The Book of Abstracts from the Critcial Debates Action Research Seminar,
University of Limerick
MARION DADDS
Validation practices and practitioner research in award-bearing
contexts:
a discussion paper
The focus here is on validity and the accreditation of practitioner research by higher education. As an academic action researcher myself working in a College of Higher Education, I am involved in judging practitioner research for degree and diploma status. This involves me in top-down judgement-making processes with colleagues. In this context, the academy is in a strong (and, often, uncontested) position of power and control over practitioner research. This should bring with it a responsibility for seeking plurality of voice in judgement-making – but usually does not. The academy often does not see its singular validating voice as problematic as it seeks assurance that practitioner research is, to quote Ernest House’s (1980) concept of validity, ‘worthy of being recognised’.
First, there are issues related to criteria for judging validity, or worthwhileness. In the past few years I have moved from one university which operated on a minimalist ‘pass or fail’ grade, in which no explicit criteria were ever committed to paper, to two different contexts in which a grade has to be chosen from a range of possibilities, and each grade has explicit criteria and standards to define it.
The first context was as loosely defined as one is likely to achieve. Validation discussions tended to be exploratory, often provocative and usually contributed to our learning in the university as we battled over different notions of worthwhileness in each unique practitioner research project. Uncertainty, ambiguity and disagreement tended to be the order of the day. No singular view of quality or validity was ever committed to print and we were fortunate enough to be supported by an external examiner who seemed to see this as a possible strength rather than a weakness. Each practitioner research study was seen as unique and, therefore, deserving of unique consideration. Criteria were driven by, and emerged from, this uniqueness. This was not, however, without its tensions, for many practitioner researchers felt they were left ‘second guessing’ what the assessors would come to see as valid in their work. Power rested, ultimately, in the academy.
In the other contexts, the explicit frameworks of criteria and standards were supposed to help develop common judgements and shared understandings. Here we have an external locus of control, intended to guard against the ravages of individualism, ambiguity, uncertainty and difference. Rigid frameworks, however, have a tendency to narrow practitioner research: knowing the game pressurises award-seeking practitioner researchers to play the game. Only the courageous diverge from the criteria path, being inventive, living dangerously with their research, taking risks with their award.
Even within set criteria, however, we often disagree. Our validation discussions elicit a variety of values and beliefs. We argue variously for, and against, the supremacy of watertight arguments in the research; perfect match between questions and methods; impeccable ethics; ‘knowledge of the field’; rigorously confronted subjectivity; tangible moral and educational benefits for the research beneficiaries; originality in thought, deed and method of reporting; conservatism; evidence of collaborative epistemologies (Winter, 1989); proof of independence; radical re-construction of the researcher’s view of the world; ‘conceptual clarity and coherence’. There are no absolute agreements about what constitutes ‘worthwhileness’. Yet our formal institutional judgements are ultimately constrained by the power of the criteria.
So, many questions have occupied me as academic validator in these, and a range of external examining, contexts. How does the level of power and control over practitioner research exerted by the academy enhance or depress its quality? Are our academic criteria standards and criteria constraining or liberating? Do they foster inventiveness, creativity and humanity in practitioner research or do they standardise, formulate and ‘straitjacket’? Does the academy value more highly sound arguments on paper than good deeds in a classroom, hospital or community?
There is a further question about “who is qualified to judge” (Lomax, 1993). The top down control and power of the academy does not sit comfortably with the democratic spirit of practitioner research. Could we seek greater congruence through a process of ‘democratic validation’ (Dadds, 1995)? Here is a case for hearing the voices and perspectives of others in the academy’s validation discourses – the voices of the practitioner researchers as well as the community participants and the beneficiaries. Democratic validation should be less concerned with the powerful ultimate judgement; more concerned to create a reflective exploration of worthwhileness as viewed from several exchanged positions of interest. The multiple voices which are drawn into the processes of good practitioner research would not be disconnected and silenced at the point of validation to make way for the monologue of the academy. Rather they would continue to play their unique and different parts in speaking validity or worthwhileness. Some universities already have validation practices incorporating this democratic principle where, for example, colleagues from the practice workplace join the validating university, the practitioner researcher and critical friends in exploring the many-sided validities of work in progress.
But I cannot rid myself of the discomforting thought that the academy may, in general, be acting like doormen (and women) at exclusive clubs (Belenky, 1986), deciding how to bestow membership on an aspiring research underclass, without involving them in the shaping of these validation discourses. Do we have the right to that singular voice of authority in the academy? Are we content with validation discourses that are rooted in the academic culture and not, at the same time, in the practitioner researcher’s practical culture? If validity criteria and processes emerged from the practice context, as well as the awarding context, how would they be different?
