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A Proposed Typology of Knowledge Sharing within Communities of Teachers: A
Comparative Case Study Focusing on England and Macedonia
James Underwood,
University of Northampton, UK
Majda Joshevska
Foundation for Education and Cultural Initiatives (Step by Step), Macedonia

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Abstract
This article is a case study of the knowledge that is exchanged by teachers when they are
engaged in professional communities that extend beyond the workplace, includinginternationally. The participants in this study were all teachers from England and Macedonia.
The data collection method was via interview. This data was thematically coded and used tobuild towards the development of a typography of the different forms of knowledge that may
be shared by teachers within such communities. In the first half of this article different waysof defining the professional knowledge of teachers, as presented in a range of research, areexplored and critiqued. The second half then explores the different forms of knowledge thatthe participants in this study perceived themselves to have shared as members ofcommunities of teachers that extend beyond the workplace. Via this study it was found thatthe participants consistently problematised the possibility of directly transferring specificpedagogic strategies. However, stories about teaching were seen by all to be useful vehicles
for enabling affirmation and for co-constructing professional purpose. It is argued that both ofthese outcomes are forms of professional knowledge in their own right. These findings havepotential implications for policy and practice as they indicate that it may be significant for
those organisations that support such networking opportunities to value and understand thesignificance of those forms of professional knowledge that are less concrete than theexchanging of specific classroom strategies alone.
Keywords: professional communities, professional knowledge, extended professionalism,
communities of practice, pedagogical knowledge, knowledge sharing, implicit knowledge

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In many countries, there are a wide range of initiatives that link teachers from different
schools within the same country. There are similarly a large number of initiatives that build
communities of teachers from different countries. These may be arranged and funded bygovernments, local and national, or by non-governmental organisations. These organisingbodies at some stage usually evaluate the success of these initiatives. The reasons variousorganisations have for supporting and promoting such community building is often describedin terms of improving teachers’ knowledge and expertise and in terms of sharing practice(Frost, 2015; British Council, 2018). These often become the success criteria that such
communities are judged by.
However, a frequent criticism is that although engagement in extended communities is often
a positive personal experience for teachers, they are sometimes not as effective at transferring
practice as is hoped for. Often, this has particularly been the conclusion reached by research
into the success of international initiatives (Oyewole, 2016). Another criticism, with thebuilding of international communities specifically, is that when the countries involved differ
in terms of economic development, levels of investment in education, or perceived teacher
status, the relationship between community members is inevitably an unequal one. The
potential for inequality is most often demonstrated by an expectation from those from themore developed country that they will have much to teach and less to learn (Steiner-Khamsi,2014).
Both authors are professionally engaged in developing extended and international
communities of teachers. Through this role we have found that current models of teacher
knowledge do not fit neatly when trying to understand these communities and especiallywhen trying to evaluate their success. Some models emphasise the importance of theindividual school (Frost, 2015), while others are culturally specific (Shulman (2013). Thesemodels do not enable a full understanding of knowledge transfer when the teachers in thesecountries teach very different subject knowledge and when the curriculum emphasises
different aspects of student and teacher knowledge and expertise (Schulman, 2013).
Therefore, in this paper we explore the different forms of knowledge that the participatingteachers perceived that they had shared and the value that they placed on these. This is within
the specific context of knowledge sharing within extended and international communities.
Literature Review
Professional knowledge in many professions is defined by a shared specialist language(Stickney, 2012). However, if professional knowledge is defined in this way, then thispresents problems if trying to understand the distinct knowledge of teachers (Frost, 2013).
Teachers certainly build a canon of knowledge and skills through their career. However, thisis framed in language that is familiar language to most people (Taber, 2009), simply because
most people have a deep familiarity with the language of teachers and of schools (Ball,
2006). In comparison, in the medical and legal professions the status of having distinct
professional knowledge, defined by distinct language and enforced by unique social codes, iseasier to attain (Hui & Stickley, 2007).
Other potentially more valid models of teachers’ knowledge identify and describe typologies
that define the different forms of knowledge that teachers may acquire. Shulman (2013) built
and refined a widely used typology of knowledge that defines teaching knowledge in terms ofpedagogical, subject content, and contextual knowledge. This way of identifying different
forms of knowledge is significant because it distinguishes between potentially mechanistic

