Dialogical habitus engagement: The twists and turns of teachers’ pedagogical learning within a professional learning community

Abstract

The focus of this article is on the pedagogical learning of five teachers in a professional learning community (PLC). The PLC was conceptualised as a means of generating pedagogical learning and change among the participating teachers in consonance with a socially just educational orientation. The two authors of this article participated in the PLC as participants and facilitators. This article discusses the difficulty that the PLC encountered as it engaged with the 'hardness' of pedagogical change among the teachers. We suggest that the dialogical approach of the PLC, as a form of 'habitus engagement', has the potential to capacitate the form of adaptation and change required by the teachers. The article discusses the twists and turns involved in the PLC's struggle to deliberate productively about pedagogical change. It describes an absence of a didactic language and pedagogic reflexivity among the teachers that caused the PLC conversations to remain 'stuck' in discussions that revolved around issues external to pedagogical knowledge transfer, mainly regarding keeping order and discipline in their classes. We describe how introducing a pedagogical tool into the PLC deliberations enabled the teachers to move towards a more participatory approach in their teaching practices. The exemplifying basis of our article is our deliberations with the five teachers in the PLC and the article describes the 'methodo-logic' of the PLC process that incorporated an emphasis on reflexive dialogue and ongoing interaction to establish a generative pedagogical platform for social justice pedagogies.

Teachers’ Voices, Pedagogy and Discursive Practices in Ability Grouping Classrooms in Delhi Government Schools

“…In the school, teachers’ professional and pedagogical habitus is elicited through their teaching style, strategies, how they respond to students, decision making, that is, their beliefs, dispositions and classroom practices shaped in the context of being teachers. However, the pedagogical habitus of teachers is highly constrained in classrooms as they enact only those behaviours that the school regards as permissible (Fataar & Feldman, 2016). Teachers exemplified this by saying: ‘we can’t apply our strategies - we have to stick to the orders to teach, enact…’ and ‘it feels like – we still follow the same traditional way of doing work.…”

Navigating the Field of English Higher Education in Kazakhstan: Advocating for Habitus and Capital Engagement of Speakers of Languages other than English

“…In South Africa, Fataar and Feldman (2017) examined how pedagogical habitus endures and adapts during educational reform and found that teachers' pedagogical habitus, shaped by educational discourses and beliefs, remains resistant to change unless challenged and contextualised within a specific cultural framework. For this reason, we argue for the inclusion of professors' pedagogical habitus as a "system of [educational] dispositions" acquired in particular contexts through particular languages since it guides their teaching practices (Bourdieu, 2005, p. 43;Feldman & Fataar, 2016). This Habitus develops gradually in response to the cultural norms and contexts within educational environments professors encounter, shaped by their educational background; their Pedagogical Habitus predisposes professors to respond in specific ways based on the historical structures it encompasses (Bourdieu, 2005).…”

“…In post-apartheid South Africa, research shows how professional learning communities (PLCs) offered a social justice-oriented local Funds of Knowledge approach and spaces for habitus engagement to promote pedagogical adaptation and change (Feldman, 2016;. The South African research studies resonate with others, indicating that PLCs foster ongoing dialogue and reflexivity as a process of habitus engagement that not only challenges but also leads to shifts in teachers' entrenched pedagogical dispositions, leading to conceptual and pragmatic shifts in their pedagogy (Durr et al, 2020;McPherson, 2023).…”

The Long Road to Shared PCK: a Science Teacher’s Personal Journey

“…We could point to the content, or maybe it was about the connections she was able to make between the topic and her pupils, or that she was more comfortable with the representations she used, or even that the academic language was more accessible to the pupils. At this point, the importance of the A-R group cannot be Experience teaches you to have more control over things and people, even over yourself, so that discipline and control within the classroom would be more flexible, even leading to negotiation with them overestimated (Luehmann, 2008), since it shares aspirations with the professional learning community (PLC) as a means of generating pedagogical learning and change among the participating teachers with the horizon of the search for social justice (Feldman & Fataar, 2016), and interesting tool for negotiation in times of curricular changes (Friedrichsen & Barnett, 2018).…”