Reflections from an ‘accidental’ Doctoral student’s professional learning journey

Author: Derek Boyle

This article documents the journey that I have taken to get to the point where I am about to start a Doctorate while working as a full-time educator developing future teachers.  Hopefully through sharing my journey, this will show that there are a variety of ways in which you can grow and develop yourself that will help you to prepare to take on this journey into Doctoral work.

A bit of history

I started my journey way back in September 1996 when I completed a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) from Canterbury Christ Church University and took up a teacher of Physics role at a selective girl’s school in Kent.  This identity as a Physics teacher is still important to me as it is part of the professional identity that I define myself by, but this has evolved over time through my own professional journey.  I taught in a variety of different schools, steadily gaining promotion until I reached Assistant Headteacher in 2008 at a school in Tonbridge, Kent.  Along the way I supported many colleagues through a variety of Initial Teacher Training and Education (ITTE) pathways as their in-school mentor.  During this time, I worked with a variety of providers and operated within a range of different frameworks for the professional formation of novice teachers, but none of them considered my developmental needs as a school-based mentor.  My personal reflection was that I was a cog in the machine, ensuring that boxes were ticked, and paperwork was completed by my colleague and myself.  Recent research into effective ITTE mentoring by Forster et al (2022) demonstrate that student teachers valued learning from their school-based mentors as the more knowledgeable other (Vygotsky 1978) to contextualise their learning in a ‘real” context.  Without the capacity and time for high quality developmental mentoring relationships, trainee teachers will not be able to flourish.

Crossing the floor

In 2013, I took the step from being part of a Senior Leadership Team of a school into becoming the Training Director of a School-Centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT) organisation.  Within England, these are part of the range of “providers” that train and qualify novice teachers to gain professional formation and to become qualified teachers.    SCITTs are registered and accredited as Higher Education providers in England and they are part of the school-based Initial Teacher Training and Education (ITTE) landscape, alongside traditional Universities.

From working within a school environment having line management responsibilities for multiple teams of teachers and support staff and pastoral responsibility for over 600 young people, to not being a teacher, was a culture shock.  This transitionary phase took about 2 years for me to reconcile myself with this new strand to my identity and was one of the most difficult phases within my professional career.  The work by Hollweck et al (2022) identifies this dissonance in identity for pracademics that are moving between or navigating between a known and new identity.

Exploring the borderlands

In September 2015 I became one of the Founding Trustees of our sector body NASBTT (National Association of School Based Teacher Trainers) and joined regional sector bodies involved in Initial Teacher Training policy and wider issues in Higher Education.  These groups introduced me to wider contextual challenges to the sector that I operated within and also to the person that would have a profound influence on my professional development and journey.  In your life, sometimes people are in the right place at the right time and the confluence of these factors makes your life pivot in ways that you don’t expect or appreciate at the time.  This is where having someone who gives of themselves as a professional coach, to help you on your journey is so invaluable and I will always be thankful for her stepping into the co-constructed journey that I am on.  The underpinning principles of collaborative professionalism being based on high levels of trust and high precision from Hargreaves and O’Connor (2018) are also the basis of a productive and developmental coaching relationship.

During this period between 2015 and 2020, I had the opportunity to contribute a chapter to a book on carving your niche as a newly qualified teacher and how to look after your own well-being.  This then lead on to starting to review submissions to publishers for book ideas and I then joined the Fabians Education Policy Group and became a fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching to start developing a professional persona within the ITT sector.  (Boyle 2019)

The next phase of my journey commenced in 2020 when a number of threads started drawing together that would put me firmly on the pathway to where I am today.  Firstly, I joined CollectivEd run by Professor Rachel Lofthouse at Leeds Beckett University, then British Educational Research Association (BERA ), British Educational Leadership, Management & Administration Society (BELMAS) and International Professional Development Association (IPDA).  This flurry of activity resulted in volunteering to write blogs and to present on topics dear to me on mentoring of trainee teachers and how we develop capacity within schools to facilitate this effectively.  Blogs then lead to presenting at the IPDA conference (now three years in a row) and writing further pieces for CollectivEd, Fabians and IPDA. Boyle (2020a, 2020b, 2022, 2023a, 2023b)

Operating now in the borderlands between practitioner and academia, I wanted to confirm and consolidate my understanding of where I stood in relation to the “traditional” paradigm of Higher Education, so I undertook the application and assessment process of becoming a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, as awarded by Advance HE. Again, the input and guidance of my informal coach was invaluable in critically evaluating the impact of what I was doing operationally within the “day job”.  I was awarded Senior Fellowship status in October 2020.  My dual identities as practitioner and emergent academic align with the definition from Dickinson and Griffiths (2023 p1) as I span and navigate the boundaries between two traditionally isolated worlds.

