(Re)connecting disconnections: the role of Cogenerative Spaces in our awareness of how learning is mobilised in schools

Abstract

There is little doubt that school improvement is a complex endeavour. School organisations are dynamic systems where individuals interact in different ways on any given day, and where both adults and children are constantly changing and growing within their own unique contexts. In addition, school improvement approaches intersect with education systems, family systems and societal expectations and inequalities, and are defined by regulatory parameters and legislative processes. Often, this has led to professional learning and school development programs that are implemented across school settings and look to external facilitators and companies for expertise and to meet outcomes. Whilst there is value in these programs, there are growing concerns in many countries about inequalities perpetuated through schools, student disengagement from learning, disrespectful student behaviour, and decreasing rates of teacher recruitment and retention. This speaks to a need to consider the transformational potential of those who have the most experience of the nested systems within each school setting: our students and teachers. The study outlined in this thesis sought to address these concerns by investigating how Cogenerative Spaces involving students and teachers can contribute to our awareness of the way that learning is mobilised within the case study schools. It adopted a mixed methods case-based approach that employed a qualitative approach that provided rich descriptive data to address RQ1 and RQ2 and an ethnographic approach that generated quantitative results to address RQ3. Data collection utilised collage-making (visual method), cogenerative dialogue (focus group) and semi-structured interview, conducted through a series of case studies in school settings across three countries, with an overall purposive sample of student participants (n = 48) and teacher participants (n = 22). Data analysis was informed by both a process tracing approach and Sociocultural Discourse Analysis (SCDA). From the study, six learning dimensions emerged, with each offering a five-part process that revealed the causal mechanism that operationalised learning within each dimension. The learning processes within each learning dimension are drawn from students’ and teachers’ perceptions of the causal mechanisms that drive learning in their school (RQ2), and weave together the lived experiences of learning within the three cases (RQ1). In addition, the research herein outlines the value of incorporating the pedagogical tool, Cogenerative Spaces, which provides the foundation for conditions where students and teachers generate insights about learning in their context – together (RQ3). Specifically, it emerged that collage-making, as an embodied experience, encourages individuals to interact with their own lived experiences in deeper and more meaningful ways, and in representing these reflections, they can make their thinking and stories more explicit to others. Alongside this, cogenerative dialogue offers guidance and protocols that support discussions between teachers and students that are respectful, inclusive, and collaborate, and enable the generation of new knowledge and insights about how learning is mobilised within a specific school context. This study provides useful implications for practice and further research and aims to disrupt policy that privileges universalist and rigid approaches to school improvement by providing an alternative approach grounded in detailed, qualitative research within schools.