Turning the kaleidoscope
Oosterhoff, Maria
DOI:
10.33612/diss.160821650
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Publication date:
2021
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Oosterhoff, M. (2021). Turning the kaleidoscope: multiple enactments of professional autonomy in early
childhood education. University of Groningen. https://doi.org/10.33612/diss.160821650
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Chapter IX
Discussion
Discussion
In the context of generally perceived pressures of accountability within education, early childhood educators have foregrounded spe-cific problematic effects impacting on early childhood education (ECE) (see Chapter I). Researchers have signalled that an intensification of ex-ternal control has prompted a shift towards pedagogies and didactics associated with older age groups: a stronger teacher-centred approach, less time for free play and a narrowed focus on literacy and math-ematics (e.g., Bradbury, 2019). Due to governmental policies, teach-ers feel compelled to act against their own professional knowledge and values (e.g., Biesta, 2007; Kelchtermans, 2012; Moss & Dahlberg, 2008; Onderwijsraad, 2013; Osgood, 2006); they sense their profes-sional autonomy is limited.
The research undertaken in this PhD aimed to explore the dynam-ics that characterize the current educational landscape in which these tensions have arisen, specifically in the context of Dutch early child-hood education. A broad, explorative research question was formula-ted: How does the workplace environment affect professional autonomy
in early childhood education? Ultimately, the aim of this explorative question was to enable thinking about ways of supporting current and prospective teachers to responsibly deal with these inherent tensions between external regulation and autonomy in their professional lives. In three subsequent studies, the concept of professional auto-nomy was brought into play in diverse ways, using different theoreti-cal frameworks that each highlighted distinct aspects of professional autonomy (see Chapter II). Furthermore, diverse research methods, grounded in distinct paradigms, were applied to explore ECE prac-tice in a broad sense (see Chapter III). Consequently, the overarch-ing research question was addressed in various ways in the different chapters reporting on the results of these studies (Chapters IV to VII). Each chapter focused on different aspects of the broad overarching research question, formulating sub-questions that addressed specific issues (see Figure 9.1.) and highlighting the different actors that ap-peared to be involved in the workplace environment. In Chapter VIII, the relevance of this methodological and theoretical heterogeneity to understanding the research issue was discussed.
In this chapter, the various threads are now pulled together. First-ly, in Section 9.1, I will answer the seven specific research questions on which the three different studies focused. In Section 9.2, the over-arching research question is addressed by examining the complex and interrelated character of the dynamics of professional practice in edu-cation. In this section, I will also elaborate on how to conceptualize the notion of professional autonomy and agency, based on the study as a whole. Subsequently, Section 9.3 presents a critical reflection on the methodological strengths and limitations of the full research pro-ject. Finally, Section 9.4 explores the implications for practice.
9.1 Research findings
This section briefly summarizes answers to the seven specific re-search questions explored in the process of addressing the overall research question. I will first address two research questions that were posed about the balance between external regulation and autonomy and its impact. Secondly, I will discuss what the different studies re-vealed about the other five research questions, each focusing on
dif-Figure 8.3 Overview of the research project: Professional Autonomy in ECE
Study 1 Exploring the landscape – Inductive approach
Data: Open semi-structured interviews Analysis: Thematic Analysis
Research questions:
• What are the experiences of ECE teachers regarding the extent to which they can work according their professional beliefs about good education for children aged 4-6?
• What are the experienced consequences of the situation they face? • In what way does the workplace environment of the ECE teachers support
or constrain their professional autonomy?
• How do early childhood educators respond to autonomy-limiting influences?
Study 2 Generalizing and theorizing results – Quantitative approach
Data: Survey
Analysis: Frequency distributions/Structural Equation Modelling
Research questions:
• What is the relationship between
management style, professional autonomy and job perception?
• To what extent do initial teacher training programmes contribute to the development of expertise?
Study 3 Speaking with things –
Sociomaterial approach
Data: Initial interviews and addititonal object interviews
Analysis: Posthuman heuristics – Following the actors; Unraveling translations
Research questions:
• How do people and things together enact everyday Dutch ECE practices?
ferent actors in the workplace environment. These five questions will be answered subsequently in separate subsections.
The balance between external regulation and autonomy and its impact
As part of the exploration of the overall research question, I in-vestigated the experiences of the respondents with respect to their professional autonomy and the effects of this on daily practice.
Professional autonomy in Dutch ECE
What are the experiences of ECE teachers regarding the extent to which they can work according their own professional beliefs about good education for children aged 4-6?
In general, the findings confirmed earlier research, which sig-nalled a culture of performativity and also the effects of this on ECE practice. Extensive accounts by teachers, drawn from interview data collected in two qualitative studies (see Chapters IV, VI and VII), re-flected the increasing societal and political attention being paid to a technical assumption of educational ‘quality’, which appears to be neutral, measurable and improvable (Moss & Dahlberg, 2008). Further-more, the respondents signalled an intensified degree of control stem-ming from the external environment. This intensified external regu-lation seemed to take two different forms. In the data, I recognized increased prescription of educational processes and the intensifica-tion of the monitoring of output (also found by Kuiper et al., 2013) in the Dutch context.
Overall, all three chapters signalled an increase in public pres-sure to achieve higher learning outcomes with, at the same time, an emphasis on intellectual skills. This current educational policy cli-mate seems to conflict with important aspects of the existing beliefs of Dutch ECE teachers. Chapter VI, ‘Aiming for agency’, discussed the respondents’ beliefs. All teachers agreed that the specific developmen-tal characteristics of kindergarten-aged children demanded a flexible approach which has the child’s interests and learning needs as its starting point, focuses on children’s wellbeing, aims to develop their self-confidence, and creates opportunities for learning through play and physical experiences. Pedagogical patience is required as an im-portant basic condition for this approach. This task perception, how-ever, is in conflict with the contextual pressure to achieve higher lear-ning outcomes, with an emphasis on a narrow set of skills. Chapter V, ‘Room for autonomy’, further confirmed these findings for the general population of Dutch ECE teachers. A large majority of respondents in Study 2 (N = 245) agreed with the statement: ‘I feel that I must actively
protect young children from outside influences on the educational ap-proach in grades 1 and 2’.
Although all of the respondents in Study 1 warned of the negative effects of a more teacher-centred approach and pressure to achieve higher learning outcomes with respect to a narrow set of skills, they also indicated that they were not always able to withstand these pres-sures. In the wake of this, there are impacts on practice and emotions.
Impacts on practice and emotions
What are the experienced consequences of the situation the ECE teachers face?