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Volume 7 – Issue 1 – Summer 2019acts of classroom strategy and a deeper knowledge of practice, the latter of which enables
innovation and responsiveness. It also distinguishes between the factual content knowledge ofteachers and a simple knowledge of strategies, both of which can be easily shared, and thetacit knowledge of how to teach well in this context, which is much harder to share withothers.
This tacit knowledge, a “wisdom of practice” (Shulman, 2013), is a form of knowledge that isharder to transfer than either subject content knowledge or the mechanistic knowledge ofindividual classroom acts or strategies (Dogan, Pringle, & Mesa, 2016). However, with
Shulman’s model, the primacy given to subject content and contextual knowledge means thatit cannot be used as a conceptual tool on its own for understanding the knowledge exchanged
by teachers engaging in extended communities that reach beyond a single education system.
This is because of the lack of content similarity and the differing curriculums in different
contexts. This is exacerbated further if the community is very diverse such as an international
community.
Another alternative way of understanding how teachers build and define the professional
knowledge they possess, which has been widely used in theory building over the past twenty
years, is by reference to arts and crafts traditions (Shimahara, 1998; Lupton, 2013). These
analogies link teaching to other highly skilled roles that historically often lay at the heart ofcommunities. This way of understanding teachers’ professional knowledge, especially withreference to craft traditions, has had a deep influence on teacher training in England andWales in recent years, which has progressively moved towards a way of training which isakin to an apprenticeship model.
One argument for using this analogy to understand teachers’ professional knowledge is basedon acknowledging that once formal qualifications to enter the profession have been
completed, further professional knowledge is almost entirely gained via experience (Hord &Sommers, 2008; Oancea, 2014). Teachers in professional practice understand situations via
the context and interpretation of previous similar experiences (Taber, 2009). These specificexperiences are just as inaccessible to others as professional knowledge in other contexts.
However, teachers’ knowledge is more idiographic, likely to be expressed in less specialist
language and the process of gaining it is done in the real world setting of the teacher’sclassroom (Nyman, 2014). This knowledge is still highly specialised though and can only beaccumulated by deeply committed professionals over an extended period of time (ParkerKatz & Bay, 2008).
Art and craft analogies are useful tools for understanding the types of knowledge thatteachers may possess and share. This is because, with these analogies, a distinction can bemade between teaching as craft and teaching as art, whilst defining teaching knowledge is aunion of both types of knowledge (Lupton, 2013). Craft involves the accumulation of a broad
set of skills, whilst art is the utilisation of these in innovative and unique ways by any given
teacher. According to these analogies just as an experienced carpenter will make each piecein a distinct and unique way, but based on prior experience of having dealt with a similar
challenge before, so will a teacher when designing lessons and teaching strategies (BlackHawkins & Florian, 2012). As each challenge is resolved, the store of accumulated expertiseand depth of knowledge is extended (van Velzen, 2012).
Artists are interested in other artists’ work because of the creative discourse that is enabled byseeing and discussing it, not because they intend to replicate it entirely. Therefore, whereas in116

