. In other words practice is not developed in a compartment (silo) for an individual in a classroom but together with others within communities at the site, and over time become dispersed among and disseminated to others beyond the site, for example as teachers like Harriet, Cassie, Jana and Astrid, share their knowledge and experiences in ways that advocate for funding at the senior management or system level. Practices of learning and researching in a site influences other persons and other practices, which leads to the final factor, relationships. Taking part in a longterm action research program together with other teachers involves relationships which evolve over time; in fact, networks of relationships might grow. Relationships between people are self-evident, but the nature of the relationships developed in action research creates a dialogic space (Grootenboer, Edwards-Groves, & Rönnerman, 2020; Rönnerman, Edwards-Groves, & Grootenboer, 2018) where it is safe to work through trouble spots, contested ideas and issues, listen and learn with empathy, to establish and strengthen interpersonal relationships, build relational trust (Edwards-Groves, Grootenboer, & Rönnerman, 2016), develop trusting mentoring relationships, test out assumptions or underdeveloped ideas. The notion of relationships here also extends to consider the interrelatedness between practices, that education practices are ecologically related in a complex of practices (as we have mentioned earlier); for example, these grow when professional learning practices might generate new teaching practices, which in turn creates new student learning practices. And as we have argued throughout this book, action research and professional learning practice may indeed generate leading practices where a facilitator or middle leader through their relatings might reproduce leading or facilitating practices for themselves. Taken together the practices and practice architectures that promulgate the factors described in this section—length, depth, breath and relationships—we are opened up to new and productive possibilities for promoting and propagating the kind of leadership (from the middle) necessary for educational and social sustainability. These ideas note key messages for policy makers concerning the implications for pre- and in-service teachers’ professional learning experiences. These point to the urgent need for the development and implementation of professional development programs that account for these factors by moving beyond the provision of a set of generic guidelines or recipes for practice which instantiate the homogenisation of practitioners. Instead, what is necessary are practices that offer scope for teachers to exercise agility and creativity in their flexible adaptation to their particular community at hand. It is not enough, and indeed it is potentially counter-productive, to provide a strict and detailed set of procedures, guidelines and curriculums without resourcing teachers

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in the diverse and innovative ways in which these can be adapted to responsively (and responsibly) meet the nuanced needs and circumstances of their own practice landscape. Entangled in ideals of professional and practical leadership, educational professionalism, individual and collective agency for activism, educational and social sustainability are practices that “prepare people to live well in a world worth living”. The multi-directionality and multifaceted nature of these practices form a hallmark for a rigorous democratic education with action research as a key platform in its endeavour. Coming to know how to lead and of leading from the middle brought to bear by the practices, processes and practice architectures of action research we have described in this book defy the chasm between democratic education and neo-liberal constraints. This is a rift worth resolving with the recognition and acknowledgement of the power and influence of action research for educational transformation. This section mounts an argument for re-setting the policy agenda in education towards investing in site-based long-term action research as a critically important move towards establishing and supporting the development of professional and practical leadership, educational professionalism, individual and collective agency for activism, and educational and social sustainability. Failure to do so risks avoiding, ignoring or neglecting the critical questions and issues that matter in education those that concern changing practices, changing education teacher by teacher, site by site.

Re-setting the Policy Agenda for Learning to Lead: Recognising the Ecologies of Practices Understanding the ecologies of practices (outlined in Chap. 1) makes us carefully attentive to the interconnectedness of practices, specifically how the particulars of one practice, as it unfolds, creates practice architectures for other practices that are also found in particular sites. Our attention is not on how different participants co-inhabit a site, but on how different practices co-inhabit and co-exist in a site, sometimes leaving residues or creating affordances that enable and constrain how other practices can unfold. We think that the strength of the ontological perspective on practices that we take in this book, lies in its challenge to general and abstract ways of thinking about practices and practice development, and its insistence on seeing how practices and practice architectures exist in reality and in relationship to other practices. We are not so much interested in saying that, in general, practices and practice architectures of professional learning shape practices and practice architectures of teaching or leading, for example, as in showing how in practice, the particular practices and practice architectures of one practice (like teaching) come to shape or be shaped by the practices and practice architectures of another practice (professional learning). This perspective might once have been described in terms of the ‘natural history’ or ‘genealogy’ of practices, but might nowadays be thought of in terms of ecologies and ecological relationships (Kemmis & Mutton, 2012).

