THE VOICE OF EXTENDED PROFESSIONALS – LEARNNG COMMUNITY MEMBERS

Апстракт

This paper focuses on the development of teacher professionality in Macedonia. It arises from a FECI ‘Step by Step’ Macedonia initiative to develop school-based ‘learning communities’ in which all parties (teachers, students and school management) have an equal voice, trust one another, share a common vision and rely on personal agency for creating a positive change in the school. The learning communities is a component of the USAID ‘Readers are Leaders’ Project aiming to increase early-grade students’ literacy and numeracy capacities. These activities draw on earlier work within the International Teacher Leadership initiative (Frost, 2011). A survey was sent to learning communities members (341) to respond to 12 themes which correspond to aspects of professional identity. The survey, developed by Education International and Leadership for Learning (Cambridge Network), consists of 20 pairs of statements, first statement asking participants to respond in relation to the actual state (what is), while the other asking them to respond about the desired state (what should be). This paper focuses on three of the twelve themes most related to areas of professional identity that have appeared in the open-ended portion of the survey: teachers’ influence in policy and practice; choice and judgement in matters of pedagogy and school evaluation/inspection. The data gives insight into teachers’ opinions about their current status, level of freedom and new education reform as an implied commentary of their professional identity. The discussion focuses on the learning communities initiative’s potential to scaffold a lifelong learning culture among teachers based on extended professionalism and personal agency.