Chapter IV, ‘Constrained or sustained by demands?’, illuminated the impact of the trends described on educational practice, as well as on the teachers themselves. The teachers indicated that actual chang-es were occurring in daily teaching practice, moving towards a narrow focus on intellectual skills and a more structured, teacher-centred ap-proach. As indicated by Goorhuis (2012) and Kelchtermans (2005), the impact of these trends on teachers’ emotions is apparent. Chapter IV showed that ongoing pressure to give up deeply held beliefs about good teaching challenges teachers’ self-esteem. Furthermore, ignoring or denying aspects of teaching that are considered essential by the teachers also seemed to affect their job motivation and the rationale for them to remain a teacher.
Chapter V, ‘Room for autonomy’, confirmed these findings about the impact of autonomy on educational practice and teachers’ well-being. This chapter presented the results of the quantitative study (Study 2), which sought to test a conceptual model that assumed a positive link between the perceived basic need for autonomy (Ryan & Deci, 2000) and job perception (perceived teaching quality and teach-er engagement). Teachteach-ers evidently see the degree to which they feel free to act in accordance with their own goals and values reflected in the quality of their teaching and in their engagement, measured as vitality and work involvement.
In addition, the qualitative data presented in Chapter IV, ‘Con-strained or sustained by demands?’, identified a separate causal link between engagement and teaching quality (also found by Appleton, 2008; Day & Gu, 2007; Schaufeli & Bakker, 2013). When the deeply held beliefs of teachers about good teaching are scrutinized and teachers perceive the quality of their teaching practice deteriorate, moral con-flict and lack of recognition occur as a consequence and this affects teachers’ resilience and job motivation (Kelchtermans, 2007). This outcome was reflected in one case of sick leave (Fleur) and one case of resignation from the job (Dyt).
The workplace environment
In what way does the workplace environment of the ECE teachers support or constrain their professional autonomy?
The analysis in the qualitative study, ‘Exploring the landscape’, showed that the generally recognized societal pressure to improve ECE in a way that seems to conflict with the preferred teaching ap-proach of ECE teachers has entered schools in diverse ways. In a com-plex and interrelated manner, many different actors have effects on daily ECE teaching practice, in constraining as well as sustaining ways, such as school heads, parents, colleagues in higher grades, inspec-torates, teaching methods, tests, teacher education, and many more. By posing and addressing specific research questions, the four ent result chapters (IV to VII) each focused on the roles of the differ-ent actors that constrain or sustain the professional autonomy of the teachers. Chapters IV and VI highlighted the role of the school head. Chapter V focused on the agency of teachers themselves and on the influence of the initial teacher training programme in developing this agency, while Chapter VII explored the active role of the numerous things that are part of educational practice. Each will be addressed sequentially below.
The role of the school head
What is the relationship between management style, professional autonomy and job perception?
This specific research question was posed in response to the find-ings in Study 1. Although all eight participants in the first study re-ported on most of the internal and external constraining forces in their work environment (as discussed in the previous subsections), not all of them qualified their own school environment as ‘restricted’. On this point, the data strongly suggested that the head teacher plays a key role regarding the degree to which the forces in the ECE work environ-ment are perceived as constraining or sustaining. Head teachers seem to have the space to negotiate external demands. Chapter IV, ‘Con-strained or sustained by demands?’, highlighted this key role of the school head. Empirical work by Imants et al. (2016) also found that the Dutch primary education system offers space for local head teachers to develop a bottom-up approach, with room for teacher ownership. My data suggest that head teachers differ in the extent to which they make use of that space.
Communication and management style seem to be the key vari-ables in understanding these differences. In cases of a non-restrictive environment, the head stimulated and facilitated open reflection on external demands in the team as a whole, with the aim of finding
propriate responses on the basis of the expertise and shared beliefs of the ECE teachers themselves. In doing so, the head teacher called upon what Kelchtermans (2012) has labelled the traditional profes-sional standards of teaching: responsibility, autonomy and expertise. In contrast to this autonomy-enhancing role of the head teacher, the teachers who qualified their environment as restricted, reported constraining forces emanating directly from their head teachers. The heads passed on external demands, for example by mandating stand-ard teaching methods and different kinds of administrative require-ments regarding accountability, without serious consultation with the ECE teachers. In some cases, management carried out inspections to control practice. The negative emotional impact of this pressure was high and even led one experienced teacher to leave the profession, thus becoming a loss to the sector.
Chapter V, ‘Room for autonomy’, further explored the question above by examining this autonomy-enhancing role of the school head. A hypothetical model that assumed there was a relationship between management style (recognition and trust, vertical control and top-down
management), professional autonomy (task autonomy and autonomy
as a basic psychological need) and job perception (perception of work
quality and of vitality and engagement) was tested using structural equation modelling. In summary, the analysis supported both the im-portance of teacher autonomy for teaching quality and teacher well-being, and the influence of context, with the school head an important factor in creating that context. Chapter V showed that providing for actual task autonomy is an important aspect in this context, while the communication of recognition and trust might be another key point of influence (for the latter finding, see also Deci et al., 1994; Fullan, 2007; Kelchtermans, 1994; Moomaw, 2005).
Teacher agency and the role of teacher education
How do early childhood educators respond to autonomy-limiting influences? 9
Chapter VI, ‘Aiming for agency’, investigated this research ques-tion. In this chapter, the ecological approach to agency (Priestley et al., 2015a) was used as a theoretical lens in an exploration and discussion of the data concerning teachers’ strategies for dealing with constrain-ing forces. The ecological approach assisted in highlightconstrain-ing the role of the teachers’ specific expertise (beliefs, specific knowledge and skills) in safeguarding their professional autonomy. The chapter indicated that specific ECE expertise strengthens teachers’ agentic capacities within restricted agentic spaces. Firstly, it was apparent that specific
9 The size and scope of the article on which the chapter is based allowed the presentation of only a part of the analysis of the data on this topic, that is, the findings related to the role of their expertise. There is more to say about the topic on the basis of the data collected in the initial study, ‘Exploring the landscape’. A paper presented at the VELON conference (Oosterhoff, Oenema-Mostert, & Minnaert, 2016) provides a more comprehensive overview of what the data revealed about the way that teachers are able to exploit, safeguard and extend their professional autonomy as part of the complex dynamics of professional ECE practice. An article based on this paper is a forthcoming project.
ECE expertise fosters the ability to critically evaluate requested or im-posed educational change. Secondly, the teachers’ specific expertise gave them confidence, which sustained their resistance to undesirable influences. The teachers’ expertise was found to support the most fre-quent responses to negative environmental influences: explaining and convincing others, whether colleagues, parents, management or the Inspectorate. Judicious dialogue among colleagues and an inquiring attitude of the teachers seemed to play important roles in the develop-ment and articulation of shared knowledge and beliefs that served as a consciously applied (theoretical) framework underpinning the teach-ers’ choices (see also Kelchtermans, 2012).