Let me try a final question. What would happen if we had the courage in the academy to ‘de-regulate’ practitioner research (Guba, 1996) such that we broke away from the ‘Overweening concern with validity, reliability, objectivity… generalisability’ and its other associated traditional research criteria (Guba, 1996) and focused instead upon the work practices needing to be examined and improved at the heart of practitioner research? In its sometimes-obsession with water-tight epistemologies, methodologies, linear questions and unquestioning certainty about its own perspective, is the academy missing the practical point of practitioner research? Does validity, rather, lie in the capacity to shed light on a ‘good’ question (in a moral and political sense) and to summon the motivation and courage to transform a needing situation into something better for the beneficiaries? Can academic validation encompass this? Are there existing practices in universities from which we could all learn?
References
Belenky, M.F., Clinchy, B.M., Goldberger, N.R. and Tarule, J.M. (1986), Women’s Ways of Knowing. New York, Basic Books.
Dadds, M. (1995), Passionate enquiry and school development: a story about teacher action research. London, Falmer.
Guba, E.G. (1996), ‘Foreword’, in E. T. Stringer, Action Research: a handbook for practitioners. Beverley Hills, Sage.
House, E. (1980), Evaluating with validity. Beverley Hills, Sage.
Lomax, P. (1993), ‘Standards, criteria and the problematic of action research within an award bearing course’, in Educational Action Research, 2, 1, pp. 113-126.
Winter, R. (1989), Learning from experience: principles and practice in action research. Lewes, Falmer.
About Marion Dadds
Marion Dadds has been actively involved in action research/practitioner research for more years than she cares, now, to admit. Her own research has been in ‘second order’ action research, in which she has studied aspects of her own work as a facilitator of professional development and action research. She has written about two of these projects on ‘Passionate Enquiry and School Development: a story about teacher action research’ (1995) Falmer, London and ‘Doing Practitioner Research Differently’ (2001) with Susan Hart, RoutledgeFalmer, London.
Marion is Professor and education research co-ordinator at St Martin's College, Lancaster. She is currently involved in a practitioner research project with Vanessa Champion and Heather Johnson, looking at ‘Emotional and Spiritual intelligence in the workplace’.
RACHEL DEITCHER
The Implicit Learning of Action Research
In addition to the conscious and explicit problem-posing and solving that occur during the action research process, and the palpable learning that takes place as a result, there seem to be unconscious, implicit learning processes that take place simultaneously and which result in significant changes in professional practice. In my own case I became aware that such learning had occurred more than a year after the close of the active stage of my research, when I felt a significant change in the comfort and confidence with which I approached my teaching of preservice teachers. This learning did not seem to be directly connected with any of the research questions I posed at the outset or during the action research process.
In considering this important effect of my action research I will present a number of areas of research which I have identified which may shed light on these developments in my teaching. These are the theory of situated learning, research conducted on vocational expertise and psychological research on the phenomenon of implicit learning.
About Rachel Deitcher
Before moving to Israel I received my Masters Degree in Education at Lesley College in Boston, where mathematics pedagogy was only a small part of the programme. I was greatly affected by one ‘methods and materials’ course in particular, which led me to become involved in mathematics education in this country. For fifteen years I worked as a teacher specializing in mathematics teaching at an alternative school in Jerusalem. Since then I have taught pre-service courses in mathematics education at the David Yellin Teachers College. Two years ago I returned to the Experimental School as a mathematics supervisor of the early grades, and along with the teachers have been developing a programme emphasising experiential learning and mathematical thinking, in which the children learn without the use of a mathematics textbook.
In 1997 I began to do action research into my teaching of an introductory course in early childhood mathematics education as part of my doctoral work at the University of Sussex. I submitted my thesis two months ago.
MARGARET FARREN
How do we exercise our pedagogy of the unique in educating for social formations?
Margaret Farren, with Fionnuala Flanagan and Chris Garvey, Dublin City University
It is clear from local, national and international studies, with respect to teaching and learning (Irish Universities Training Network Colloquium, 1998; Ramsden, 2000; Skilbeck, 2001), that teachers have a central role in their own professional development. However, set alongside this view is a growing move towards external performance assessment of teaching. Doubts have been expressed about the effectiveness of external assessment. For example, Pickering (2002), in her thesis ‘Becoming a University Lecturer’, casts doubt on the approach used by the Institute of Learning and Teaching (ILT) in the UK that she believes promotes the view that effective teaching can be defined in terms of a set of skills or techniques which are to a significant extent transferable between teaching and learning contexts. Van Manen (1990) states a similar view when he says ‘modern conceptions of theorizing are more often guided by the useful (the manageable, the pragmatic, the efficacious) than by the good’.
In our presentation we will describe and explain how we have researched our own educational practice using Information and Communication Technologies, and developed our own ‘living’ educational theory (Whitehead, 2003). Living educational theory is constituted by the descriptions and explanations which individual teachers produce for their own learning in enquiries of the kind: ‘How do I improve my practice?’ It involves using our values as ‘living standards of judgement in testing the validity of our claims to educational knowledge’ (McNiff, et al., 2003). The classroom environment offers a unique setting for teachers to develop their educational practice by exploring, discovering, interacting, articulating, and communicating how they have improved educational practice. This calls for each one of us to exercise our own pedagogy of the unique (Farren, 2003) in our educational relationships.
