Then and now: Challenging the Reproduction of Values in the Secondary Curriculum: A Critical, Reflective Commentary on Practitioner Dispositions

This article provides a reflective commentary on the modification of the lead author’s professional practice in a secondary academy in England. The modification of practice has been as a result of work conducted on a postgraduate Masters module, which has focused on practitioner development of an exemplar grammar lesson devised for Year Nine collaborative learning. The motivation to publish this work is in light of a heavily structured, prescriptive and time pressured approach to teacher development which disconnects professionals from more meaningful enquiry into the practice they are engaging with. The work initially sets the scene for the situated context detailed above, before moving into a reflective commentary that focuses on the lead author’s structurally influenced dispositions to practitioner development. The paper then moves into key conceptual considerations that have underpinned the development of practice, which subsequently leads to details on the implementation and evaluation of the new learning intervention. With the intervention founded on praxis, it is the critically reflective and reflexive conceptual work completed which is of central interest, and the conclusion that spaces for undertaking a genuine reflective and reflexive approach are diminishing in educational practice. As a result, the authors finish the article with a number of recommendations for practitioners to be given space for authentic reflection focusing on classroom practice, dialectical critical enquiry, theory and reflexivity.