In the wake of this, the role of the initial teacher training pro-gramme with respect to the development of these agentic capacities became apparent. The eight respondents in Study 1 indicated that novice teachers graduating from the current teacher training pro-gramme are insufficiently equipped for their task because of their lack of expertise regarding young children. The results of the quan-titative follow-up survey (Study 2) showed that this opinion is widely shared throughout the population of Dutch ECE teachers. Almost 79% of respondents disagreed with the statement: ‘The current PABO
pro-gramme sufficiently prepares trainees to teach in grades 1 and 2’ (N = 245). A limited degree of domain-specific knowledge about the young child, the eight respondents argued, could potentially narrow their repertoire of responses to dilemmas they encounter in practice.
Chapter VI also revealed the influence of the teacher training programme on the pedagogical beliefs of the prospective teachers, with an expected shift towards a more teacher-directed approach as a result. The eight respondents in Study 1 differed in educational back-ground, with some having KLOS (targeted specifically at ECE) and oth-ers PABO (targeting primary school ages 4-12) training. A comparison of the two groups showed differences in the educational beliefs of KLOS-trained and PABO-trained teachers, with the former more strong-ly inclined towards a child-centred approach than the latter. Moreover, the lack of specific expertise and related skills appeared to increase the teachers’ dependence on prescribed teaching methods, which are associated with a more structured, teacher-directed approach (Gordon et al., 2019).
KLOS-trained teachers, who have played an important role in filling the knowledge gaps of novice PABO-trained teachers in recent decades, will be retiring from the field during the next decade. Given this fact, a continuing shift towards a more teacher-directed approach in Dutch ECE can be projected. This approach, however, has tradition-ally been considered more appropriate for higher grades (e.g., Boland, 2015; Gordon et al., 2019).
One final finding with respect to the role of teacher training in fostering the agency of prospective teachers concerns a perceived lack of a critical reflective attitude among novice teachers. According to the eight ECE teachers in Study 1, current PABO-trained interns focus on accomplishing their assignments rather than on critically reflecting on ‘the right thing to do’. This tendency, as well as the tendency to apply prescribed methods, may resonate with the prevailing political climate. Teacher training programmes do not exist in a vacuum; they are part of the ecologies of teaching (Priestley et al., 2015a). Current accountability policies may have thus influenced the teacher training curriculum.
The agency of thingly gatherings
How do people and things together co-constitute everyday Dutch ECE practices?
Chapter VII, ‘It’s not a paper kid!’, investigated this research ques-tion. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT), one specific case, Britt’s school, served to unravel the doings of Cito standards in daily ECE practice, that is, the way they act, as networks, to change understand-ings and practices (Gorur, 2015). These Cito standards came to the fore as a key actor in the initial interviews.
Chapter VII described how a specific Cito standard materialized in extended network assemblages. The standard folded into daily edu-cational practices in Britt’s school through test items that were readily translated into proficiency scores, categories and charts, which be-came aligned with many other network entities, such as books, work-sheets and meetings. Similar to what Mol (2002) shows with respect to diseases, multiple versions of the learning child seemed to be enacted as part of different practices in different spaces in Britt’s school. The study indicated a gap between managerial practices and teaching prac-tices, which both enacted different, partly overlapping, but also con-tradictory realities. In the room of the supervisor, the learning child was enacted as a diagram, a paper kid. In the classroom, the child was enacted as a learning body, interacting with people and things in daily practice. The nationally standardized Cito test claimed its legitimacy by enrolling other authoritative entities, such as government, science and professional practice. In this way, the Cito standard, as a network, more or less subtly seemed to reshape ECE practices.
Standardized testing has gradually taken a more significant role in kindergarten classrooms, both internationally (e.g., Bassok et al., 2016) and in the Netherlands (Frans, 2019). At the time of data- gathering for this research, schools were required to use a student tracking system (STS) that showed the progress in knowledge and skills at the pupil, group and school levels (Primary Education Act,
2017, Section 8.6.). While it was not compulsory for primary schools to conduct specific tests, schools were mandated to use a national standardized test (Primary Education Act, 2017, Section 8.7). Recently, however, the Dutch government decided to prohibit the use of these standardized tests, which are commonly used as part of an STS, argu-ing that they are not appropriate for measurargu-ing learnargu-ing progress at this age (Van Engelshoven, 2018). From 2021 on, only approved ob-servational instruments will be permitted. This change is good news for Dutch ECE, which has lobbied for years to draw attention to the mismatch between such testing and the characteristics of the young child; for example, by the Young Child Union (Vereniging Jonge Kind, VJK, 2009) and the professorship Early Childhood Studies at NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences (Frans et al., 2019; Goorhuis-Brouwer, 2012; Oenema-Mostert, 2012), and also the respondents who made their concerns heard in this dissertation. The political change also demonstrates the relevance of tracing the effects of sociomaterial forces, for example demonstrating the apparently easy and unproble-matic way in which children become translated into datapoints and how practices become reshaped in undesirable ways.
Despite this legal change in Dutch ECE, Study 3 remains relevant to the future. The results that revealed the compelling force of stand-ardized tests as networks transcend the case of the current Dutch ECE testing system. On a national level, the results should also be taken into account with respect to higher grades, in which the same instru-ments are used, considering the effects at these levels. On an interna-tional level, the use of standardized tests is still common, including in ECE (e.g., Bassok et al., 2016; Frans et al., 2019). In addition, the relevance of tracing the effects of sociomaterial networks demands ongoing investigation, even when changes are made, as will be done in the Dutch ECE context.
Considering the research findings of the different studies, I gath-ered all kinds of insights that could help answer the overall question that guided the three studies: How does the workplace environment
affect professional autonomy in early childhood education? In the next section this overarching research question is addressed by examin-ing the complex and interrelated character of the dynamics of profes-sional practices in education. Furthermore, I will argue how the overall project contributes to the conceptualization of professional autonomy and agency.
9.2 The complex dynamics of educational practices
How does the workplace environment affect professional autono-my in early childhood education?
All three studies illustrate the current tendency to forms of ‘or-ganizational professionalism’ (Evetts, 2013) and the ‘swing towards more output and input regulation’ that, according to Kuiper et al. (2013, p. 154), characterizes Dutch education policy of the last dec-ade. The four results chapters demonstrated that many different ac-tors – such as people, things, technologies and procedures – are in-volved in these tendencies. Although the four chapters focused on different actors, they all revealed that these actors do not work on their own but together, in complex and interrelated ways, to modify the way these tendencies are enacted in daily ECE practice.