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As we have shown, the development of leading practices might include participating in professional learning which is long term and focused, site-based (own space, own pace); reflects hospitable fertile (or inhospitable) groups that are similarly (or not) committed to their own learning and the learning of others (including colleagues or their students), experience supportive (or unsupportive) external conditions from multiple levels (program, collegial, school, system); and responsive and alert (or blind) to the praxis orientation of self and others. In our view it is the responsibility of management and systems not only create generative conditions but to recognise that middle leading is an important benefit of such professional learning programs. So far, we have mentioned how practices prefigure and are prefigured by the practice architectures within a particular site or practice landscape. In this section we are taking a step out of the site and identify other arrangements that prefigure the practices but, in our view, also need to be addressed. We frame this as investing in sustainable site based education development. For learning to take place in any practice landscape, all practices need to be taken seriously on a political level. In today’s global discussion on education, student learning and improving outcome is a top subject when discussing schools, teachers are singled out as one of the most important factors for students’ achievement (evident, for example the OECD report Teachers matter, 2005). But as we have shown throughout this book there will be limited change or development in education if only the practices of teacher learning and student learning are taken into account. There is now a critical need to examine all the ecologically interlinked educational practices in the school landscape and highlight specific details about how each shapes and influences the other. We do not think of these relationships between practices only in abstract or general terms—like the generalisation that teaching influences learning. The teaching profession needs to take policies and politics into account and make something happen, not just to be operatives in a system that lets things happen to them—but instead, develop capacities to be activist professionals (as Sachs contends). Returning to the first chapter on action research we refer to the definition of action research first mentioned by Carr and Kemmis (1986). They stated at that time that action research is about changing, (1) aspects of practice, (2) understandings of this practice, and (3) the understandings of the context in which practice takes place. Their contention asserts that action research is not just about changing practice instrumentally by using specific methods (Carr & Kemmis, 2005), but these changes demand wider and deeper understandings whereby policy and the politics of education is praxis-oriented, that is, about acting wisely, ethically, reflexively and responsively. For a future direction that consider the arguments presented in previous chapters, there is a need of transformation and development of education systems at several levels. It is necessary for the school to be aware of their own practice landscape and how practices of professional learning, action research, leading, teaching and student learning are ecologically connected each shaping one another. But as inferred earlier in this chapter, a practice landscape (of for example a school) cannot exist in isolation since the practice architectures of, for instance, the system or district office must necessarily be taken into account. Mechanisms between schools and the district

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or regional offices (and their policies) must be open in ways that allow the profession, as a critical stakeholder, to have a voice in the direction and policy setting (as stressed by Jana and Astrid above), then a locally driven, locally relevant impact on education might be seen. Such conditions are required to realise the critical power that action research promises to have for enabling desired outcomes without tight regulatory policies that restricting those desires from the ‘top’. Furthermore, such as position requires the type of support that simultaneously develops the professional capacity of teachers, so they can contribute to on-going and sustainable improvements in classrooms, schools and across education systems (Fullan, 2006, 2015). Intrinsically, we argue that the gaze on education must become more stereoscopical to account for multifaceted representations of influence in and for educational transformation (Hardy et al., 2017). Such a view then accounts for a wider multidimensional generative view of teacher development and change that positions all who participate equally in educational work as stewards of, and responsible for, education; views given warrant by the middle leader’s voices presented in this book. This standpoint is more outward looking. And directs us towards the praxis-oriented ideals of education itself—as comprised of practices that support individual and collectives to live well in a world worth living in (Kemmis & Edwards-Groves, 2018; Kemmis et al., 2014). This standpoint is one that avoids the risk of education falling into a deep abyss whereby the professional wisdom and site-based experiences of teachers and middle leaders are left circulating endlessly in a cesspool of managerialist tendencies. Moreover, the dichotomy between relevance and rigour, and achievement and accountability that unnecessarily juxtapose interests or accomplishments at local sites with those publicised at the global cannot be misunderstood, these are two sides of the same coin. Indeed, these are issues and questions not for education alone, but assuredly provoke reframed, reformulated policy directions that draw from a practice-based site ontological position as necessary in considering, planning for and investing in the development of the leading capacities of practitioners in other organizations and workplaces as well.

