Pedagogical bricolage and teacher agency: Towards a culture of creative professionalism

Communicating Elevated Academic Expectations: Positioning Students as Thinkers with Ideas to Share

“…To support social mobility, education is critical; curriculum and policy design can grant learners equal opportunities, access to high quality early and formal education while inhibiting early school leaving (OECD, 2018). Yet, in the NS context, formal curricular attention has not been given to ECM, circumstances which highlight not only the importance of experienced literacy teachers and their pedagogy (Campbell, 2019), but the pressures they experience.…”

“…Consistently, Lia directly, and indirectly, demonstrated to students that they could use ideas from their own lives to inform their thinking, reading, writing, and analysis of texts. Informed by Lia's understanding of restorative practices (Watchel, 2016) as well as the learning principles underlying literature and Socratic circles (Moeller & Moeller, 2013), we present Lia's daily classroom circle as an example of pedagogical bricolage 4 (Campbell, 2019).…”

“…Campbell (2019) defined pedagogical bricolage as "a way of considering teaching not merely as a set of behaviours that determine certain outcomes, but as a concatenation of possibilities, realized in an infinite number of permutations by those who operate successfully within the teaching profession" (p. 38).5 The term late adolescents is used to define the age range (17-21) of the participants in this study.…”

The Rural Child and the Ambivalence of Education in Zimbabwe: What Can Bricolage Do?

“…Reference [50] suggests that professional teachers help students to develop the dispositions or attitudes associated with critical thinking, as well as the ability to think well. This advice is confirmed by [46], who asserts that teachers should apply an eclectic assemblage of skills, strategies and resources, which should be mediated through the school ethos, curricular demands, education policy and changing notions of professional standards and competence. The kind of teacher required by the multigrade class is one who can "make do by applying combinations of the resources at hand to new problems and opportunities" [51].…”

“…Affirming bricolage as an alternative to the trajectories faced by students in multigrade classes requires a change in the mindsets of teachers working in deprived areas. It will require a level of personal commitment, creativity, and responsiveness, rather than homogenous and mechanistic, action [46]. Thus, in the context deprived multigrade classes, bricolage is relevant as a possible solution, based on the notion that bricolage appreciates complex epistemological underpinnings and multiple perspectives [47], as long the goal is to change the circumstances of teachers and students and improve education using locally available resources to champion change.…”