Collaborative Learning as a Travelling Practice: How Practices of Learning `Travel'

Author： Hardy Ian Edwards-Groves Christine Rönnerman Karin

ISSN： 1323-577X

Source： Educational Practice and Theory, Vol.34, Iss.2, 2012-01, pp. : 5-22

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Abstract

Drawing on cases of teachers' collaborative learning from Sweden and Australia, this paper explores how practices of collaborative learning come about or `travel' within and between schooling sites. The paper describes collaboration as a learning practice arising from specific conditions which influence relevant stakeholders in pre-schools, schools and school systems. After Schatzki (2002) and Kemmis and Grootenboer (2008), we argue these learning practices are the result of a continuous process of unfolding and evolving projects characterised by distinctive language, activities and relationships - all of which shape and are shaped by the conditions under which they transpire. Specifically, the paper reveals how such learning practices are the product of how stakeholders' language, activities and relationships in different parts of schooling organisations `hang together' in the spatio-temporal domain. Such learning practices are also revealed as creating conditions productive of substantive educational improvement. The paper identifies some of the necessary conditions which enable productive collaborative learning practices to be taken up in schooling settings.