Workshops

The workshops are a modified version of an action research approach that has been developed by South Australian researchers in collaboration with teachers and school leaders over the last 3 decades, particularly in the projects: Redesigning Pedagogies in the North (RPiN), Towards an Australian Culturally Responsive Pedagogy, and Culturally Responsive Schooling (CRS).

This pack provides the resources needed to run 8 workshops, designed to be facilitated by teachers with their colleagues over a full year, with 2 x 1.5hr workshops per term. The final workshop in term 4 is a more formal session for teacher-researchers to present their research process and findings to others. Depending on how many teacher-researchers are involved, this may need to be longer or run over more sessions. It is also worth noting that the schools who trialed these workshops in the CRS project chose to devote more time to the first workshop, allocating either a half or whole day session (see the case studies on ‘Leading the culturally responsive school’). As a broad outline of the 4 terms:

Term 1 – Provocation

Introducing CRP and action research. Identifying pedagogical challenges and elucidating a hopeful idea that could inform redesigning practice.

Term 2 – Pedagogical redesign & Plan action research

Redesigning pedagogy and practice that is informed by the provocation phase. Planning the action research.

Term 3 – Do the action research

Enacting the redesigned pedagogy and collecting the data.

Term 4 – What did we learn? Reflecting and sharing

Evaluating what has been learnt. Preparing and delivering a public presentation of the research.

In this pack, each workshop gives time for discussing theory (ie understanding CRP), as well as time for discussing what this means for practice. At first, the main focus will be how this theory might inform your practice in new ways, but as your action research progresses your practice will start to inform theory (ie how you and your school are conceptualising CRP in your particular contexts). For each workshop for terms 1 & 2 there is:

• A power-point that gives a suggested way to structure a 1.5 hour workshop. The power-points are deliberately plain for you
  to amend as you see fit.
• A copy of the reading(s).
• A pdf with a summary of each reading and some discussion questions.
• A sound file of each summary as an audio.

For each workshop for terms 3 & 4:

• There is a pdf with a suggestion of what to do in the workshops. During term 3 the teacher-researchers will be enacting their CRP action research so the workshops are devoted to discussing this. No powerpoints are required.
• Term 4 is devoted to working towards and presenting the Action Research Showcase (workshop 4.2). Workshop 4.1 is for teacher-researchers to work on their presentation. A powerpoint template to help structure this is provided