Generative Leadership for Education Development Navigating our way through the histories of teachers as they traversed the education domains of action researching, professional learning, teaching and leading has provisioned grounds for reinserting the push for systemic funding of long-term site-based approaches to development. It is here, in this vein, that transformation of teaching and leading is possible. Incontrovertibly, the foundation to the propositions we have made in this book is the need to take account of and moreover invest in site based education development. And, as we have shown across the book, the longevity of action research for site-based education stimulate and support practices that undeniably provide grounds for the professional journey into middle leading. Considering the momentum and nature of this journey, the social and professional consequences

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of action research have provoked breakthrough understandings about learning to lead. As a reader, you have also heard the voices from the field that provide evidence about the generative power of action research—especially about the entwined practices of action research, professional learning and leading. Our studies suggest that reciprocity exists as middle leaders both create conditions for learning and leading (through aspirations, conviction, and drive to make change in their own circumstances and the circumstances for other teachers) and are created by the external conditions laid out for them as they experience learning in longer term focused professional learning programs. From this perspective, learning and leading practices take form in, and are formed by living the practice in ‘the site of the social’. In our view, this mutual accomplishment is necessary for generating learning and leading capacities and are built up on the following five principles: 1. To be democratic and effective, professional learning in long-term programs include seven cornerstones: collaboration, collegiality, capacity, communication, community, context; 2. Action research generates professional and practical leadership, educational professionalism, individual and collective agency for activism, and educational and social sustainability through depth, length, breadth and enduring relationships; 3. Practices of professional learning, leading learning, action research, teaching and student learning are ecologically connected in an educational landscape at the site; 4. The practice landscape is shaped by practices within and beyond the site and need professional action, agency and activism; 5. The Education Complex of Practices need to be understood as locally and systemically interrelated across schools, district or regions. As a sixth principle, based on our studies, we want to extend the definition of action research formed 30 years ago by Carr and Kemmis (1986, p. 164) by adding that action research generates leading capacities; that is, that: 6. Action research is about changing aspects of practice, understandings of practice, and understandings of the site where practices takes place, and understanding the potential for generating capacities for leading. We believe, this extension, locates action research as a strong vehicle for supporting leadership development; and importantly that action research goes beyond the modest time-bounded project to become a way of being in practice. In this way, we have illustrated empirically, the ways a theoretical, practical and critical orientation towards site based education development can serve as the vehicle for revitalising leading work in education and re-invigorating the practices of students, teachers and school and system leaders who live and work together in the communicative spaces of education. Our desire, in this book, has been to unravel, or moreover tease out den röda tråden that comprise action research practices as, and for, professional learning and

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development in education. Moreover, we sought to explore what happens in practices of practitioners after the ‘end of the project’. Our findings, we claim, have reconceptualised, and even rescripted understandings about the promise of action research. We conclude, by returning to middle leader Rosie, whose comments encapsulate the essence of this book—that action research, professional learning, teaching and leading are intricately tied together in practices and aspirations for supporting site based education development. She says: My capacities as a leader stem from my capacities as both a learner and a teacher – they are tied together actually. How I see it, my professional leadership is sustained by a reciprocity between both teaching and ongoing professional learning … in one way, one continually flows into the other… back and forth so to speak… for me facilitating is teaching is learning is leading – I can’t see the difference. Rosie, Middle leader

