Creative postgraduate pedagogy for personal and professional learning: Risks and rewards
Book chapter
Durrant, J. 2022. Creative postgraduate pedagogy for personal and professional learning: Risks and rewards. in: Saunders, L. and D. Trotman (ed.) The Professional Doctorate in Education: Activism, Transformation and Practice Newcastle upon Tyne Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 67-90
Authors | Durrant, J. |
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Editors | Saunders, L. and D. Trotman |
Abstract | This chapter explores the implications of innovative postgraduate pedagogy within one EdD module, where providing a flexible, reflexive space to explore professional and personal positioning and identity has proved to be a pivotal point in many people’s doctoral journeys. The initial validation of the EdD linked modules to the Faculty of Education’s research themes and this module, with a given focus on ‘contemporary issues in educational research’, was led by the professional development and identity theme group. I and my co-leader (of both theme group and module) decided to adopt the kinds of facilitative, process-based approaches that we had found to be effective in supporting teachers and other education professionals in deepening understanding of professional situations, contexts and identities and in supporting organisational change. We knew these approaches could provoke powerful individual learning, appropriate for the professional doctorate, therefore from the outset we resisted the academy’s anxious demands which tended to push towards packing the module with ‘content’. We became increasingly bold in offering thinking space, choice and opportunities for structured discussion using a variety of stimulus material. Implications for the professional doctorate and other postgraduate programmes are considered, where practitioner learning, personal journeying and academic scholarship are intertwined, sometimes in unexpected ways. Using unusual, often intuitive pedagogic approaches with education practitioners reveals new perspectives on professionalism and identity, lives and learning for both tutor and students. However, pedagogy that exposes experiences, emotions and identities to reflexive investigation, relying on trusted peer support, carries risks. Such learning does not always align with Higher Education expectations and structures. Empowering diverse voices requires openness to those voices, subjecting the learning experience to intense scrutiny and questioning assessment frameworks and formats. Enquiry can unearth practitioners’ tacit understandings, laying bare values and views, perhaps prompting deeper realisations and choices hitherto avoided. Nevertheless, such challenges should be embraced, as they are inherent in the richness of the learning within modules where pedagogic and methodological risks are taken, as a precursor to what may be encountered at thesis stage. Shared within a postgraduate learning community, creativity and challenge can gather additional momentum. |
Keywords | Professional doctorate; Education; Postgraduate learning; Creative pedagogy; Risk |
Page range | 67-90 |
Year | 2022 |
Book title | The Professional Doctorate in Education: Activism, Transformation and Practice |
Publisher | Cambridge Scholars Publishing |
Output status | Published |
File | File Access Level Controlled |
Place of publication | Newcastle upon Tyne |
ISBN | 9781527577435 |
Publication dates | |
10 Feb 2022 | |
Publication process dates | |
Deposited | 17 Feb 2022 |
https://repository.canterbury.ac.uk/item/906q3/creative-postgraduate-pedagogy-for-personal-and-professional-learning-risks-and-rewards
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