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Volume 7 – Issue 1 – Summer 2019other professional fields an exact equivalent case may inform the way to address the next, inteaching the myriad range of similar classroom experiences informs later decisions. However,this knowledge is used far more flexibly than it might be in other contexts. A different setting
is not simply advantageous or disadvantageous, but leads to different but equally valid
decisions being made (Gun, 2014).
Another distinct approach to understanding the knowledge of teachers is the teacher
leadership perspective as promulgated by Frost (2014; 2015) and others involved in theInternational Teacher Leadership Initiative. “Teacher Leadership” is used as a term byvarious writers. However, two aspects of the teacher leadership approach that Frost (2015)
propounds are distinct from other conceptual models. These are the importance of the coconstruction of knowledge by teachers, and the importance of knowledge validation by
fellow professionals (Creaby, 2013; Frost, 2014), albeit acknowledging that the idea of coconstruction is implicitly present in models that use arts as an analogy.
According to this teacher leadership perspective, for knowledge to be relevant to teachers it
must be co-constructed as a community (Bolat, 2013). The distinction between coconstruction as opposed to simply sharing is important as it is through co-construction thatteachers are able to be creative and to exercise leadership (Steel, 2014). Through this process,knowledge is shared through the stories teachers tell and it is then developed in innovative
ways as a community. This then facilitates the process of building a positive professional
identity and self-efficacy among teachers (Frost, 2014), which in turn facilitates the enablingof embedded, long lasting changes in practice or underpinning viewpoints on education (Hill,2014).
For this professional knowledge to be of value it therefore undergoes a process of“knowledge validation” (Frost, 2013, p.17) with the teachers in the role of expert practitioner
and expert audience. The knowledge that is co-constructed and then validated in the dialogueof teachers may on occasion be specific knowledge relating to classroom strategies but it may
also be knowledge of how to exercise leadership, knowledge of purpose, or knowledge of
one’s own professional significance (Hill, 2014; Frost, 2013). The emphasis in the context of
this teacher leadership approach is on teachers being empowered to innovate. Through theconfidence that this builds teachers then develop belief in themselves as leaders of change.
The significance of emphasising the co-construction of knowledge rather than the directtransfer of practice has implications when teachers work together across national borders(Underwood & Kowalczuk-Walędziak, 2018). It reduces the risk of strategies being rejected
because of an unquestioning acceptance of approaches brought in from other countries,
especially wealthier ones (Ramahi, 2015). Ramahi (2015), in the context of Palestine, writes
about how the building of collective knowledge as opposed to only individual reflective
knowledge enables forms of knowledge other than classroom practice to be exchanged byteachers. This, in her experience, includes knowledge of: personal agency; approaches toleading change; and of teachers’ own role as experts.
To some extent these interlinking definitions of professional knowledge would also beappropriate when defining experienced professionals in any profession including the
traditional professions of law and medicine, which were placed in opposition to these models
at the start of this section. However, it may be more significant for teachers than for those inother professions (Kuper & D’Eon, 2011; Frost, 2014). This knowledge of teachers, which
once a teacher is qualified is largely built experientially, is different from the more proceduralknowledge of other professions and therefore is worth understanding in a distinct way (Eraut,

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Volume 7 – Issue 1 – Summer 20192007; Frost, 2015).
The purpose of this study reported here was to explore the types of knowledge that teachers
engaged in extended and international communities shared, and the value that they put onthese different forms of knowledge. Two research questions underpinned this study:••

What types of knowledge do teachers engaged in extended communities exchange?
In what ways do teachers value these different types of knowledge?
MethodThe overall design for this study divides into two stages (Newby, 2014). First, there was a
preparatory stage which involved an exploration into literature in this field. This first stage
built an initial conceptual understanding that would be used to guide the analysis of
documents and the interviews. In the second stage, ten interviews with two different groupsof teachers were conducted. Interviews were firstly conducted five teachers currently
teaching in schools in England, who were all engaged in communities that extend beyond
their workplace. For all of them, this involved working with teachers, and others in education,from the Balkans including Macedonia, via “the International Teacher Leadership initiative”.
The second group was five teachers teaching in schools in Macedonia who were members ofsimilar communities that extended beyond their own workplace and in some, but not allcases, communities with an international dimension.
The participants from both countries were all teachers within the state system in either
England or Macedonia. The five Macedonian teachers all taught in schools that had cohortsof children aged from 7 to 14. The teachers from England were all secondary school teachers(teaching children aged 11 to 16). All had taught for at least one year and none had taught for
more than ten. The teachers from England were one English teacher, two humanities teachers,
one science teacher, and one dance teacher. Due to the age of the children the Macedonian
teachers did not have a subject specialism.
All could be described as “extended professionals” (Hoyle, 2008, p.287) in that they were
proactive professionals, constantly seeking professional development opportunities within
their schools, their country and beyond to make systematic and purposeful interventions intheir teaching practice in order to improve it. In this way they also demonstrate a high level of“professionality” (Evans, 2008, p.24).
The participants were involved in a range of communities from formally structured projects
to online communities that they had created for themselves. The one commonality thesecommunities all had was that they extended beyond the school workplace. They were all also
involved in at least one community that was part of the larger, UK based “International
Teacher Leadership initiative”. However, in no case was this the only extended communitythat they belonged to and the participants referred to a range of the communities in which
they were involved in their interviews.
The “International Teacher Leadership initiative” provided gatekeeper access to theparticipants. It is a project that started at the University of Cambridge in 2011 and is now a
fully independent initiative. It involves all the countries that have emerged from the former
Yugoslavia, plus the UK, Turkey, Portugal and Palestine. The participants’ involvement
ranged from being central to the governance of this initiative, to being a teacher involved in118

