Designing my learning: Establishing my practice as an educational broker

Abstract

Voices of external practitioners do not seem to occupy a central position in educational discourses except maybe in some rare cases when the enquiry has been led by a practitioner. Initially, I was oblivious to this underrepresentation of practitioner voice. I had questions regarding the validity of my practice as I had assumed that my non-teacher status coupled with my intersectional identities within race and gender influenced the marginality of my role in the education system. This thesis summarizes my journey that I have made from taking the outsider stance to that of an insider to reconceptualize my practice. I have moved from viewing my work on the outside, removing the self and marginalizing my role to that of acknowledging the ‘selves’ in the practice and looking inside by placing me in the center. The narrative that I provide is an ode to that tacit self which is no more a bystander but an active participant of my practice. Through my work I expand the knowledge on educational brokerage and the importance of context-aware and conscious brokers traversing diverse socio-cultural systems. I explore the role of ‘broker meta-awareness’, a form of knowledge of the self that supports brokers to become effective boundary crossers. I demonstrate the impact of such meta-awareness within educational brokerage mechanisms. Using self-study action research methodology, I facilitated three action research cycles in three schools in two countries, India and England. Analyzing the data from the three action research cycles helped me to envision my practice from ‘margins and marginality’ to ‘boundaries and centrality’. Shifting my perception from ‘marginality’ to ‘centrality’ was possible because I was able cross both imagined and real boundaries. Through a conscious brokerage approach I have been able to reconceptualize my practice and in the process have crafted a nuanced vocabulary to aid other educational brokers that could help them to revision their role and in turn their practice. At the start of my research I viewed digital technologies as an external instrument that I could use as a tool to tackle an issue. Through this research I have come to appreciate the role of digital technologies to reshape and establish my broker practice where technologies have acted as boundary objects supporting the diverse boundary-crossings that I have undertaken. Finally I would like to highlight the central role of personal agency within broker practice. Through my work I have been able to impact some of the social structures to ensure learning is more joined up. Along with ecological agency, high levels of personal agency was employed to facilitate meaningful brokerage processes. Through this thesis I present an explicit form of brokerage where brokers who have meta-awareness of their role are able to strengthen their practice across diverse socio-cultural domains and in the process are able to impact student learning and teacher practice.