References Biesta, G. (2007). Why “what works” won’t work: Evidence-based practice and the democratic deficit in educational. Educational Theory, 57(1), 1–22. Carr, W., & Kemmis, S. (1986). Becoming critical: Education, knowledge and action research. London: Routledge. Carr, W., & Kemmis, S. (2005). Staying critical. Educational Action Research, 13(3), 347–358. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650790500200296. Cherryholmes, C. H. (1993). Reading research. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 25(1), 1-32. Edwards-Groves, C., & Rönnerman, K. (2013). Generating leading practices through professional learning. Professional Development in Education, 39(1), 122–140. Edwards-Groves, C., Grootenboer, P., Hardy, I., & Rönnerman, K. (2018). Driving change from ‘the middle’: Middle leading for site based educational development. Special Issue “Middle Leadership: Practices, Policies and Paradigms, in School Leadership and Management. https:// doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2018.1525700. Edwards-Groves, C., Grootenboer, P., & Rönnerman, K. (2016). Facilitating a culture of relational trust in school-based action research: Recognising the role of middle leaders. Special Issue: Partnerships and Recognition, Educational Action Research, 24(3), 369–386. https://doi.org/10. 1080/09650792.2015.1131175. Fullan, M. (2006). The future of educational change: system thinkers in action. Journal of Educational Change, 7, 113–122. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-006-9003-9. Fullan, M. (2015). Leadership from the middle: A systems strategy. In Education Canada (pp. 22– 26). Canadian Education Association. www.cea-ace.ca/educationcanada. Goldenberg, C., & Gallimore, R. (1991). Local knowledge, research knowledge, and educational change: A case study of early Spanish reading improvement. Educational Researcher, 20(8), 2–14. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X020008002. Grootenboer, P., Edwards-Groves, C., & Rönnerman, K. (2020). Leading from the middle: Pedagogical leadership in schools. Sydney: Routledge. Groundwater-Smith, S., Mitchell, J., Mockler, N., Ponte, P., & Rönnerman, K. (2013). Facilitating practitioner research: Developing transformational partnerships. London: Routledge. Haneda, M. (2008). Contexts for learning: English language learners in a US Middle School. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 11(1), 57–74. Hardy, I., Edwards-Groves, C., & Rönnerman, K. (2012). Collaborative learning as a travelling practice: How practices of learning travel. Educational Practice and Theory, 34(2), 5–22.

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Hardy, I., Rönnerman, K., & Beach, B. (2018). Teachers’ work in complex times: The ‘fast policy’ of Swedish school reform. Oxford Review of Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2018. 1546684. Hardy, I., Rönnerman, K., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2017). Transforming professional learning: Educational action research in practice. European Educational Research Journal, 1–21. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1474904117690409. Hardy, I., Salo, P., & Rönnerman, K. (2015). Bildung and educational action research: Resources for hope in neoliberal times. Educational Action Research, 23(3), 383–398. https://doi.org/10. 1080/09650792.2015.1012175. Kemmis, S., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2018). Understanding education: History, politics and practices. Singapore: Springer. Kemmis, S., & Mutton, R. (2012). Education for sustainability (EfS): Practice and practice architectures. Environmental Education Research, 18(2), 187–207. Kemmis, S., & Smith, T. J. (2008). Praxis and praxis development. In S. Kemmis & T. J. Smith (Eds.), Enabling praxis: Challenges for education (pp. 3–13). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2017). Roads not travelled, roads ahead: How the theory of practice architectures is travelling. In K. Mahon, S. Francisco, & S. Kemmis (Eds.), Exploring education and professional practice—Through the lens of practice architectures (pp. 239–256). Singapore: Springer. Kemmis, S., Wilkinson, J., Edwards-Groves, C., Hardy, I., Grootenboer, P., & Bristol, L. (2014). Changing practices, changing education. Singapore: Springer. OECD. (2005). Teachers matter: Attracting, developing and retaining effective teachers. In Education and training policy. Paris: OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/978926401804 4-en. Rönnerman, K. (2019). Challenging action research as a research method. In Annual Conference Proceedings, Voicing and Valuing: Daring and Doing. Collaborative Action Research Network (pp. 41–44), Manchester, October 25–27, 2018. ISBN 978-1-910029-54-1. https://www.carn.org. uk/site/assets/files/2279/carn_bulletin_22-1.pdf. Rönnerman, K., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2012). Genererat ledarskap [Generative leadership]. In K. Rönnerman (Ed.), Aktionsforskning i praktiken—förskola och skola på vetenskaplig grund [Action research in practice] (pp. 171–190). Lund: Studentlitteratur. Rönnerman, K., Edwards-Groves, C., & Grootenboer, P. (2018). Att leda från mitten—lärare driver professionell utveckling [Leading from the middle—Teachers driving professional development]. Stockholm: Lärarförlaget. ISBN 978-91-88149-33-6. Sachs, J. (2010). Teacher professional identity: Competing discourses, competing outcomes. Journal of Education Policy, 16(2), 149–161. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680930116819. Schatzki, T. (2002). The site of the social: A philosophical account of the constitution of social life and change. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Schatzki, T. R. (2010). The timespace of human activity: On performance, society, and history as indeterminate teleological events. Lanham, MD: Lexington. Wittgenstein, L. (1958). Philosophical investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Afterword

