ABSTRACT

The current neoliberal political climate in education has narrowed the focus of teachers’ professional development and reduced their work in the classroom to a simple and predictable process. In this article, we challenge this view by deploying a range of complexity thinking concepts to present an account of teachers as self-organising, inquiring, and emergent professionals, whose classroom practice is constantly evolving as they negotiate different boundaries and make connections across the nested layers of the education system. Lesson Study is recognised as a collaborative, school-based, and long-term form of professional development that appears to have the potential to foster these complex and adaptive features of classroom practice. To this end, in the closing stages of this article, we present examples from our involvement in two longitudinal research projects in Scotland. The project leaders have set up appropriate contexts for Lesson Study that are ripe for a focus on complex adaptive practice in the future. We share our next steps in these two projects but remain realistic about the implications of developing complex adaptive practice through Lesson Study in the current political climate.

摘要

当前的新自由主义政治教育环境使教师的专业发展重点缩小，并将他们在课堂上的工作减少到一个简单且可预测的过程。在本文中，我们通过部署一系列复杂性思维概念来挑战这种观点，以教师的身份进行自我组织，探究和崭露头角，他们的课堂实践不断发展，因为他们协商了不同的界限并在嵌套中建立联系教育系统的各个层次。课业研究被认为是一种协作的，以学校为基础的长期专业发展形式，似乎具有促进课堂实践的这些复杂和适应性特征的潜力。为此，在本文的最后阶段，我们以参与苏格兰的两个纵向研究项目为例。项目负责人已经为课程学习设置了适当的环境，这些环境已经成熟，可以在将来着重于复杂的适应性实践。我们在这两个项目中分享了我们的下一步工作，但对于在当前政治环境下通过“课业研究”发展复杂的适应性实践的含义仍然持现实主义态度。