INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 2017

The 2017 IPDA International Conference took place from 24-25 November 2017 at the Vale Resort in the Vale of Glamorgan with the theme The Complexity of Professional and Inter-professional Learning.

For full details you can download the conference programme.

The Complexity of Professional and Inter-professional Learning

Three excellent keynote speakers challenged our thinking as they addressed the theme from different but complementary perspectives. During the conference delegates had a range of opportunities to engage directly with the ideas presented by keynote speakers. Each keynote was followed by a time for delegate table group discussion and further dialogue with the presenter. Keynote presenters were also further involved through active participation in the wider conference.

Delegates presented a wide range of stimulating and thoughtful papers in relation to the conference theme with a particular focus on the exploration and application of ideas in practice. The use of theory and research to challenge practice, and of experience to challenge theory and research, is a mark of IPDA conferences and enables people from across the wide spectrum of education, in and around schooling, to share ideas and experiences and learn from each other. New researchers and presentations from practitioners are particularly welcomed and there were many who made their contribution this year.

The IPDA international committee were also pleased to welcome people from across the globe with international delegates bringing a wonder cultural dimension and experience of other education systems to the paper presentations and discussions. All delegates had an opportunity to socialise and get to know each other further at the excellent conference dinner and in the social spaces and time available throughout the conference.

Feedback from delegates was very positive and the interactive nature of the conference once again proved to be a strength.

Keynote Speakers

Reimagining Professional Learning

Professor Graham HC Donaldson, Independent Consultant/University of Glasgow

Professor Graham Donaldson, president of IPDA, started the conference with a focus on co-constructed curricula. He argued that the involvement of professionals across the education spectrum in designing and determining routes to their professional learning could result in combating isolationism and ensuring relevance, flexibility and thus efficacy. Professor Donaldson contrasted what he described as metric driven reductionism with active participation from the profession in their own learning. Professor Donaldson drew on his experience of curriculum review and development in Scotland and Wales and posed some challenging questions that made us think about the relationship between co-construction, or otherwise, and ideological positions in education.

What can complexity do for UK education policy: a passing fad or helping to loosen the grip of centralised control?

Professor Tony Bovaird, University of Birmingham

Professor Tony Boviard showed the enormous complexity of complex adaptive systems such as education, and how analyzing and modelling these systems could help better understand public policy making, its processes, and impact. Professor Boviard demonstrated the difficulties of planning in open systems where there is, or needs to be, a significant level of decentralization of decision making. Professor Donaldson’s account of co-construction is an example of this. Professor Boviard showed how meta-evaluation at systems level allows for triangulation of results from many different and often seemingly incompatible perspectives. A wide range of literature and data was drawn on to show how complex adaptive systems could be managed to improve public outcomes.

‘Bridge over troubled water’: Rebuilding professional learning in landscapes of educational complexity

Professor Rachel Lofthouse, Leeds Beckett University

Professor Rachel Lofthouse focused on the role of coaching, and peer coaching specifically, in the development of teachers. She drew on models from the discipline of geography to show how the struggle to find spaces and levers in the schooling system to allow for effective peer coaching could be better understood. Professor Lofthouse illustrated her arguments with examples from her own practice and research using peer coaching in schools to support critical learning at different stages in teacher careers.

AWARDS

IPDA Prize

The 2017 IPDA prize was awarded to Dr Sacha Mason, Bishop Grosseteste University for her PhD thesis Capturing the Struggle: Understanding the metacognitive strategies for academic writing of mature, work-based learners at University.

IPDA Fellowship

An IPDA Fellowship was awarded to Dr Roger Levy.

PDie Best Paper Award

The PDiE best paper 2017 was awarded to André Koffeman (Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and University of Amsterdam) and Professor Marco Snoek (Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences) for Identifying context factors as a source for teacher professional learning.