The let me learn professional learning process for teacher transformation

Abstract

This research set out to explore how a group of nine educators from a Catholic Church school in Malta, who have attended the Let Me Learn professional Learning process (LMLpLp), experienced personal and professional transformation. This study investigates those factors influencing participants in their transformative learning journey. It also explores the dynamics of transformative learning and whether individual transformation affects the school’s transformative learning experience. More specifically this study set out to explore how teachers who participated in the Let Me Learn professional Learning process have experienced transformative learning. This study takes a qualitative phenomenological approach. It seeks to identify phenomena of personal and professional transformative learning through the perceptions of the educators participating in this study. Through the use of the semi structured interview it seeks to gather ‘deep’ data. This data represents the voices of these educators in narrative, thus emphasising the importance of the personal perspective and interpretation. This allowed this research to understand the subjective experience, motivation and actions of the participants.

The Literature review informs the questions asked during the interview. The interview was used as a tool for gathering information regarding values, attitudes and beliefs of participants. Each interview was transcribed, translated (when response was given in Maltese) and categorised according to Mezirow’s ten stages. Excerpts from each stage were further processed to generate themes. The themes were later streamlined and an acceptable interpretive framework was created. Each interview excerpt was then analysed through the framework.

Once all interviews were coded, detailed narratives were written. These narratives are meant to help the reader reflect on the process of transformative learning. It underscores those factors highlighted by the participants, which helped bring about both personal and professional transformative learning. This research has identified that individual constructs are strongly determined by an individual’s personal learning characteristics. Awareness of these personal learning characteristics (self knowledge) helped educators assess their practice and understand how their personal characteristics were determining their approach to teaching and affecting their interpersonal relationships with students and colleagues. This research showed that transformative learning is a mutually interdependent experience. Individual transformation amounts to, and is influenced by, the collective transformation. This study highlighted the role of the school community in the pursuit of personal transformation.

Yet another important finding of this research is the importance of a shared language of possibility. Through a shared language, a learning community can create a dialogic environment through which intentions, beliefs and interventions can be shared among the professional community. This research accentuates the importance of a shared language as a means of articulating a change in perspective. The study identified three main agents of change. The Let Me Learn team, as promoters and experts of this particular learning process; the teachers, who internalised the process and applied it to their practice; and the school’s senior management team, who internalised the Process, positioned it into the larger vision of the school and created a conducive environment through which the whole school community was empowered to take responsibility to bring about change in practice. A number of implications emerge from this study that could inform policy on teacher professional learning. A major implication concerns the importance of a shared language – a language that reflects the shared values and ideological position of the community. Such language frames the learning process, makes learning visible for teachers to be able to respond effectively with strategies that respect each learner’s learning preference and makes learning visible to the learner himself.

Another implication from this study arises from the finding that the transformative learning process of any individual educator and effectively of the whole school community, goes beyond the effectiveness and limitations of any one professional development programme. True and deep seated transformative learning comes from within the individual educator. This statement has serious repercussions on any professional development programme that aims to aid participants in their quest to transform their practice.

This study also emphasised the importance that any professional development needs to be seated in the local experience and needs of the school community. Any attempts at developing comprehensive, nation wide projects with pre-packaged approaches, are doomed to fail. What this research has shown is that for effective professional development, the identified outcomes need to correspond to the local needs of the school, rather than the national guidelines, detached from the realities of the particular school. Finally, this study accentuated the importance of incorporating mentoring support in any professional development proposal. Delivery of information and skills without follow up tend to lead to superficial application. Transformative learning presupposes a period of shared reflection on practice and collegial mediation of ideas through contact between teachers and their leaders and on the job support from their professional development mentors.