Investing in Communities of Scholar-Practitioners

Abstract

Communities of Scholar Practitioners (CSP) form the workings of the renewed teacher education program at UBC Okanagan, purposefully bringing practitioners and researchers together and, thus, theory and practice together.  The separation of practitioners from researchers, theory from practice, is documented for over 100 years in the research literature as being unproductive. Effective school contexts, discerning leadership, and good teaching, lives at the intersections of theory with practice when educators understand their identity as inquirers--teacher researchers—continually questioning what they are doing and why, theorizing their practices and practicizing their theories; embracing the search within research. Envisioning opportunities to really explore what being a scholar-practitioner entails for learners and learning at all stages of study and careers are what the teacher education program at UBC O is emphasizing. In other words, an educator’s professional knowledge is formative and requires ongoing mentorship. Cultivating CSP where teacher candidates and mentor teachers and leaders understand learning as necessarily experimental, grounded in questions, collaborative, connected to and derived from work with students, and sustained and interdependent with school contexts and needs, forms our current task. The challenges, tensions, and possibilities encountered to date are mapped out and considered from multiple perspectives through negotiating the needed relationships, seeking fitting conditions and supports, and investing in conjoint mentoring relationships with schools and other education sites, reframing professional growth for all involved.