Den röda tråden: The Practice Architectures of Our Research Collaboration When people’s paths cross things happen. But this is not blind faith or by coincidence. Rather it has to do with the practice architectures around the practices that you are a part of at the time. For us, our paths crossed 15 years ago when we met for the first time at a book-meeting in Amsterdam in 2006, as we (with a small group of colleagues representing Australia, the Nordic countries—Finland, Norway, Sweden—and the Netherlands) began discussing a series of possible up-coming books for the international network Pedagogy, Education, Praxis (PEP) in its earliest formation. The first official meeting of PEP occurred two years later at Charles Sturt University (CSU) at Wagga Wagga, Australia, in 2008, where the first drafts of four books in the series were discussed, and further plans for research within the network was planned. This first meeting was made possible by the practice architectures then and there. These early encounters opened a communicative space for those in the network at the time, and were the genesis of our professional relationship. At the meeting, the discussions were fruitful as we all shared (in English, even though this was not the first language of many people present in those days) what it was like being educators at universities from around the world. Yet, the fact that the language of the meeting, spoken in English, became a practice architecture that influenced how language was used in our gatherings. For some international participants present the terms, idioms, concepts and phrasing (in English) were familiar; yet others were foreign and unfamiliar and were new and confusing. As a response, new practices and practice architectures emerged from the group, for example to make the meeting a hospitable encounter for everyone, we changed the material-economic arrangements so that there was always someone who could explain and exemplify. This made it possible for everyone present to reach a common understanding—come to intersubjective meaning making—about what we were thinking, discussing, reading and writing.

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At the time, another important material-economic arrangement that made it possible for the international network participants to meet in physical space time, was through the provision of funding for a group of non-Australians to travel to CSU to take part in these meetings, and at the same time CSU provided resources (like discounted accommodation, supplying lunches, working and technological materials, and transport) and spaces at the university so that our discussions could be held. Then, and over time, the practices and arrangements changed the relationships and roles we experienced; the relatings because of between people in the cross-national group evolved as our work (collective thinking, discussing, reading and writing) begun. Written drafts of chapters from the different national contexts were shared. At the beginning, one of the practices that emerged was that there was no specific leader who told everyone what ought to be done; this was a practice architecture that was frustrating (constraining) for some but was liberating (enabling) for others. What emerged was a strong sense of shared power and solidarity among the group, whereby this practice became a social-political arrangement whereby democratic and agentic ways of working emerged as a longstanding network practice. During the meetings the group actively and collaboratively strived for unforced consensus. As the years passed varying collaborations among the PEP participants emerged, as people took a shared responsibility for the practice architectures that shaped and facilitated the conduct of the network. It took another couple of years until our collaboration (in 2010) started more specifically. One day in Christine’s car, on our way to lunch from the university to the town centre, we started to talk about our personal research programs. We were both pretty tired and hungry and were ‘assigned’ to be in the same car to go and get lunch (note, this was the result of a material economic arrangement where a “local” Wagga person was assigned to be responsible to transport international visitors between venues). We started to introduce ourselves by talking about the research we were conducting at our own sites. Suddenly we were both very alert and just responded, ‘yes I found that too’, ‘my teachers talk that way as well’ and so on. We found joy in this discovery. Our stories were mirrors of one another—this was intriguing to us since in our respective research was conducted on the other side of the globe from each other. The particular moment was shaped by practice architectures—that we were ‘locked in the boundaries of a car going to get lunch’. That was when we started to talk about something that we at the time saw, then eventually described, as generative leadership. This was one of the common and striking findings from our research being conducted worlds apart. As our discussions continued, now over a sandwich and a coffee, Karin shared that she had just completed a survey among 120 early childhood teachers in Sweden who had all taken part in a yearlong action research program. One of her most stunning findings was that almost 70% responded they had taken on a facilitator’s role leading professional learning in their respective preschools as a practice to continue with action research. Our discussion became more enthusiastic as we continued over the lunch break into the afternoon and extended into the evening where a glass of champagne consolidated the formulation of a plan (as bubbles often did—especially as Dorsia in Gothenburg, or in a surf club at Broadbeach on the Gold Coast).

