Prominent calls have been made to radically shift current teaching provision in higher education towards critically ‘transformative’ pedagogies that align with the pressing imperatives of sustainability. Yet much uncertainty remains over how educators envision the notion of ‘transformative learning’ and their possible role in supporting it. In this study, 21 interviews were conducted with specialist UK-based academics in which they were asked to bring a physical object to represent what ‘transformative learning’ might look like in the context of their sustainable development-focused curricula. Narrative thematic analyses indicated that while transformation cannot be directly brought about by the actions of educators, they can nonetheless indirectly help to support it by enabling students to encounter diverse perspectives, to acquire novel appreciations for relational thinking and to actively participate in social change. Such practices were found to enable a generative balance between the initiatives of the educator and the agency of the student.
This exploratory study introduces shared development: student and teacher development proceeding through the same dialogic framework, with documented sequences consistent with recursive influence between levels. We report a qualitative multiple-case study of the first full implementation of the Think-Talk Toolbox, which operationalises transversal competencies through twelve dialogue skills: 24 teachers across four subjects in two contrasting Chinese primary schools over 15 months. Data comprised classroom dialogue recordings, collaborative inquiry documentation, and individual reflection notes. Findings document student dialogue behaviours consistent with development across three levels (skill enactment, emerging competencies, preliminary dispositional indications), varying systematically by subject. Teacher development operated through the Dialogic Inquiry Triangle (inquiry INTO, THROUGH, and FOR dialogue), with shared analytical capacity appearing foundational for collaborative inquiry. Student dialogue patterns were comparable across schools while teacher inquiry varied, suggesting differentiated support for scaling. We specify three evidence criteria for shared development and apply them across eight cases.
Teaching is understood as emotional, relational and identity-based work, yet little is known about how teacher-mothers negotiate these demands over time, particularly in performing arts education. This qualitative follow-up study returns to four performing arts teacher-mothers seven years after their original participation. Narrative portraits constructed from a follow-up focus group examine how participants retrospectively made sense of changes in their professional and personal lives over that period. Participants retrospectively described how trauma, motherhood, workload intensification and changing forms of participation reshaped their professional identities. Their accounts suggest that institutional expectations of availability, co-curricular labour and visible commitment can position caregiving in tension with professional legitimacy. Co-curricular responsibilities and relational teaching in performing arts extended work beyond formal hours, intensifying these tensions. The study contributes a long-term follow-up perspective to scholarship on teacher identity, arguing that sustaining teachers requires redesigning school systems around caregiving rather than expecting individual adaptation.