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Volume 7 – Issue 1 – Summer 2019local initiatives inspired by it in England or Macedonia. In all cases though it meant that it
might be expected that the participants would have a shared perspective on the ideals of“teacher leadership” that this project puts forward (Frost, 2015). However, this study does not
focus exclusively on this project, but rather on the knowledge shared within a range ofcommunities these teachers were involved with, whether formally or informally structured.
Interviews were used because the aims and goals of communities of teachers that stretch
beyond the workplace, articulated in the literature of the organisations that promoteinternational networking, tend to be strong, clear, and hard to disagree with. This includes the
documents produced via the “International Teacher Leadership initiative”. They variously
combine an emphasis on the importance of: democratic participation; enabling civic society;empowering teachers; and on building global communities of education professionals (British
Council, 2016; Frost, 2008). These are all values and ideals that any teacher engaged ininternational networking via formal projects would be likely to concur with. We therefore
decided to use interview because such deep data would reveal subtle differences in viewpoint
and perception (Robson & McCartan, 2016).
The participants were interviewed in private. The interviews were held in English althoughboth authors were present for the interviews with the Macedonian teachers (one of the authors
speaks both English and Macedonian fluently). The same simple interview schedule was usedwith all the participants from both countries and consisted of four open questions, which
would then enable a further discussion. These questions asked the teachers to describe thecommunities that they had been involved in, their reasons for joining, the knowledge thatthey had shared within the community, and what they valued most about community
membership. From this starting point further discussion emerged. The shortest interview
lasted 40 minutes, the longest lasted 70 minutes.
All the interviews were transcribed verbatim. They were then:• carefully read by both authors with initial codes written in the margin by hand;• extracts with identical or related codes were grouped together in tables;• the codes were then reduced and categories identified; and• these became the categories that shaped the writing of the second half of this article.
Findings and Discussion
This section is a discussion of the forms of knowledge that were exchanged by theparticipants, when they were engaging in communities beyond the workplace. We also
discuss the value the participants put upon the different forms of knowledge that were sharedand on the process of sharing.
Knowledge of Strategies and PracticeAll of the participants acknowledged the possibility that specific classroom strategies may beexchanged by meeting other teachers through a community that functions beyond theworkplace. This reflects Shulman’s model of knowledge sharing, which describes how
specific strategies are the simplest and most transferable form of knowledge that teachers
share (Shulman, 2013). For the participants this included within international communities
that they had been engaged with. However, none of the participants, from either England or
Macedonia, felt that the learning of concrete strategies had been particularly significant forthem. Therefore, an apparent tension regarding rejecting the simple and mechanistic learning