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After this fateful day, our plan to develop a shared international research project was put into action. We began with the development of a joint survey and interview schedule to be implemented in our respective countries. This work, conducted over the next few months, revealed (as a central finding) how professional learning through action research led to leading colleagues in their own development—something we called generative leading. We disseminated our findings at a range of conferences and published in 2012 and 2013, and made reciprocal scholar visits to each other’s institutions (University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and Charles Sturt University, Australia). Towards the end of 2012, when Karin again visited CSU, we went on a mini sightseeing tour along the Great Ocean Road (Victoria, Australia). While Christine was driving, Karin was typing a first draft of a proposal for a book—this book. Our intention was to build on our research and more deeply theorise generative leadership as we considered the relationships between professional learning and leading as an essential part of site-based school development. This consideration took seriously ways critical participatory action research, and how leading, facilitating and researching it, forms a critical part of the machinery for ‘driving change’ in particular educational sites. For us, our role in that endeavour has been a real and rewarding privilege. Although the work with the book has taken many years—a lot longer than we expected as life threw us many challenges along the way—the extra time afforded our crossing a new path—that with our dear colleague Peter Grootenboer. Within PEP, Peter Grootenboer, was actively working on middle leading in schools. The three of us began working together because of central interest in theorising professional learning and action research in school-based change and development—and, in many ways, our ideas were consolidated in new projects where middle leading became the essence of what generative leadership is leading towards. In our view, middle leading is a form of leading not at the top nor at the bottom, rather beside; it aims to facilitate and support colleagues in developing the school on a professional ground that stem from the teachers’ own experiences. In other words, it is not part of the New Public Management steering of schools, but comes from the professionals themselves—their knowledge, competences and activism. This phase of our research collaboration with Peter consolidated strong findings about middle leading driving school change. Throughout this book we have used the metaphor of den röda tråden, a very wellknown way (particularly in Sweden) of describing how values and activities continue and connect over time. We could feel connecting our lives and activities across our two countries in deeply professional and personal ways. In the beginning of the book we wrote of its origin. But we can also see it connecting to the continental perspective on education as a human science (bildning). In the Nordic countries bildung has long traditions and can be viewed either as an elite perspective and as based on folk enlightenment. As part of the industrialism era, workers with no or little school experience came together to learn more together with the purpose of acting as a good citizen (folk enlightenment). Another way to look at bildung is to view it as travelling—as a journey. You learn things during the way and when you come back

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you are not the same person as when you left. In the most recent book on bildung in Sweden, Sverker Sörlin (2019) defends bildung as important by saying that it is about the importance of knowledge for shaping and dedicating life as a human being and citizen in the society (p. 16 author translation). From our perspective, we consider our collaboration to be an educational journey where we developed knowledge together, managed to visit each other regularly and deepened a collegiality and friendship through our practices of studying action research, generative leadership and middle leading among teachers in preschools and schools in both Sweden and Australia. Den röda tråden for us has been the continuity and continual desire to know more and to understand what professional learning, action research, generative leadership and middle leading is about. This brings us in line with Sörlin who ends his book with the words (p. 212, author translation), We need to know more together. This journey—now shared with Kirsten Petrie, Tess Boyle and Veronica Sülau, but especially with Peter Grootenboer—has been one that has been extremely professionally and personally rewarding. For us, having fun sustained the hard work and the relationships—and is a lesson for all. Our PEP moments made it possible for the development of our long standing, robust, coherent and importantly, productive research collaboration. And yes—even with 10,000 km between us.

Appendix

Middle Leading Bibliography

Edwards-Groves, C., & Rönnerman, K. (2013). Generating leading practices through professional learning. Professional Development in Education, 39(1), 122–140. Edwards-Groves, C., Grootenboer, P., & Attard, C. (2019). Conceptualising three core practices for leading site-based educational development in schools: A practice architectures perspective. In American Educational Research Association Conference (AERA), Toronto, April 2019. Edwards-Groves, C. E., Grootenboer, P., Hardy, I., & Rönnerman, K. (2019). Driving change from ‘the middle’: Middle leading for site based educational development. School Leadership & Management. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2018. 1525700. Edwards-Groves, C., Grootenboer, P., & Rönnerman, K. (2016). Facilitating a culture of relational trust in school-based action research: Recognising the role of middle leaders. Educational Action Research, 24(3). https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792. 2015.1131175. Edwards-Groves, C., Grootenboer, P., & Rönnerman, K. (2018). Middle leading: Examining the practice architectures of leading sustainable site-based practice development in schools. In American Educational Research Association Conference (AERA), New York, April 2018. Grootenboer, P. (2018). The practices of school middle leadership: Leading professional learning. Singapore: Springer. Grootenboer, P., Edwards-Groves, C., & Rönnerman, K. (2014). Leading practice development: Voices from the middle. Professional Development in Education, 41(3), 508–526. Grootenboer, P., Edwards-Groves, C., & Rönnerman, K. (2015). The practice of middle leading in mathematics education. In M. Marshman, V. Geiger, & A. Bennison (Eds.), Mathematics education in the margins (Proceedings of the 38th © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 C. J. Edwards-Groves and K. Rönnerman, Generative Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4563-8