Various scholars have highlighted the complex and interrelated character of these dynamics in diverse ways. The teachers’ accounts in this dissertation offer a glimpse of webs of influence, as Neumann (2016) describes it (Chapter IV). The data also illustrated the ecologi-cal nature of agency, which was established by Priestley et al. (2015a) (Chapter VI). Furthermore, Chapter VII illuminated the complex socio-material dynamics and the power relations which are part of these dynamics. Although the quantitative study tested a model which rep-resented a reduction of the complexity, this study also added to this view of complexity. The analysis showed that the influence of manage-ment is a significant, but by no means the only, determining factor in explaining the variance in perceived autonomy (Chapter V).
Over and above these insights, the methodologically and theo-retically heterogeneous character of the overall research project be-came of great value to a rethinking of this complexity of professional practice. Chapter VIII, ‘Meeting ontologies’, discussed this value in depth. Incorporating ANT in the project not only offered fresh answers to my research questions but also urged me to rethink my way of ‘seeing’ professional practice. This sociomaterial approach considers professional practices as continually emerging and multiple. Thus, it becomes impossible to know what is going on in ‘the’ workplace environment, simply because this environment is too dynamic, fluid and multiple. Consequently, instead of investigating ‘the workplace environment’, it is more appropriate to speak of investigating ‘profes-sional practices’; thus, not to conceive the workplace environment as a fixed and pre-existing concept, but as practices that are constantly being performed and negotiated, entangled with a myriad of other practices (Reich & Hager, 2014).
The study demonstrated the way that reality is done in practices in two ways – both in ECE professional practice and in my own re-search practice. Firstly, the ANT study, ‘Speaking with things’,
indi-cated a gap between teaching practices and managerial practices in ECE (see Chapter VII). The tensions in current educational practice that were examined in this dissertation appeared to arise as part of dif-ferences between the knowledges of diverse stakeholders involved in measuring learning progress and evaluating the quality of education. Secondly, the dissertation demonstrated how professional autonomy and agency became enacted in different ways, as part of my own het-erogeneous research practices.
Chapters IV to VII not only focused on different actors in the work environment, but also applied different theories to explore the con-text. In the next section I will argue how this theoretical heterogene-ity contributed to the understanding of professional autonomy and agency.
Theoretical reflections: the value of (in)compatible differences
In Chapter II, I discussed four main theoretical frameworks that guided the research in different studies: autonomy understood as task autonomy; autonomy understood as psychological need; the ecologi-cal approach to agency; and ANT. I also discussed how these different perspectives can complement each other, but also contradict (see Sec-tion 2.3). In this secSec-tion I consider how the study as a whole has ben-efited from these generative as well as more challenging differences to increase the understanding of professional autonomy and agency.
Firstly, the study supports some of the complementary relations between the different concepts that were presumed in 2.3. Building on the study of Van den Broeck et al. (2008), study 2 shows that task autonomy (Pearson & Moomaw, 2006) mediates the influence of man-agement style on the fulfilment of a teacher’s basic need for autonomy (Ryan & Deci, 2000) (see Chapter IV). Furthermore, the results under-score my argument, made in Chapter 2, that, for teacher autonomy to be called ‘professional autonomy’, teacher agency – as understood by the ecological approach (Priestley et al., 2015a)– should be incorpo-rated. The diverse chapters illustrate that the teaching profession, as a public service, operates within cultural, structural and material cir-cumstances that fluctuate, for example, in response to the enactment of mechanisms of external control. Chapter VI shows the importance of expertise, as one of the aspects that is crucial for the teacher to be able to respond in a professional way on these fluctuating circum-stances, thus, to safeguard and employ their professional autonomy in a responsible way.
However, there were two challenging contradictions between on the one hand the three theoretical frameworks presented in Section 2.1 (two conceptions of autonomy and the ecological approach to
agency) and on the other hand ANT (Section 2.2). Firstly, the literature discussed in 2.1 was based on a largely anthropocentric conception of autonomy and agency, whilst ANT explicitly foreground the agency of nonhumans. Secondly, the first three frameworks aim to describe a coherent theory, whilst ANT emphasizes the emergent character of social practice. I ended Section 2.3 by stating that I decided to con-sider these contradictions as important features of practices and to acknowledge them, rather than arguing them away. Thus, I challenged myself to exercise my ‘ability to tolerate incommensurability’ (Lather, 1993, p. 679). In the next two sections I will show how this stance has helped to enhance the understanding of the concept of teachers’ pro-fessional autonomy and of agency as part of it.
Multiple enactments of professional autonomy
As a consequence of the use of these differing theories in differ-ent studies, professional autonomy emerged as a multidimensional, multi-layered and sometimes contradictory concept. Starting from the assumption that realities do not exist ‘out there’ but emerge as part of practices, this section does not aim for one overarching definition or model that would represent what professional autonomy is; it nei-ther strives for an overarching theory that would explain the tensions in education, nor to find an overall solution to the unwanted effects of these tensions. Rather, the aim of this section is to illustrate how teacher professional autonomy became enacted in different ways, as part of my research practices.
To be enacted, as Mol (2002) explains, suggests that what some-thing is cannot be isolated from the activities that take place in prac-tice. Practices that emerge as an effect of a specific gathering of actors, shape what is, those gatherings enact reality. Several sociomaterial researchers have demonstrated this emergent and multiple charac-ter of reality in the educational context (e.g., Gorur, 2015; Mulcahy, 2011; Plum, 2016; Röhl, 2015). I highlighted examples of this research throughout this dissertation (see Chapter II, III, VII and VIII).
This emergent character of reality was also illustrated through-out the result chapters of this dissertation. Professional autonomy shows to be different ‘somethings’ in the different chapters, in which it was enacted each time as part of the different methods that I applied and the different theories that I used to make autonomy in ECE prac-tice visible, audible and knowable.
In Chapter IV, ‘Constrained or sustained by demands?’, and in Chapter V, ‘Room for autonomy’, professional autonomy was enacted as something that can be provided (or withdrawn) by influential actors in the teachers’ environment (e.g., government, school head). Task au-tonomy can be provided as a space to act independently and to exert
influence on one’s own work environment (Moomaw, 2005). Autonomy, as a basic psychological need, can be provided in terms of contextual factors that promote the internalization of externally desired behaviour (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Chapter VI, ‘Aiming for agency’, subsequently fo-cused on the way teachers’ agency contributes to their professional autonomy. The ecological approach to agency (Priestley et al., 2015) was utilized, which offers a way to study teacher agency as part of a broader ecology that extends through time and place. Autonomy, in this chapter, was enacted as something that can be, albeit partly, achieved by the teachers themselves and, thus, as something that can be developed, for example as part of initial teacher training. Chapter VII then took another turn, following a route that is less articulated in education research. This orientation offered a way to illustrate how autonomy (or a lack of it) emerges as part of networks of people and things that act to produce specific practices.