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Volume 7 – Issue 1 – Summer 2019of teaching strategies, whilst maintaining the goal of achieving concrete change throughdialogue with other teachers, was present in all the interviews.
The participants were very interested in how others taught and consistently described how
hearing stories about teaching was a vital and stimulating aspect of engaging with teachers
from other countries. This closely matches Frost’s (2015) and Ramahi’s (2015) description ofknowledge being present in the discourse of teachers. However, the participants wereconfident in their own skills as teachers and lesson designers, enjoyed the process of lesson
design, and were consistently looking for sources of inspiration rather than strategies thatthey could simply transfer. They were also interested in current trends and developments as
expressed by the teaching of others. This again fits closely with Frost’s (2014) teacher
leadership model, which describes how experienced teachers perceive themselves as creativeand individualistic and therefore seek forms of knowledge other than the direct copying ofstrategies. This is illustrated below by this quotation from one of the teachers from England.
I kind of just wanted to find out more about it. Colleagues have been abroad
before and found it really interesting to hear about teaching in other countries
but particularly the obstacles to teaching and how we take it for granted overhere. I saw this as a form of professional development, a chance for
involvement in something. I expected it to have some kind of influence on myteaching but that isn’t the same as learning teaching strategies, it was
something less direct that I expected to gain. The vast majority of your time isspent in your classroom by yourself and you are the identity in your classroom.
The activities, the lessons have your stamp on them. My lessons have the stampof other individuals who inspire me. Although I think you could come into mylesson and see a Ms xxxxx lesson, there are other ideas that have fed into thatparticular lessons and yes that is what I expected or at least hoped for (Asecondary school geography teacher from England, engaged projects withteachers from the Balkans).
The knowledge that all the participants sought to build through engagement, in the morediverse communities of teachers that they belonged to, included and emphasised knowledgeof the thought processes of other teachers when designing approaches to teaching; knowledgeof the working culture that enabled or inhibited this, and a deeper understanding of theinteraction between the wider community that they belonged to and the design of innovative
lessons. All of these in turn were linked to improvements in teaching within their own schools
and classrooms but in a more nuanced way than the simple importing of strategies. The
participants saw the dialogue that international engagement, specifically, could bring about
between teachers from different countries as ideally being critical, discursive and coconstructed. They also thought that it was important that such discussions would be
empowering for the teachers engaged in them.
There was an initiative seven years ago, we were in that initiative, and theytaught us that it is great to share your ideas and that was the aim of thatworkshop and they taught us how to film, to record our classes and to shareand that is great, really inspiring, but it was the doing of it that inspired me, tobe honest I didn’t then copy a lot of lessons but I made friends, interesting
people I still talk about teaching with (teacher from Macedonia: engaged in apan-Macedonian project).

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The quotation above is illustrative of how a perception of teaching as an individualistic or
idiographic profession was expressed in all the interviews. It was also consistently
emphasised that an individualistic approach to lesson design could potentially be positive andenabling. It could even promote greater self-efficacy than dependence on the strategies ofothers. However, for this to be the case it was seen as important that these teachers still
identified as members of a community, thus fitting with E. Wenger-Trayner and B. WengerTrayner’s (2015) model of a community of practice. This emphasis on individuality andcreativity did not negate the possibility of community membership, as long as the expectation
was that the knowledge shared would not simply be mechanistic know-how.
Within several of the interviews, as the quotation below illustrates, there was also explicit
reference to the idea of teachers’ shared knowledge being similar to knowledge in the arts.
According to this analogy it may be expected that techniques, approaches and perspectives
are shared in order to then enable personal innovation (Lupton, 2013; Oancea, 2014). This
may indicate that this is an analogy that these teachers were already familiar with. However,even if this is the case, it is clearly one that resonates.
Solutions are found more quickly if you can undertake reflection with othercolleagues but the final design of a lesson needs to be something personal …….
You get involved in designing a lesson, it is like an artist or a writer does
(teacher from England: secondary science teacher: engaged with projects in
Europe).
All of the participants saw the process of lesson design as highly personal and individual.
One participant in particular was very active in presenting her ideas to others via the internet
and had built a community beyond the workplace where she was a leader and innovator,presenting her practice to others. However, even in this case, an appreciation of the role ofothers was still present. She acknowledged that she was often inspired by ideas from others
within and beyond this community. In keeping with the analogy that lesson design is similar
to the process of being an artist (Lupton, 2013), she never used these in their entirety without
modifying and developing them further.
I never use the internet for ideas, because I record my lessons and I picture
them. I publish them. So I need to always be creative (teacher fromMacedonia: engaged extensively in online, international communities ofteachers).
It was interesting that this emphasis on independence and creativity was still the case eventhough both countries, England and Macedonia, had seen political pressures emerge since2010 in terms of an expectation of improving the teaching in the respective country via directinternational borrowing. In England this has been diffuse and sporadic with various initiatives
using China, Finland, Singapore and others as a potential model being promulgated (Frost,2015). In Macedonia this has been more focused and concrete, specifically the national
curriculum and assessment processes were, at the time these interviews were conducted,
being re-designed by Cambridge International Examinations, with teaching towards thishaving already begun with children aged up to eleven (Joshevska & Kirandziska, 2017).
Teachers in Macedonia at this time were also having to undergo a large-scale government led
assessment of their teaching and subject knowledge as part of this development.
On the few occasions where learning specific teaching strategies were mentioned, all the121