While all of this was going on, my informal coach suggested that I think about applying to undertake a Masters (MA)in Leadership in Education, using credit from the work I had been undertaking within the sector being counted for some of the credits towards the MA.  Some guest lecturing accompanied this period of study, and also some review and quality assurance work on a new MA framework that was being developed.

Upon completion of the MA, I was invited to review submissions for the IPDA conference and then for research papers that were submitted to a number of sector leading journals.  This work is highly enjoyable and stimulating and if you ever get the chance to volunteer for a role like this with a journal, please do step forward.  You get to explore the borders of the fields in which you work and to support the development of new knowledge and understanding of key issues within your field.

Further work in the borderlands resulted in becoming the vice-chair of one of the regional Initial Teacher Training Advisory Groups and joining a number of Special Interest Groups linked to my role within Initial Teacher Training as well as the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Teacher Education and CPD special Interest Group.

Partnering with my guide to write a book on mentoring and coaching helped me to consolidate my thinking on key critical issues within the mentoring of teachers at all stages of their careers and this enabled me to write as if I was giving advice to my younger self when I was working in schools taking up different mentoring roles. (Oberholzer and Boyle 2023)

Stepping into the Doctoral realm

I am now coming up to date and over the Summer of 2023 I decided to apply to start a Doctorate.  The rationale for this was to develop new knowledge and understanding of how we can add sustainable capacity to placement schools and partnerships of schools that work with ITT providers.  Little is known of how to do this within the ITT sector in England and I believe I have found my niche that will allow me to contribute to capacity building at a sector level.  This capacity issue is key to the implementation of the requirements of the ITT Market Review (DfE2021, 2024) that has an enhanced role for placement mentors within the placement or practicum aspects of the training and professional formation of teachers.  Without sufficient capacity within the placement schools to take trainees, these reforms will struggle to have the impact that was planned.

Choosing the right Institution to undertake your Doctoral journey is a big step and I was lucky in that my guide encouraged me to explore different pathways with different universities.  I decided to work with her as she has been at my side throughout my journey into the borderlands.  Finding someone that provides challenge and encourages you to reflect on the rationale for your choices is rare.

Looking back, my journey to starting an MA and then onto starting a Doctorate was a series of “happy accidents” and being in the right place at the right time.  I took the active decision to explore the opportunities that were open to me and to keep asking questions of those around me.  At times I do still feel like an interloper and I do get the imposter syndrome feelings when I am working with those who work in academia full-time.  I am proud to work in the borderlands, in pracademia, as I have a foot in both worlds.  I bring the richness of my working world, with the realities of what assails us, keeping me grounded and the opportunities for clarifying thoughts and ideas within the academic realm.  For those who are thinking of embarking on either a MA programme or a Doctorate, seize the opportunity with both hands and find your “tribe”, there are plenty out there.  Find those people who inspire you and network with them, offer to collaborate with them or just chat about issues that impact on all of your worlds.  Opportunities will present themselves from the most unlikely quarters.

References

Boyle, D (2019) Looking after yourself and your professional development. In Capel, S. et al. Surviving and Thriving in the Secondary School. Routledge pp261-273.

Boyle, D (2020a), A new paradigm and challenge for school-based ITT mentors, CollectivED [10], pages 12-15, Carnegie School of Education, Leeds Beckett University. 

Boyle, D (2020b) “How can we get through this new normal?  Teaching in a post Covid-19 World. https://fabians4education.edublogs.org/2020/05/11/how-can-we-get-through-this-new-normal-teaching-in-a-post-covid-19-world-derek-boyle/ (accessed 30.5.24)

Boyle, D (2022) “The marketisation of Initial Teacher Training – a view from inside the system”. https://fabians4education.edublogs.org/2022/08/30/the-marketisation-of-initial-teacher-training-a-view-from-inside-the-system-derek-boyle/ (accessed 30.5.24)

Boyle, D (2023a) “Developing and sustaining professional learning communities within School-Centred Initial Teacher Training in England” available at https://ipda.org.uk/developing-and-sustaining-professional-learning-communities-within-school-centred-initial-teacher-training-in-england/ (accessed 30.5.24)

Boyle, D (2023b) “Professional Learning Networks within School-Centred Initial Teacher Training in England” available at https://ipda.org.uk/professional-learning-networks-within-school-centred-initial-teacher-training-in-england/ (accessed 30.5.24)