Professional Learning and Experience: The Road Not Taken

• In Event: "Back to the Rough Ground": Practitioner Inquiry and Education as an Academic Discipline in the 2020s

Abstract

This paper explores the role of School-University Partnership initiatives in the development of practitioner enquiry in educational research. It takes as its focus the conceptualisation of professional learning embedded in such initiatives and the implications of this on the implementation of policy and on practice. The paper takes an instance of a School-University Partnership initiative as the object of study in order to identify antecedents and consequences of a government sponsored attempt to promote practitioner enquiry. The aim of this investigation of a School-University Partnership is to contribute to our understanding of the place of practitioner enquiry in relation to education as an academic discipline in universities in two ways: firstly, by re-examining what was learned from the initiative about the role of experience in the construction of knowledge through enquiry and secondly, by questioning the extent to which the educational research community is itself equipped to learn from experience. Perhaps it can also serve as a stimulus to consider any implications of ‘the road not taken’.

Author

• Vivienne Baumfield, University of Exeter