None of these enactments of professional autonomy should be considered more or less real than the others. Reality appears to be multiple (Mol, 2002). An important theoretical outcome of the study as a whole, I argue, is that professional autonomy, and agency as part of this, is not capturable in a fixed and definitive concept. Examining each of these versions of professional autonomy offers different ways to explore and think about how professional autonomy could be safe-guarded or enhanced (see Section 9.4). Mol’s description of what an actor is seems also to count for the concept of autonomy: ‘The point is not to purify the repertoire, but to enrich it. To add layers and pos-sibilities’ (Mol, 2010, p. 257). This urges an ongoing, open, inquiring attitude, attentive to possible black boxes and reflective of the fact that the research practices themselves become part of the practices which are described. This dissertation is an example of a study that was responsive to such an open inquiring attitude (see Section 3.1). In Section 9.3, I will elaborate on the value – and drawbacks – of the methodologically heterogeneous character of the overall research pro-ject. First, in the next section, I will discuss in more depth what the study contributes to the understanding of agency.
More-than-human agency
As in most social research (Fenwick, 2016), the literature utilized in the Chapters IV to VI, was based on a human-centred conception of autonomy and agency. In Chapter VI, agency is described as innate to humans ‘making choices that are willed’ (Hultin, 2019, p. 96). Chapter VII, in contrast, highlighted the, often unnoticed, agency of numerous things involved in educational practice, in concert with other actors. In this section, I argue that it seems appropriate to speak of more-than-human agency. Change in practice ‘does not necessarily begin
with an assumed human intention, but in the situated (and thereby already conditioned) sociomaterial practice’ (Hultin, 2019, p. 97). An interesting question now arises: What is the consequence for human agency when human and nonhuman actors are treated symmetrically and agency is considered a distributed phenomena? What does this mean for teacher agency? Starting from my interest in the position of the teacher as part of these dynamics, this is an especially impor-tant question to consider. The conception of nonhuman agency has been the most prominent strand of contention within criticisms of ANT (Sayes, 2017; Mifsud, 2020). Is human agency a hollow concept?
I answer this question in the negative. A lack of human agency does not automatically follow when attending to the agency of things. Actors are not determined by their surroundings. Actors (humans and nonhumans) are enacted, but they also act (Mol, 2010). ANT aims ‘to make specific, surprising, so far unspoken events and situations visible, audible, sensible’ (Mol, 2010, p. 255). ANT inquiry aims to open black boxes. Subsequently, I argue, this greater consciousness expands the agency of human actors, albeit only to a certain extent. Practice, and its effects, can be reconsidered. Human actors can take professional responsibility by making judgements and taking action in response to the emerging ambiguities of daily teaching practices, as Priestley et al. (2015a) argue in their more human-centred approach to agency. Bringing things out of the background, into the open, makes their intended and unintended consequences for practice visible and enables the human actors who work with them (e.g., teachers, manag-ers, inspectorates, policymakers) to (re)consider their doings (Ceule-mans, 2017). When necessary, this allows the imagining of how prac-tices might be assembled differently (Mol, 1999; Hultin, 2019). Gaps between different practices can be made visible and might be bridged. Sayes (2014) explains that it is crucial to understand that ANT is primarily a sensibility that explores ‘what action consists of’(p. 141), it is not a theory that aims to define the relative amount or intensity of human or nonhuman agency. ANT, according to Sayes (2016), ‘at-tempts to pluralize what it means to speak of agency’ (p. 142). While intentional agency is still recognized as agency, it is merely one type of agency. What is important is that distinctions are not relevant prior to the analysis, which aims to explore how agency is spread through-out networks of humans and nonhumans, no matter what the actors may look like. Sayes (2016) states that ‘nonhumans do not have agen-cy by themselves, if only because they are never by themselves’ (p. 144), and I would add that the same is true for human actors. Instead of speaking of human agency or nonhuman agency, it seems appropri-ate to speak of more-than-human agency.
9.3 Methodological reflection: turning the kaleidoscope
The flexibility of the research design proved to be valuable for the investigation of the central research question. Openness to emerg-ing research questions enabled the research to focus on different ac-tors that appeared on stage and to apply different theoretical perspec-tives. In addition to this substantive openness, a variety of research methods and methodological approaches were applied to explore ECE practices. Chapter III outlined the three different methodological ap-proaches that guided the three different studies, which departed from a constructivist paradigm (Study 1), a (post)positivist paradigm (Study 2), and a sociomaterial ontology (Study 3), respectively.
In this section, I reflect on the merits of and dilemmas inherent to the emerging methodological heterogeneity. I aim to outline how the sociomaterial worldview became the overall theoretical thrust of the full project. Hence, I aim to justify my ontological stance in this dis-sertation that the world does not pre-exist, but that it is a generative world, produced as part of practices. Subsequently, I aim to highlight and discuss the consequences of such a stance for the quality of the project as a whole.
A major methodological challenge was to make sense of the un-folding heterogeneity of the project. Chapter VIII, ‘Meeting ontologies’, reported on the transformative reflection that occurred in the wake of the emerging design, in particular, because the methodologies that were incorporated in the study stem from contradictory ontological backgrounds. Within each of the three studies, I had been faithful to the tenets of the different paradigms used (the rules and customs, the instruments, the criteria) and also to the underlying, but mutu-ally contradictory, philosophical assumptions, as outlined in detail in Chapter III. The first two studies, although grounded in different para-digms, aimed to create accounts of more or less clear causal relation-ships between actors in a pre-existing reality.
However, this conception of reality contradicted the sociomate-rial approach in the third study. ANT counters an essentialist ontology in which entities are assumed to have inherent qualities; it ‘tells that entities take their form and acquire their attributes as a result of their relations with other entities’ (Law, 1999, p. 3). Several questions arose: How is it possible to remain sincerely faithful to several ontologies that seem to mutually contradict one another? Paradigms are identi-fied as sets of beliefs (Hesse-Biber, 2010). The problem is that such beliefs cannot be turned on and off on a whim. Lincoln et al. (2018) state that elements from different paradigms, such as methods, can be combined; however, stances are not commensurable. Is that true? Is faithfulness to different paradigms a problem?
The methodological challenge to find answers to these fidelity questions, however, ultimately became the strength of the project. In this reflexive process, the sociomaterial worldview gradually became the overall theoretical thrust that framed the research project as a whole. The major strength of the methodologically heterogeneous de-sign of the full study turned out to be that it helped to catch glimpses of the fluidity and multiplicity of educational reality. Studying ECE practice became like turning the kaleidoscope (Law, 2009): looking at the same practice, the same issues, but seeing fascinating different pictures. I came to see the world as a generative world, produced as part of practices. The heterogeneous approach illuminated the mul-tiple realities that co-existed. Moreover, it showed that realities also emerge through our diverse research methods and tools. Thus, the crucial thing is that there is always more. This ontological stance re-quires scientific humility.
