development of a mutually supportive learning community, one that ‘recognises each
classroom as different, that strategies must constantly be changed, invented,
reconceptualised to address each new teaching experience’ [24]. Her approach to
pedagogy avoids authoritarian teacher-pupil models whilst recognising that the
teacher/educator still has a responsibility to ‘orchestrate’ the learning; an approach
based upon a commitment to continual shared investigation. Therefore, in
communities of learning, relations are about ‘we’ and ‘us’ rather than ‘me’, ‘you’,
‘them’.
2/gallery educator: [The] philosophy of everybody buying into something because
they re interested in it and... the people working in it, and .. that we learn from each
other, has been really fundamental in keeping the momentum going throughout the
eighteen months.
All participants in Critical Minds recognised mutuality as both beneficial to learning
and a means to militate against the distance between teachers and pupils. Teachers
often find classrooms demanding, densely populated, complex social environments
and, although under constant scrutiny, they remain psychologically ‘alone’. Over
recent years this situation has been exacerbated by policy makers who prescribe
strategies for improvement denying teachers’ a professional vision, reducing agency
as well as morale [25].
For pupils the opportunity to work together was greatly appreciated. In their exit
questionnaires they were asked to rate various skills in terms of how important they
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