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Evidence-informed teaching has been a focus for the UK government since 2014 and whilst there is a suggestion that engagement with research to inform practice can enhance the quality of teaching, access to high quality research is a challenge for school-based practitioners. Successful schools make research more accessible to staff by building research resource banks and by collaborating with universities. Whilst stronger schools also support teaching staff to become more independent in their engagement with research, there can be a tension between access to research and the judgement of its quality. Furthermore, teacher workload has been highlighted as a concern across the education sector and this includes that of trainees engaged in initial teacher education. Lesson planning has been identified as something that can be burdensome for trainees and the expectation that they develop individual lesson plans should be reviewed to help address workload issues.

In this paper we introduce a novel method—generative critical conversation (GCC)—which we propose can develop educator and researcher reflexivity and enhance criticality in enterprise and entrepreneurship education (EEE). We ground this method in literature from the field of educational research and reflexivity scholarship. We hybridize three methodological elements—the self-study strategy of reflecting on recorded material; exploring lived experiences through cogenerative dialogue, and a focus on critical questioning—to facilitate the development of educator-researcher reflexivity. We use illustrations from our own conversations to show how GCC opens up space over time to access and move between levels of reflexive interpretation. We suggest enabling conditions that support GCC and its potential as a method for developing educator-researcher reflexivity across EEE, initial teacher education, and other fields of research.

The formation of teachers’ professional practice has been discussed in relation to a wide variety of influences, with government prescription of practice often criticised as oppressing professional agency. Set within an ethnographic study within one English primary school, this paper explores the role of intertextuality in the form of intertextual hierarchies during a policy-led period of change to teachers’ professional practice: the introduction of a new way of teaching mathematics. Drawing on actor-network theory and literacy studies, we trace the stages of the translation of the new method from policy into practice, through the intertextual hierarchies which carry this knowledge across policy/practice boundaries. We highlight the crucial role of texts as actors within a remodelling of professional practice. Describing how the socio-material use and creation of texts leads to localisation of policies, we lend hope to schools in terms of their own agency within government-driven agendas.

This seminar will explore our paper on the Banality of Education Policy, which draws on the work of Hannah Arendt (1963), Elizabeth Minnich (2017) and Simona Forti (2014) to problematise the increasing use of zero tolerance behaviour policies in schools as part of a neoliberal education regime. \ud We explore the empirical and conceptual background of our paper, then examine the use of ‘Zero tolerance’ and ‘isolation’ as banal education policy. We conclude with the implications for our future research project "Understanding and undoing the neoliberal-neoconservative nexus in education".

Action research is a methodology in which a professional improves or develops practice in a cyclical way, by planning the next step of action as a result of analysis of the previous action or development. It therefore involves reflective practice. It is distinct from other forms of research in that the professional looks at his or her own practice, and develops an aspect of it, rather than producing new knowledge, and is thus ideally suited to the classroom practitioner, whether at primary, secondary, FE or HE phases. This workshop will describe the mechanics of action research and consider types of evidence that might be collected to demonstrate impact. Through the workshop, participants will discuss and plan a piece of action research that they can carry out.

The event was a celebration of how schools across the UK were using industry skills (Autodesk Maya) to create 3D computer animations. It is challenging how younger people given the opportunity to learn skills at an earlier age.

