The purpose of this paper is to outline a study undertaken within a nine-month period, ranging from the end of 2019 and first semester of 2020, related to an improvement change I led in my workplace that consisted in designing and implementing, along with other teachers and school leaders, assisted by an external consultant, a new curriculum for the English as an Additional Language (EAL) classes offered in elementary school. While structuring the improvement initiative, it was collectively decided that our curriculum should be simultaneously 'knowledge-and-skills-centred' and 'student-centred' while fostering 'socialisation'. Later on, when a pilot version of the curriculum started being implemented, at the same time that I was attending an elective module named Values, Vision and Moral Purpose (VVMP) from the Master´s Programme in Applied Educational Leadership at the University of London (UoL), I realised that the three education aims contemplated in it presented flaws, despite of being valuable. Driven by an intense learning and professional development trajectory resulting from much reflection upon the countless experiences as an educational middle leader and teacher for the past twenty years, and mainly supported by the content studied in the VVMP module, I carried out the study which will be described in this paper. The main objective was to learn how to interpret and integrate aspects of the three conflicting aims of education, in order to put them into a constructive alignment, both ethically and logistically. At last, the findings obtained through this study enabled us to contribute more effectively to the success of the improvement initiative in my educational context.

Published in: London International Conference on Education (LICE-2020)

• Date of Conference: 23-25 November 2020
• DOI: 10.2053/LICE.2020.0035
• ISBN: 978-1-913572-22-8
• Conference Location: London, UK