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ESRC Seminar Series aims and objectives

Aims

The ESRC Seminar Series provided support for the on-going work of core group members of the Transforming Learning Capacity research group. The members were all actively engaged, in their own professional contexts, in exploring collaboratively with colleagues the possibilities for influencing practice, in line with the transformability agenda. Contexts included:

Advanced Skills Teacher: working with a variety of practitioners in primary and secondary schools
LEA Specialist Teacher: supporting teachers in conceptualising and addressing the distinctive needs of pupils
Initial Teacher Educators: challenging student teacher assumptions about ability labelling and working with school-based mentors to promote the agenda of transformability
Mathematics teaching: exploring processes of change in pedagogical thinking and practice with secondary school Mathematics departments
Working with Teaching Assistants: challenging assumptions and promoting good practice in school within the framework of transforming learning capacity
School leadership: a headteacher using LWL principles and practice to foster learning and development within a whole-school community

In addition to the core group and invited speakers, seminars were also attended by a number of guests, both researchers and practitioners, representing a range of educational contexts.

Detailed aims

To establish a forum for exploring and further developing existing understandings of how a pedagogy committed to transforming learning capacity is possible in schools.
To understand a range of opportunities for implementing new ideas related to transforming learning capacity in collaborative professional contexts.
To develop our understanding of the issues involved in implementing new ideas related to transforming learning capacity in collaborative professional contexts.
To develop and share possible strategies for exploiting opportunities and overcoming problems.
To share experiences and evidence relevant to the evaluation of such strategies and to develop new theoretical understandings related to transforming learning capacity.

Objectives

To continue to develop and evaluate practical models which reflect the pedagogy of transforming learning capacity through work with teachers, teaching assistants, initial teacher educators, student teachers, LEA specialist teachers and LEA officers.
To synthesise the ideas related to transforming learning capacity with relevant research being conducted by experts in their field (eg inclusion, education and equality, dialogic teaching, international educative practices)
To support the work of core group participants who are engaged in researching case studies of collaborative professional practices directly related to the ideas of transforming learning capacity, through dialogue and critique of work in progress.
To bring together researchers and practitioners in order to foster debate, develop thinking and change practice.
To facilitate the ongoing dissemination of the work of the group