An actor-network theory analysis of actors influencing the formation of teacher professionalism. Over time, views on the role of the teacher have changed dramatically. Views of teaching as a vocation along with other ‘caring’ roles such as nursing (Menter 2009; Inglis 1989; Sockett 1993) altered in the post-war political drive towards ‘professionalising’ the role (Ball 2008; Oancea 2014; Gitlin & Labaree 1996). In the following decades of increasing prescriptions of teacher training requirements, of curricula, of pedagogy and assessment, opinions in the literature and policy began to divide as to the status of teaching as a vocation/profession/semi-profession (Carr 2000). These professionalising efforts have been viewed as ‘deprofessionalising’ (Hargreaves & Goodson 1996) in terms of a reduction in professional agency (Buchanan 2015; Ball 2015; Black 2009) and as overly focused on marketisation (Ball 2003; Ball 2016) and accountability (Ball 2008; Buchanan 2015; Taylor Webb 2005; Kogan 1989). A resulting dichotomy emerged in the field between prescribed practice and teacher beliefs, with detrimental effects highlighted regarding teachers’ professional identity development and morale (Day & Sachs 2004; Sachs 2001; Biesta 2007; Little 1990). \ud \ud Out of this history arose a debate around the nature of teachers’ professionalism, with diverse studies seeking to define the term: bureau professionalism (Reeves 2007); activist models (Sachs 2000); restricted and extended professionalism (Hoyle 1982); to name but a few. Each definition carries variations according to central defining factors and combinations of policy-led and practitioner-led views. \ud \ud Disparities in definitions can also be found in national policy, with many western countries seeing several versions of ‘standards’ or ‘competencies’ documents, which themselves vary to the teaching standards/competencies documents of other countries (Ministry of Education 2009; MCEECDYA 2011; DfE 2011). The influence of such ‘standardising’ documents is questionable: although there is some evidence to suggest that standards documents influence the shaping of curricula and professional training programmes (Ceulemans et al. 2012), there is little evidence to support that these have any standardising impact on practice (Tummons 2016), perhaps due to variations within human interpretation and translation of written documents (Tummons 2014). Teacher professionalism thus remains a concept without a universally agreed definition and as such, problematic. \ud \ud From within this uncertainty can be seen the complexity and fluidity of teacher professionalism – an ever-changing term, linked to the political climate, to national priorities as well as to context (Livingston 2016; Flores & Day 2006; Evans 2008). This complexity, as well as the recognition of the importance to professionalism of teachers’ beliefs and professional identity development (Beijaard 1995; Biesta 2009; Pajares 1992), has led to arguments for more contextualised views of the term (Talbert & McLaughlin 1996; Ball & Goodson 1985; Clandinin & Connelly 1996), viewing the enactment and espousement of teacher professionalism from the inside out. \ud \ud Viewed as a situated construct, teacher professionalism can be seen as fluid, dynamic (Jones et al. 2008), forming and reforming according to the influencing factors. These factors may be both human and non-human (policies, environment, proforma, etc) and threaded over time and space through layers of context (economy, politics, policy, community, immediate environment). Rather than attempting another overarching definition of teacher professionalism to add to the debate, this study sets out from within the complexity of the term as situated in time and space, to bring to light the interactions and power structures of human and non-human actors whose workings have created a temporarily stabilised understanding of teacher professionalism in one institution. \ud \ud Using ethnographic methodology and an actor-network theory (ANT) approach, the aim is to lay bare the assemblage (Law 1994) of an iteration of teacher professionalism – the influencing factors which make up its perception and enactment – and trace how these came to bear such influence.

'Not all students have the same ideas as their teachers about what they are meant to be doing in the classroom' (Wiliam, 2011:52). Often, what is wanted is not made clear, and this puts some students at an advantage becasue they already 'know'. Unchecked, access to the same education becomes diminished, leading to inequities. At these times, one thing we can do is help the student develop a 'nose for quality' (Claxton, 1995) and this practical workshop is designed to firstly, understand what the assessment descriptors mean in practice when applied to students' own work and secondly, to be able to give and receive feedback that will help move learning on in a 'can-do' way.\ud This workshop subsequently focuses on the role of feedback as a mediator of pesonal self-efficacy and proposes that increasing the deployment of regulation and process feedback builds the self-efficacy of students to foster an 'I can' attitude for agentic action. Through a practical approach, participants will be encouraged to flex thier feedback into these forms, and consider highlighting prompt-type feedback as 'next steps for action' on the part of students (or peer/self-assessment on the part of students), encouraging them to take these steps themselves. Aimed at both students and academics, this should position them to act upon the feedback they receive (or give), so that students move from obtaining executive help (seeking answers; Hattie and Timperley, 2007) to instrumental help (seeking hints on how to work something out).

During this workshop, we will consider the different aspects comprising key features of the Ofsted School Inspection Framework standards for 'good' and 'outstanding'. Through reflection on the current practice of individuals and science teaching team, you will audit your provision to help agree a model for future action in your institution.