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Annual Conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia) (pp. 277–284). Sunshine Coast: MERGA. Grootenboer, P., Edwards-Groves, C., & Rönnerman, K. (2020). Middle leadership in schools: A practical guide for leading learning. London: Routledge. https://doi. org/10.4324/9781003026389. Grootenboer, P., Rönnerman, K., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2017). Leading from the middle: A praxis-oriented practice. In P. Grootenboer, C. Edwards-Groves, & S. Choy (Eds.), Practice theory perspectives on pedagogy and education: Praxis, diversity and contestation (pp. 243–263). Singapore: Springer. Rönnerman, K. (2015). The importance of generating middle leading through action research for collaborative learning. LEARNing Landscapes, 8(2), 33–39. E-journal https://www.learninglandscapes.ca/current-issue. Rönnerman, K., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2012). Genererat ledarskap [Generative leadership]. In K. Rönnerman (Ed.), Aktionsforskning i praktiken—förskola och skola på vetenskaplig grund [Action research in practice] (pp. 171–190). Lund: Studentlitteratur. Rönnerman, K., Edwards-Groves, C., & Grootenboer, P. (2014). Opening up communicative spaces in early childhood education through middle leadership. Paper presented at the conference, Educational Leadership in Transition—The Global Perspective. Uppsala. Rönnerman, K., Edwards-Groves, C., & Grootenboer, P. (2015). Opening up communicative spaces for discussion ‘quality practices’ in early childhood education through middle leadership. Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy. https://doi.org/ 10.3402/nstep.v1.30098. November 5–6, 2014. https://int.blasenhus.uu.se/papers ELTGP/KRO637.pdf. Rönnerman, K., Edwards-Groves, C., & Grootenboer, P. (2017). Action research generates middle leading for professional learning of others. Paper presented in, Collaborative Action Research Network (CARN), Crete, November, 2017. Rönnerman, K., Edwards-Groves, C., & Grootenboer, P. (2018). Att leda från mitten—lärare driver professionell utveckling [Leading from the middle—Teachers driving professional development]. Stockholm: Lärarförlaget. Rönnerman, K., Grootenboer, P., & Edwards-Groves, C. (2017). The practice architectures of middle leading in early childhood education. International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy, 11(8). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40723-0170032-z.

Index

B Bourdieu, 26

K Kemmis, 8, 21, 28, 79, 108, 132, 133 Knowledge, 28, 79, 108, 132

C Capra, 26 Carr, 8, 79, 108, 132 Coaching, 39, 51 Communities of practice, 28, 49 Corbin, 30

L Lave, 28 Leading, 131 Learning communities, 49

D Dialogue groups, 39, 51

M MacIntyre, 28 McNamara, 21, 30 Mutton, 21, 28, 133

E Ecologies of practices, 14, 21, 28, 101 Education, 23, 28, 38, 39, 133 Edwards-Groves, ix, 27, 28, 80, 133

F Fitzsimmons, 49 Freire, 23, 28, 132

H Habermas, 80 Hardy, ix, 28, 80, 133 Hargreaves, 38 History, 29, 128, 133 Horton, 23, 28

I Ingold, 28

N Nehring, 49 New practices, 7

P Peters, 28 Potter, 21 Practice architectures, 7, 28, 133 Practices are bound up with material arrangements, 102 Practice tradition, 37 Prefigured, 36 Professional learning, 128, 131

R Researching, 8, 131 Revitalising education, 131 Rönnerman, 27

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142 S Schatzki, 29, 133 Schooling, 38, 116 Site, 7, 21, 22, 36 Site based education development, 116 Smith, 133 Social space, 23 Stark, 21, 30 Stengers, 21, 29 Stoll, 49 Stronach, 21, 30

Index T Teaching, 8 Tönnies, 49

W Warne, 30 Weaver-Hightower, 21, 30 Wenger, 28 Wilkinson, ix, 28, 80, 133