It certainly can be useful to make a chart, to seek patterns, to test a model. Methodological humility implies an understanding that, while parts of reality can be captured in respondents’ narratives, eth-nographic notes or statistics, for example, none of the different ways of turning realities into scientific knowledge are more real than others. Moreover, none of those methods can capture the complexity, fluidity and multiplicity of practice on its own. Law (2004) argued for hetero-geneity and variation. A methodologically heterogeneous approach at-tempts to accomplish some of this variation. Foregrounding multiple discourses in a single research project can be utilized ‘to decentre the researcher as the master of truth’ (Lather, 1993, p. 680).
What is the relevance of this scientific humility to the educational field of practice and policy? Humility is the opposite of dominance, which bears the danger of overlooking or denying other realities. If realities appear definite and singular this might be because these realities are being enacted and repeatedly re-enacted in certain he-gemonic research practices. Chapter VII, ‘It’s not a paper kid!’, showed the knowledge-making dynamics in ECE. The chapter illustrated how quantifying methods that are used to measure learning progress gain their authority as part of extended network assemblages.
The full research project exposed the effects of these dominant knowledges in educational practice. Specific technical paradigms ap-peared to be reshaping the purposes and practices of ECE. Using an ANT lens enabled to see how these forces could be conceived of and in-vestigated as doings of complex sociomaterial assemblages. Quantify-ing methods to measure learnQuantify-ing progress seemed ‘to perform certain kinds of social realities whilst not performing others’ (Law, 2004, p. 4). Nerland (2018) illuminated the increasing pace of knowledge produc-tion in twenty-first century professional practice and the increasing
diversity of knowledge-generating actors and stakeholders. Thus, it becomes important to (re)consider the practices through which partic-ular knowledges are produced and to critically think about the status of the data they produce.
The validity and value of this methodological heterogeneous project
Since a sociomaterial worldview became the overall theoretical thrust of the full project, the quality of the overall project must be evaluated in line with this approach. In Chapter III (Section 3.4), I out-lined why I chose to use the term ‘validity’ to denote the quality of sociomaterial research, although this is a contested term and primar-ily associated with the (post)positivist need to produce and prove ob-jective, reliable and replicable accounts of a generalizable truth (e.g., Denzin & Lincoln, 2018; Lincoln et al., 2018). As mentioned above, central to a sociomaterial ontology is that there is no single reality ‘out there’ to be discovered by the researcher. The question of validity is bound to the question of reality (see Chapter 3.4). Thus, within a sociomaterial approach, another version of validity must be achieved. Presenting and discussing methodologically heterogeneous work, then, is a means to account for ‘multiple – overlapping and sometimes conflicting – interpretations of the world’ (Hultin, 2019, p. 94). By ap-plying methodological heterogeneity, my research became a way of capturing multiple realities, making readers aware of how there is no single truth (Lincoln et al., 2018). This is valuable because this aware-ness might establish a ground on which to call for a more open and layered, and thus a more valid, way of producing knowledge than is currently done in educational policy and increasingly in educational practice itself (see Chapter IV). Applying methodologies from different paradigms is thus a way of deliberately attending to diverse practices of knowing and the tensions between them. As Lather (1993) suggests, fostering heterogeneity and refusing closure is a form of validity; in particular, a ‘Lyotardian paralogy/neo-pragmatic validity’ (p. 678), which, Lather argues, is a means to ‘refine our sensitivity to differenc-es and reinforce our ability to tolerate incommensurability’ (p. 679).
In the next section, I further elaborate on the rigour of this re-search project by discussing some (potential) drawbacks of this hetero geneous approach.
Some drawbacks of methodological heterogeneity
There are also drawbacks of applying a methodologically hetero-geneous approach and the associated attitude of methodological hu-mility. Some readers, especially those who seek certainty and stable conclusions, might refuse this attitude of scientific humility, accusing
those who advocate such a position of an attitude of relativism. This, however, I refute. The bottom line of the argument against relativism is that there is a real world ‘out there’. However, in this dissertation, my ontological stance is that there is no pre-existent world; it is a gen-erative world, produced as part of practices. As research is part of this world, our methods also help to generate the (real) world (Law, 2004). Being aware of these dynamics is, as I argued in the section above, of great relevance for educational research, policy and practice.
However, there remains the risk that too much humility will not convince those who seek certainty and quick solutions. If research is considered as a collective construction (Latour, 1997), then to have an impact, researchers must connect to other research, which might lead to the need to align with the language and habits of others. Es-pecially with respect to influence (e.g., policy), it might provisionally be strategic to consider the best way to find allies by connecting to the paradigms of those who decide. In the current project, this was an important reason to include the quantitative study (see Section 3.3). Ethically speaking, however, such a choice cannot be the endpoint when working within a sociomaterial paradigm. Sincere effort should simultaneously be made to avoid the risk of providing further support to the belief that the world is simpler than it is. In this project, this was an important reason to relate and discuss the contradictions of the three studies in depth (see Chapter VIII ‘Meeting ontologies’).
An additional note should be made about research skills. Ap-plying multiple methods in a project places high demands on the re-searcher, which is especially challenging for a PhD project (Morse & Chung, 2003). Rigorous multi-method research requires skilled schol-ars, with skills in a certain specialism that they have developed over time (Creswell, 2014; Hesse-Biber, 2010). ‘Jumping on’ multiple meth-ods without a basic understanding of underlying assumptions may yield research of dubious quality (Hesse-Biber, 2010, p. 22). This risk is even greater when applying methodological heterogeneity. To avoid this problem in this research project, I paid close attention to the cri-teria that dictate what constitutes rigorous research in each paradigm. This was done, firstly, by using handbooks and heuristics written by skilled scholars who have built expertise in a particular approach (e.g., Adams & Thompson, 2016; Braun & Clarke, 2006; Jöreskog & Sörbom, 1996) and, secondly, by learning from the empirical work of scientists grounded in a specific ontology. Moreover, last but certainly not least, during the process, this research relied on the support and critical feedback of my supervisory team, composed of experienced research-ers from different univresearch-ersities, with roots in different paradigms.
Another question that could be asked is: Would it be advisable to apply heterogenous methodologies in all research? I have no grounds
to advocate this. This research project was able to apply different theories and to use different research tools that were developed over years in research communities that focused on specific issues, apply-ing specific methods, grounded in different paradigms, in which high levels of specialism developed. This kind of in-depth research on spe-cific and limited topics, albeit from a singular worldview, has value in its own right. Moreover, beliefs are beliefs, they cannot be turned on and off on a whim. However, what does seem important for every researcher is the attitude of humility that is inherent to the belief that practice is emergent and multiple. This is especially important when investigating issues that are complex and in which many different stakeholders are involved. I will come back to this in the next section (9.4).