This paper explores teachers’ professional knowledge and action as constructions resulting from complex socio-material interactions. Taking an actor-network theory approach to the analysis of data constructed through observations and semi-structured interviews conducted in a primary school in the north of England, this paper foregrounds the interplay of human and non-human actors in tracing the actors involved in ‘performing into being’ (Latour 2005) professional knowledge and action. Situated within a wider study of the formation of teacher professionalism, this paper explores the influence of texts used and created by practitioners on the formation of professional knowledge and action. Drawing on theories of literacy as social practice (Barton, 2017), the interactions between teachers and networks of texts are presented as shaping collaborative negotiations of professional knowledge. The power of these text-teacher networks as part of this inter-relational formation of professional knowledge and action is traced through ethnographic observations of moments of the creation of new texts, highlighting inter-textual hierarchies and the translation of policy/theory into context-based professional knowledge and practice. Emerging from this perspective is an argument for greater consideration, both in terms of political as well as theoretical contexts, of the mediating role of texts within the formation of teacher professionalism. Scripted definitions of teachers professionalism are problematised and it is posited that professionalism is instead best understood and developed from a view centred within its socio-material formation. \ud \ud \ud \ud Barton, D., 2017. Literacy: An introduction to the ecology of written language, John Wiley & Sons. \ud Latour, B., 2005. Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory, Oxford university press.

In the wake of the neoliberalisation of education, which has seen growing and relentless demands for performative data, along with detailed curricular and pedagogical prescriptions, concerns have been raised about the survival of teacher agency (Priestley, Biesta, & Robinson, 2015; Ríos, 2018). Such concerns raise questions of what we understand by agency. Conceptions of agency have been critiqued for viewing it in dualistic terms, as for instance in notions of structure versus agency (Archer, 2000, 2003), and for reducing it to notions of resistance, as if this was the only possible modality of agentic behaviour (Mahmood, 2005). In this paper, drawing on recent work in Lacanian psychoanalytic theory (Bunn, Langer, & Fellows, 2021; Clarke, 2019), and on empirical data from interviews with teachers, we offer a ‘quaternary’ model of teacher agency in which four agentic modes are mapped onto Lacan’s four discourses. Through this model, we explore the discourses of teachers as they talk about their practices. We posit that teacher agency exists and is shaped within the relational and discursive positioning of teachers vis-a-vis the complex web of interrelated actants that surround their professional practices. From a Lacanian perspective of discourse as a social link, we explore the shifting position – and hence role – of the constitutive-generative lack that functions as the paradoxical object-cause of teachers’ desires around their practices (Bunn, Langer & Fellows, 2022). The model we explore opens up possibilities for teacher education to be understood as a site of ceaseless ‘becoming’, in that relational positioning within each discourse reveals how teacher agency is able to be exercised, highlighting potential limitations and affordances that come to constitute professional identities and practices. We thus offer a perspective of teacher agency which affords potential to teacher educators to interrupt dualistic or resistance-based understandings of agency and move forwards with a deeper understanding of how it is discursively enabled and/or constrained. \ud \ud \ud \ud \ud \ud References \ud \ud Archer, M. (2000). Being human: The problem of agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. \ud \ud Archer, M. (2003). Structure, agency and the internal conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. \ud \ud Bunn, G., Langer, S., & Fellows, N. (2022). Towards a model of student subjectivity in the \ud \ud marketized university. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 1-32. \ud \ud Clarke, M. (2019). Lacan and education policy: The other side of education. London: Bloomsbury. \ud \ud Mahmood, S. (2005). Politics of piety: The Islamic revival and the feminist subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. \ud \ud Priestley, M., Biesta, G., & Robinson, S. (2015). Teacher agency: An ecological approach. London: Bloomsbury. \ud \ud Ríos, R. (2018). Teacher agency for equity: A framework for conscientious engagement. New York: Routledge.

Outstanding is a contested term, viewed through the various lenses of Ofsted, teachers, students and researchers. The UK has a world-acknowledged tradition of educational research, often leading global education. But much of it rarely filters down into actual teaching and can be fashionable, political and contradictory. This workshop will engage with the evidence-base of ‘what works’ to learn what the ‘literature’ says is outstanding and participants will reflect on the implications this will have for their own classroom practice, and make targets for future action.