English Teaching: Practice and Critique
Reciprocal mentoring across generations: Sustaining professional development for English teachers
Volume 3 Number 2 September 2004
Ivan Boyer (Portland Secondary School, Australia)
Bev Maney (Portland Secondary School, Australia)
Barbara Comber (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)
This article draws on a collaborative research
project entitled Teachers Investigate Unequal Literacy Outcomes:
Cross-generational Perspectives, funded by the Australian Research
Council 2002-2004 and awarded to Barbara Comber, University of South
Australia and Barbara Kamler, Deakin University. The university
researchers invited early career teachers in their first five years of
teaching, and late career teachers with at least twenty-five years
experience, to collaboratively explore the problem of unequal outcomes
in literacy. Over a period of three years, the teacher-researchers
conducted audits of their classroom literacy programs and the effects
on different children; case studies of students they were most
concerned about; and redesigns of their literacy curriculum and
pedagogy. Bev Maney and Ivan Boyer collaborated as research partners in
the context of their work together as English teachers at Portland
Secondary College, Victoria. This paper is based on transcripts of
their many conversations with one other and the research team and is
represented as an interrupted conversation with the university
researchers. Here they critique current models of professional
development and the effects of standardised testing and argue for the
importance of serious teacher conversations and ongoing school-based
research.