Finally, I would like to emphasize that although ECE practice is explored from different angles in this dissertation, the overview of in-fluences which is provided in the four chapters remains far from com-plete, fixed and definitive. The roles of the many actors that appeared to be relevant (e.g., the Inspectorate, boards, parents and numerous nonhuman things) could be explored in more depth in future studies. Moreover, the question could be further investigated from the per-spectives of actors other than the teachers, who were my main source of data in this dissertation. The numerous ways in which the issue could be explored further, as well as the complex and situated charac-ter of the dynamics at play in daily teaching practice, also reveal that striving for completeness is simply impossible. Striving for difference, however, has proved to be valuable in exploring several different an-gles from which undesirable effects could be precluded. I will return to this in the next section when discussing the implications for practice.
9.4 Implications for practice and further research
Based on the influence of the different actors, each result chap-ter also offers possible starting points for preventing or resolving the undesired effects of the constraining forces that arose. In this section, I briefly summarize the implications for practice and further research that came to the fore in Chapters IV to VIII. I will also discuss how to conceive these implications, against the background of the complex dynamics of professional educational practices, as discussed in Sec-tion 9.2. Investigating the issue from different angels reveals many starting points, on the basis of which solutions to unwanted effects can be explored. However, the complex and interrelated character of the processes means that it is not to be expected that any of them will offer a solution on its own.
Recommendations for head teachers
Within the strained relationship between professional space and an administrative tendency towards control (Van den Berg et al., 2012), head teachers hold a difficult position between the government and the sphere of educational practice (Kessels, 2012). In this posi-tion, however, they can also play an important role in maintaining a healthy balance between curriculum regulation and curriculum free-dom. Chapters IV and V revealed some starting points for this.
Firstly, it seems to be important that head teachers acknow-ledge the gap between internal and external discourses in the field of Dutch ECE. Thoughtful head teachers are able to see the interper-sonal dimensions of teaching; dimensions that are less measurable and quantifiable. As Moss and Dahlberg (2008) argue, we live in a multil ingual world, in which there are different perceptions of quality, based on different worldviews or paradigms. The recognition and ac-knowledgement of these different languages is important because this can promote the value of different perspectives for different purposes, and at particular moments and in different circumstances.
Head teachers are also in the position to see and acknowledge teachers’ emotional struggles with demands for change, as well as their thoughtful resistance (Kelchtermans, 2005). Teachers need a cer-tain amount of autonomy to find appropriate answers to contradictory demands from society (Van den Berg et al., 2012). Independently of this, recognition and trust seem important to enhance motivation and job satisfaction (Deci et al., 1994; Fullan, 2007; Kelchtermans, 1994). Thus, head teachers would do well to facilitate collective reflection on each teacher’s own commitment to external demands. Making time for collegial communication and investigation of one’s own profes-sional practices appears to be important for enhancing profesprofes-sional autonomy.
The research showed that Dutch primary school heads have space to develop an approach that leaves room for teacher autonomy, and most of the head teachers in the study sample were at least partly successful in utilizing this space (see Chapter V). Follow-up research could further explore the differences between school heads who do and do not utilize this space.
Recommendations for teacher education
Chapter VI highlighted some concerns about the agentic capaci-ties of the current generation of Dutch novice ECE teachers. The chap-ter discussed the influence of the current teacher training programme on teachers’ specific ECE expertise, as a prerequisite for their agentic capacities. Following on from this analysis, the chapter raised some issues that might need further exploration and debate.
Firstly, as Boland (2015) has recently advocated, it seems im-portant to consider once again the amount of attention being paid to specific ECE knowledge and skills within the current Dutch teacher training programme. In addition to attention being paid to knowledge and skills, more attention should be paid to the development of ECE teachers’ beliefs about what counts as good education for children aged 4-7. Since the ECE context differs from the educational context in higher grades, more time is required to develop specific ECE beliefs and rich opportunities for experiences in the ECE context. This might require specific routes in the teacher training programme that allow for specialization.
Currently, there seems to be some room for debate on this topic in the Netherlands. In 2018, the Dutch Education Council (2018) rec-ommended the clustering of teaching qualifications based on speciali-zation, including a focus on different age groups. Recently, members of the Dutch parliament tabled a motion in which they requested the government to allow prospective teachers to opt for specialized edu-cation targeted at younger or older children (PDC, 2020). This offers space to reconsider the attention paid to specific ECE-related know-ledge, skills and beliefs within the current Dutch teacher training programme. In September 2020, the professorship Early Childhood Studies of NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences started a pilot investigation on ‘Age specialization for the young child’, which aims to investigate what should be added to the Pabo curriculum that would specifically address the needs of the young child and the teacher ex-pertise required (Kuijpers, 2020). In addition, induction programmes and further in-service professional development aimed at ECE teach-ers should be closely considered. As several respondents in this study suggested (e.g., Diet, Geraldien), KLOS-educated teachers could play a profitable role in this.
Furthermore, Chapter VI posed some more general questions about the aims of the initial teacher training programme with respect to fostering the agency of student teachers which deserve attention and further research. Issues were raised about the agentic behaviour of lecturers in teacher education and the extent to which they serve as role models or, on the contrary, might contribute to compliance to pressures to perform according to certain technical demands of society. These issues also deserve further investigation. Furthermore, as Kelchtermans and Ballet (2002) argued, teacher education should consider paying more attention to micro-political literacy, as an im-portant, although generally neglected, dimension of teacher develop-ment. One way of attending to this could be by teaching students and professionals how to critically analyse their professional worlds with an ANT sensibility. I will argue this in the next section.
How to deal with the agency of things?
Sociomaterial investigations ‘are increasingly acknowledged as critical in understanding the politics of public service’ (Fenwick, 2016, p. 14). Although ANT is reckoned an important player in the field of the social sciences (Sayes, 2017), ANT is still relatively under-utilized in education research (Mifsud, 2020). On the basis of my own study, I recognize the value of sociomaterial sensibilities, not only for scien-tific researchers, but also for practitioners. I agree with Fenwick and Edwards (2010), who argue that it seems important to teach students and professionals how to critically analyse their professional world with an ANT sensibility, ‘tracing the micro-strategies of power, the ways that entities including themselves can become translated into networks that normalize, and how all things are effects – unstable al-liances – produced in continuous webs of action’ (pp. 54-55). Chapter VII, ‘It’s not a paper kid!’, illustrated this, focusing on the doings of standards in ECE. The chapter showed that it is important to pose questions about how learners (and teachers) ‘are represented in knowl-edge practices’ (Mol, 1999, p. 86) and the value of investigating the ef-fects of this. One additional question that remains to be explored: How are teachers themselves represented in knowledge practices?
