A research report describing a joint project by two practitioners exploring the impact the language of learning had on their colleagues' understanding of education, their practice, and their professional identity
The project focuses on what practitioners found to be the results for their professional experiences and their sense of themselves as professional educators of particular types of language choices, driven largely by policy, made by policymakers, leaders, and their peers and colleagues. The researchers collected amd analysed qualitative data via interviews with practitioners with varying levels of experience
The researchers found that the professional language surrounding educators broke down into two categories, one of a therapeutic ethos and one related to the economic market model and performativity (linked to summative assessment). These languages, combined with language embedded in operational practices and procedures, produced powerful metaphors which seemed to dominate and often oversimplify conceptions of practice for practitioners, reducing critical reflection about, for example, the accuracy and evidence base underpinning issues such as learning styles or assumptions about the nature of "the curriculum".
LSIS Research Development Fellowship