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interviewees stated that it would be likely that teachers working in England would have more
specific strategies to give to others and less to learn. However, these strategies were not thoseof classroom practice but rather were leadership strategies promulgated by the International
Teacher Leadership initiative that they were involved in (Frost, 2013). This therefore
reflected the greater depth of embedding of this specific initiative in England rather than aperception that education in England was superior in any more general sense. Contrary to apossible expectation that classroom strategies may be imported from the West (SteinerKhamsi, 2014; Oyewole, 2016) all of the Macedonian participants perceived there to be no
significant difference in quality or approach to teaching between the two nations.
Knowledge of Purpose
Eight of the ten interviewees, from both England and Macedonia, used the phrase “moral
purpose” in their interviews. This is language used by writers, who identify themselves as
writing in the tradition of teacher leadership (Frost, 2015). This may therefore come from theparticipants’ involvement in communities that define themselves in this way. However, to theparticipants it was clearly a meaningful term even when defining other communities that they
belonged to. When expanding upon it, a common understanding emerged that linked thisclosely to ideas of collective-efficacy and empowerment in a similar way to that expressed by
E. Wenger-Trayner and B. Wenger-Trayner, (2015). For all the teachers the experience oftravelling, when this was possible, was connected to an ambition to work with fellow teacherswith similar approaches and values. Indeed, what particularly impressed the teachers fromEngland about those with whom they had worked from Macedonia was their ambitions
regarding and focus on improving the education system of Macedonia. These conversations
where the teachers were able to find a commonality of moral purpose were particularly
valued as a distinct positive that came from being part of this community.
Maybe different experiences and examples are going to inspire them because I
think that philosophy is not inspiring teachers who are just listening to a lot of
philosophy. I want to convince them that if I can do it, you can do it also
(teacher from Macedonia: involved in pan-Macedonian projects).
There are so many involved and dear to me. The initiative gels people together
but the individual relationship is more significant still. We synchronised aboutteacher leadership around having the same values, realising how important
what we are doing was, but I definitely feel like I belong to a community ofteachers that are seeking for an impact and a change in education (teacher
from England: a secondary school dance teacher, involved in projects with theBalkans).
This was also connected for the participants to the establishing of democracy in The Balkans
and the rebuilding of civic society. It was the fact that this initiative was working with thesecountries that drew some of the teachers from England to choose to become involved at an
early stage. As regards their role as leaders of civic change, the perceptions of the
Macedonian teachers were distinct from the teachers from England and also morehomogenous. Some of the teachers from England did not perceive themselves as having awider civic role beyond their school, while others saw this as a strong feature of their identity
as teachers and educational leaders, to the extent that they perceived this role as a global one.
We work with little kids we create in some way the future citizens. So we teachinteraction in group cooperation, in groups that is the first way how to be a

