Teacher Responses to New Pedagogical Practices: A Praxeological Model for the Study of Teacher-Driven School Development

Abstract

This article focuses on the teacher community as an agent of school development, and in the context of teacher engagement in new educational practices, it discusses how school change can be analyzed as a process of creating and transforming professional knowledge (orientation pattern). The qualitative research was conducted in 2015–2016 at 12 schools participating in an innovative tutoring program in Wrocław (Poland). A total of 12 group discussions and 52 individual interviews were interpreted using Mannheim’s documentary method. As a result, a typology of the four forms of new professional orientation patterns—niche, instrumental, apparent, and synergic activities—was elaborated, and in a case study, they were applied as a theoretical model to the sociogenetic analysis of the school development process.