Emerging Into a Different Way of Becoming and Belonging. A School’s Journey in ‘Living and Sustaining’ Transformative Pedagogy. A Case Study of a New Zealand Primary School

Abstract

Every school has an organisational storyline that relates to people, objects, relationships and experiences. At a deeper level, a school’s storyline might be retold in terms of the aspirational intentions and achievements towards such aspirations. Deeper still, a school’s storyline can be told ideologically in terms of the shared understandings, shifting discourses, and the construction and re-construction of meaning with regard to the learning and teaching in the school. Using an ideological framework that focuses on the development and consensus of shared understandings, this presentation will outline a collaborative research project with a university and a school where the school’s storyline is tracked for five years from the appointment of a new principal. The participants are those in school governance, school leadership, the staff and students. The findings from the research show the subtleties within a school’s storyline during a time of transforming the learning and teaching in the school. The research focuses on the relational movements of stakeholders in re-purposing the learning and teaching that is transformative for all learners. The school’s learning priorities fully embrace an inclusive, strength-focused, creative and critical pedagogy. The school’s learning priorities transform not only how and what the students learn, they also transform the school’s culture. A different way of ‘becoming’ and ‘belonging’ emerges. School leaders bring meaning by re-telling and re-crafting their school’s storyline. Indeed, this activity provides connections and meanings that are further re-constructed. Feeling a part of an unfolding story, leaders act as a guardian of



Author Information
Jane Cavanagh-Eyre, Epsom Normal Primary School, New Zealand

Paper Information
Conference: ECE2014
Stream: Challenges and transformation in times of change

This paper is part of the ECE2014 Conference Proceedings (View)
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Posted by James Alexander Gordon