These questions have only gained in relevance in the current age of datafication (Bradbury, 2019; Jarke & Breitner, 2019; Lupton & Williamsen, 2017). Bradburry (2019) shows how ’data are an enabling technology for schoolification’ (p. 11). Furthermore, scholars point to the consequences of datafication for teacher professional autono-my (Jarke & Breitner, 2019). Fenwick and Edwards (2010) signal that teachers are bypassed when children ‘are directly enrolled into the subject matter that has been translated into the test’s limited forms of knowledge’ (p. 123). Teacher education might play an important role in the development of ‘data literacy’, addressing not only the poten-tial impact of algorithms but also, as Gray et al. (2018) argue, to de-velop ‘data infrastructure literacy’, which ‘look[s] beyond “data skills” towards cultivating capacities to account for (and reshape) the wider socio-technical infrastructures through which data is created, trans-formed and circulated’ (p. 2) (see Chapter VII).
Developing these sorts of sensibilities should start in pre-service education and continue throughout one’s career. A vital question then is: How do we engage future and current educational professionals with sociomaterial sensibilities? It takes quite an ontological shift and a lot of time to learn to play with its sensitive terms (Mol, 2010). The set of heuristics developed by Adams and Thompson (2015), however, were helpful in this study, allowing to gain a glimpse of the doings of things in practice. The guiding yet open character of the heuristics might also be beneficial for practitioners.
Based on their own teaching and research practices, Adams and Thompson (2015) found that their heuristics are ‘an excellent way for … practitioners to explore posthuman ideas and to gain insight into the otherwise hidden effects in their own and others’ lives’ (p. 3). How-ever, based on my own experiences as a researcher and lecturer at a university of applied sciences, I doubt that the current form of the book is accessible to Dutch undergraduate students and practition-ers. The questions in the heuristics are thought provoking, but are not applicable without a basic understanding of the theoretical and ontological background. While the book provides a good explanation and a reasonable number of good examples without which the back-ground could not be understood, it would take some time to reach a level of understanding that allows students to work with the questions effectively. I know on the basis of my own experiences that such time to critically engage with ontological and epistemological assumptions of research methods is lacking in current pre-service training. Thus, research should be done to determine whether and how these timely heuristics might be utilized in teacher education and for in-service professional development.
Furthermore, we need to engage in debate about how teacher trai-ning programmes could address the uncritical notion that methods, whether research methods or teaching methods, are merely tools that can be used unproblematically (see Chapters VI, VII and VIII). I will further develop this stance below, arguing that we must prepare the stage for a meeting of ontologies.
No single answer
Investigating the tensions between the professional autonomy of teachers and external regulations and control mechanisms in the ECE field from different angels revealed many starting points from which solutions to the unwanted effects of these tensions can be explored. However, the complex, interrelated character and dynamics of edu-cational practices means that it should not be expected that any will offer a single solution on its own. It thus also makes no sense to point to any one of these actors and blame them for the undesirable effects. Instead of ‘blaming’ – whether policy, the public, managers, teachers, things, or any other actor that takes part in educational practices – the variety and multitude of influences should be explicitly acknow ledged. Accordingly, the array of possible starting points for action should be embraced. The value of this was recognized by the respondents in the first study, when discussing this provisional outcome in the second interview.
Eef: If your final conclusion is that one solution won’t work that would be of great value. Because that is what often goes wrong: that one solution is devised for the whole of the Netherlands, with all those different neighbourhoods, different schools ...
However, embracing complexity is not an easy path to take. ANT was, nevertheless, particularly helpful in considering the consequen-ces of taking such a stance. Sociomaterial scholars have investigated and discussed practices as complex, various, multiple, fluid, contradic-tory and uncertain, also exploring the consequences for policy. If we, as researchers and as professional workers in the field, see ourselves as entangled in networks that co-constitute these emerging practices, we are responsible for what emerges. In this respect, a consideration of the knowledge-making role of research methods and methodolo-gies becomes important. I will elaborate on the implications of such responsibility for educational practice in the final section of this dis-sertation.
Preparing a stage for meeting ontologies
Where technical thought and expectations of certainty have for so long structured people’s thought, it is important to prepare student researchers in the field of educational science to find their way into a ‘less comfortable social science’, as Lather (2006) puts it, and help ‘students develop an ability to locate themselves in the tensions that characterize fields of knowledge’ (p. 47). The aim of preparing stu-dents for the heterogeneous field of science should be to develop a humble and open conception of what science is by deliberately staging our ‘stammering relationship to knowing’ (Lather, 2006, p. 48). Addi-tionally, as I argued in Chapter VIII, ‘Meeting ontologies’, it might be important to not limit these educational goals to the field of science, but to extend them to professional practice.
Popa and Guillermin (2017) argue that combining methodologi-cal approaches from different paradigms encourages transformative reflexivity, a form of reflexivity that purposefully engages with dif-ference with the intention of learning from it. I therefore make a plea for deliberately combining ontological stances, in order to encourage methodological reflexivity and methodological humility. Following Popa and Guillermin (2017), I further advocate the inclusion of a wider array of stakeholders in research and reflection processes. It might be important to not limit the transformative goals of collaborative methodologically heterogeneous research to the field of science, but to extend them to professional practice. Applied to the educational context, I would call for the deliberate creation of a stage for the
transdiscipli-nary research teams which integrate the expertise of all stakeholders (scientific researchers as well as teachers, managers, policymakers, students/parents) and pursue practices of collective inquiry in evalu-ating educational quality. As Lincoln et al. (2018) argue, while it might not be likely that controversies will be resolved by such dialogue, the important idea of the partiality and fluidity of truth might replace as-sumptions of a single objective reality .
Future work needs to focus on how to prepare professionals in the field to engage in a dialogue across different co-existing fields of knowledge-making. Professional programmes, such as teacher educa-tion and teacher leadership programmes, should develop curricula that aim to foster crucial competences to enable prospective teachers and managers to fully take part in these collaborative processes of knowledge-making, and to engage in the complex knowledge dynam-ics of the twenty-first century. This could be done, for instance, by in-tegrating different methodologies and bringing reflexivity into the pro-cess of knowledge production (Costley & Pizzolato, 2017). Although Costley and Pizzolato (2017) signal that there is a growing govern-mental and public discourse that is receptive to transdisci plinary research, deliberately preparing a stage for a meeting of ontologies by establishing transdisciplinary teams to measure educational quality is ambitious and seems far from the current educational reality. To move in this direction requires methodological humility above all: the need to acknowledge that all knowledge production is done in socio-material practices situated in time and place, and to adjust to the idea that there is no best way of knowing.
