Reprofessionalising teaching: a university research institute engages teachers in creating dialogic space in schools

Policy-makers, governments, researchers and outside agencies can be
harmful and hurtful to teachers, especially in the limited construals they hold of
teaching. This article reports on the activities and experiences of a university research
institute which adopted a style of ‘voiced research’ aimed at assisting schools to
reprofessionalise themselves through the notion of the ‘dialogic school’. Issues of how
to work with teachers to promote argument, contestation, debate and resistance around
the concept of the socially just school were paramount. But, as the article also reports,
these moves had to be accompanied by a need to significantly rethink what it means to
be an educational researcher of teachers’ work, and the changes that are required in
order for this to occur.