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great citizen. What I am trying to achieve is that, I try to teach children to
become good human beings (teacher from Macedonia: primarily engage inprojects in the Balkans).
As this quotation above exemplifies the teachers from Macedonia all perceived themselves as
having a role in terms of building civic society. This was also articulated in documents
produced by Macedonian writers, linked to the “International Teacher Leadership initiative”(Joshevska & Kirandziska, 2017). In all cases this was primarily linked to and focused on thelocal community. The Macedonian participants saw themselves as having a leadership role interms of building social cohesion. However, they saw this as being even more closely linked
to teaching than the teachers from England did, with both being an aspect of a common
process.
Knowledge that Affirms
For all the teachers, recognition of their expertise by other teachers was significant to them.
They emphasised a recognition of the unique skills set innovative teachers have, their role inbuilding civic society, and the importance of resisting becoming mechanistic as regards
approaches to teaching. The interviewees strongly identified with the communities beyond
the workplace that they belonged to as ones that they took considerable pride in being part of.
One form of knowledge that they therefore perceived as being shared when working withother teachers, was knowledge of themselves as professionals and of their shared collective
efficacy. This is a form of knowledge that has been previously described by E. WengerTrayner and B. Wenger-Trayner (2015). One thing that was consistently welcomed was theopportunity to demonstrate expertise to a knowledgeable audience outside their own schools
and to have this expertise recognised, something also noted by Frost (2013) when describing
such communities. Thus, one of the gains of working on initiatives with other teachers in thisway was the process of being affirmed and of affirming others.
So one of the things we also do in the component is that we set up networking
meetings in one school for several schools that are joined. They have a chance
to show off, to celebrate their success, something that is very lacking in theteaching profession in general or in Macedonia specifically (teacher fromMacedonia involved in projects across Macedonia and with England).
Teachers from both countries saw themselves as being engaged in a conversation between
equals. However, both groups of participants identified that this was particularly possible
because they identified with the commonality of being teachers and experts in education.
From this therefore emerges the fourth type of knowledge that was shared within thiscommunity, which was, “knowledge that affirms”. This is the knowledge that one is a skilled
professional that can only be gained from the critique of other fellow professionals.
Thus, although distinct, knowledge that affirms, also relates to the other three types ofknowledge identified above. All the interviewees described how stories about teachingprovided the opportunity to demonstrate expertise to a knowledgeable audience outside theschool they usually work in and to have this expertise recognised. To the participants thestories that teachers tell are not simply informative but are more purposeful and inspiring thanother types of discussion on pedagogy or practice. All the participants also understood theimportance of being prepared to move flexibly between the role of expert and expertaudience.

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Based on these findings a typology of knowledge is presented in the diagram below. This
diagram was designed by the first author and first presented in a doctoral thesis in 2017
(Underwood, 2017). The four types of knowledge illustrated by the four arrows that emerge
are: knowledge of strategies, knowledge of practice, knowledge of purpose and knowledge
that affirms. The distinction between the first two of these is that knowledge of strategies,
refers to specific classroom-based actions which are both mechanistic and relatively easilytransferred; while, knowledge of practice, is a term to describe perspectives on andapproaches to teaching and lesson design rather than specific teaching strategies. In the
middle of this diagram is a box that represents: communities that are personally significant,and in which knowledge is co-constructed. The arrow at the bottom of the diagram, shows
how this knowledge is shared via community engagement but also creates community
identity and cohesion. It is these forms of knowledge that need to be understood if those thatcreate, support and fund such projects are to be able to evaluate them effectively.
Community characteristics

soughtThe knowledge createdInternational
communities,
potentially coconstructing
knowledge

The co-creation of knowledge, creates community
identity and cohesion

Figure 1: Types of knowledge generated within extended communities of teachers,(Underwood, 2017)124

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Volume 7 – Issue 1 – Summer 2019Conclusion
The high regard these teachers put upon the experience of being able to network with fellow
professionals suggests that there is value in government, local and national, supporting suchprocesses. Teachers clearly described how being involved in diverse communities, includinginternational communities, had improved their classroom practice and professional
confidence. These are all aspects of teachers’ professionalism that any school or country
would want to develop. However, none of the participants placed any particular significanceon the sharing of specific teaching strategies. Instead they stressed the importance of hearing
about strategies for designing lessons and for exercising leadership as well as the coconstruction of moral purpose. This know-why knowledge was seen to exist in the same
discourse as knowledge about teaching strategies but was given far greater primacy. Indeed,stories of know-how for these teachers were largely seen as a vehicle for these other deeper
forms of knowledge. Therefore, we would recommend that when such communities areevaluated, by those that lead or fund them, that the value of different types of knowledge isunderstood, with credence given to sharing knowledge other than the direct transfer ofclassroom strategies

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Corresponding author: James Underwood
Contact email: james.underwood@northampton.ac.uk

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