Philippa Nicoll Antipas, University of Otago
As a secondary-school teacher transitioning into being a professional learning and development (PLD) facilitator in schools, I was finding myself troubled by the traditionally-designed conferences for teachers’ PLD. I was struck by their, at times, passive nature and disconnect between workshop facilitators who espoused student-centred learning approaches without necessarily modelling these in their own facilitation practices. This lead me down the path of my own doctoral research, where I pondered the question: What happens when teachers design their own conference as and for PLD?
In my quest to support teachers to design their own conference, I created Plan D, a collective, game-like activity. Plan D emerged from reviewing literature on effective teacher PLD; teacher learning; game-based learning, as well as from teacher voice gathered through an electronic survey and two in-depth interviews with teachers who had been part of organising conferences for teacher PLD. (As a sidebar, the ‘d’ business is a nod to the design thinking school at Stanford University and to Ivan Illich’s notion of deschooling.)
Plan D comprises four layers, with each layer having four connected activities for teachers to complete either individually, in small groups, or as a collective. The four layers lead teachers through a design process at the end of which they have a plan for what I have called a ‘d.conference’: a PLD experience such as a teacher only day.
The first layer is about getting assumptions and expectations out on the table. It asks: What do we expect from good PLD? The second layer is about scoping the purpose of the d.conference and the learning needs of ākonga and teachers. It asks: What are we seeking to achieve? The third layer is about the nuts and bolts of the d.conference. It asks: How do we want our d.conference to run? The fourth and final layer is about reflection and sustainability: Do we want to attend what we have designed? How will we keep our learning going?
Thus, with a prototype of Plan D in tow, I conducted my first round of data collection: six teachers from Valley Intermediate School (this is a pseudonym, as are all teachers’ names) willingly engaged with the collective board game-like activity onsite, face-to-face, in a room together. But then I encountered a significant glitch: COVID-19.
I was unable to find another school with which to research, and when I finally did find another school, due to the ongoing COVID restrictions, I had to pivot from face-to-face to online research. (I have written about this experience here). But how do you play a collective, game-like activity, which has been intentionally designed as a face-to-face experience, online?
My solution: make mini-versions of Plan D and post them individually to the six teachers from Merino Primary School who had generously agreed to be co-researchers with me for my second round of data collection.
Picture this: six teachers in a classroom, mini-versions of Plan D laid out in front of them with sticky-notes, pens, paper, wool, laptops, cups of coffee, chocolate; their colleagues; and me, beaming in virtually via Zoom on a larger-than-life screen. And Sarah, one of the teachers, observes: “It looks like an invitation to play!”
Bizarrely, I had never thought of Plan D in this way before, even though I had engaged extensively with the literature on game-based learning. Prior to this moment, I had conceptualised Plan D as a PLD activity that should not require active (human) facilitation. Nevertheless, Plan D was purposefully designed as a collective game. Games are to be played. In designing Plan D in the form it had taken, I had unknowingly invited teachers into a space where they might play as part of (and as for) their PLD.
Further, Sarah had channeled one of my scholar-heroes: Jane Bennett. Bennett considers the vitality of (all) matter. In doing so, she follows a tradition that ascribes agency to not only humans, but also to more-than-human and non-human entities. She has coined the phrase ‘Thing-Power’. Sarah, in her observation of Plan D as an invitation to play, was, to my mind, describing this collective, game-like activity as a Thing with Power.
Plan D invites teachers to:
- Play with ideas;
- Play with materials;
- Play with their colleagues.
And in doing so, they mutually co-create knowledge (what I have called ‘knowledge-ing’ in my thesis, after Carol Taylor).
In my research I noticed that the teachers who played Plan D found themselves designing a PLD experience – the d.conference – that was completely different to what they imagined themselves offering prior to their engagement with the game. Ethan from Valley Intermediate School described this previously-anticipated PLD design as “business as usual”: a slide-show presentation followed by some kind of activity. Instead, playing Plan D appeared to support teachers to question their assumptions and design something bespoke for themselves and their colleagues – a d.conference indeed.
Thus, through my doctoral research, I have come to understand the power of play and the potential of play for teacher PLD. Play has the ability to make the familiar strange. It can disrupt seemingly settled expectations. Part of the playful nature of play is the way player-learners are invited into a space of possibility whereby they play with and against the rules.
This, then, is a call for an additional reading of the ‘P’ in PLD: not just professional learning and development, but playful professional learning and development. Play in PLD has, in our opinion (that is to say, the opinion of this researcher and of the collective, game-like Thing with Power Plan D), the potential to open up a transformative space of possibility – a space of and for knowledge-creation. How might we harness the power of play to activate collective knowledge-creation (knowledge-ing) in teacher PLD?
Philippa Nicoll Antipas is a lecturer and education advisor at the University of Otago | Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka, Pōneke. She is awaiting her doctoral graduation from Victoria, University of Wellington | Te Herenga Waka after successfully defending her thesis. She wishes to express her infinite gratitude to her supervisors Dr. Joanna Higgins and Dr. Sandi Tait-McCutcheon, as well as to her co-researchers from Valley Intermediate School and Merino Primary School. Copies of Plan D are freely available to researchers and schools. Please email philippa.nicollantipas@otago.ac.nz.
Ipu Kererū 