References
Irish University Training Network Colloquium (1998) University Teaching and Learning: Policy and Practice Proceedings. http://www.aishe.org/resources/links.html
Farren, M. (2003) A Pedagogy of the Unique. Accessed from http://www.computing.dcu.ie/~pedagogy.html
McNiff, J., Lomax, P. and Whitehead, J. (2003) You and Your Action Research Project (Second Edition). London, RoutledgeFalmer (in press).
Pickering, A. (2002) ‘Becoming a university lecturer: an exploration of the pedagogic beliefs and practices of four novice university lecturers enrolled on an in-service teaching development programme.’ EdD thesis. London, Kings College, University of London.
Ramsden, P. (1994) ‘Using research on student learning to enhance educational quality.’ http://www.aishe.org/resources/links.html
Skilbeck., M. (2001) ‘The University Challenged - A Review of International Trends and Issues with Particular Reference to Ireland’. Accessed from http://www.actionresearch.net/
Van Manen, M. (1990) Researching Lived Experience. New York, State University of New York.
Whitehead, J. (2003) ‘What counts as Evidence in Self-Studies of Teacher Education Practices?’ Accessed from http://www.actionresearch.net/
About Margaret Farren and colleagues
Margaret has experience of teaching at different levels - secondary, further, adult and community education and training - and has worked in industry. She has a Masters degree in Educational Technology from the University of Bath and is currently completing her Doctorate which focuses on developing a knowledge base of teaching and learning using ICT. She has taught Computer Studies and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in different contexts in London and Brussels. For the past five years she has been lecturing at Dublin City University. Margaret teaches on the Masters Degree in Information and Communications Technology in Education and Training.
Fionnuala Flanagan and Chris Garvey are second level teachers. They completed the Masters Degree in Computer Applications for Education at Dublin City University in 2002.
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MÁIRÍN GLENN
Multimedia, the celebration of creativity and multiple forms of learning
I am a teacher in a primary school on the west coast of Ireland, teaching ten and eleven year old children. I am exploring my own learning and drawing on my work with my class to inform my thinking. Through this process I have come to understand how various aspects of the education system in Ireland, including the form of curriculum, have had immobilising effects on me as a teacher. I have come to understand that many teachers use didactic pedagogies, and how, in my opinion, these pedagogies often constitute a form of social and educational injustice because they deny my values of individual creativity and spontaneity in learning. They also deny the capacity of all to learn according to their individual strengths, and the celebration of their embodied forms of knowing as well as cognitive forms of knowing. My work offers a critique of dominant forms and aims to develop a form of pedagogy that is grounded in the values of creativity and freedom of mind in education. My work aims not only to celebrate creativity and spontaneity in learning but also aims to show how creativity and spontaneity are core values for life-affirming forms of learning.
I believe that the inclusion of ICT in classrooms can help to facilitate multiple forms of learning, provided ICT is used in an educative way. By this I mean that the use of technology can be a creative and emancipatory resource in learning. This view is contrary to dominant views that regard ICT as a form of technology that is used to control behaviour (Rosak, 1994). I hope to demonstrate through my work how the educational use of ICT can provide opportunities for learners to explore their own learning in a creative manner, where respect for oneself and others is valued.
Through studying my own workplace practice I believe I am generating a theory of education that is grounded in the values of creativity and freedom. I believe that my work may have implications for wider practices because it shows how I have emancipated myself in terms of developing the capacity to make critical judgements, both on the wider literature and also on my own practice. I believe that the critical perspective of ICT that I am developing has much to contribute to a new form of theory of curriculum from which other educators in Ireland and elsewhere can learn.
Reference
Rosak, T. (1994) The Cult of Information. San Francisco, University of Berkeley and Los Angeles.
About Máirín Glenn
I am a primary school teacher in a small rural school on the west coast of Ireland. I have spent most of my teaching career teaching younger primary school children, but am currently working with ten and eleven year olds. I have an interest in including ICT in my work because I believe it can facilitate multiple ways of coming to know.
REVITAL HEIMANN
Action research for organisational change: power restructure, empowerment or tension
The use of action research for the professional development of individuals and organisations is neither new nor surprising. Since Kurt Levine's day, a good deal of research evidence exists that advocates the practitioner as researcher approach to facilitating improved practices of individuals, groups and organisations (for example, Argyris and Schön, 1996; Elliott, 1991; McNiff and Whitehead, 2000; Simons, 1987). Frequently, the research process leads to new understandings and is followed by deep emotional experiences that influence conceptualisations of practitioners’ living theories and their decision-making processes.
The methodology of the learning process differs from one case to another. Based on my experience, I will describe four prototype cases that demonstrate varied relationships between practitioner inquiry and its potential influence in the organisation where it is located:
- theory-driven inquiry – the case of a school principle who learned how to share her duties with others while participating in a training course for principles;
- a staff member who was encouraged by the head of the organisation to explore possible procedures for improving mentoring practices in the organisation;
- a group of teachers who reorganised the curriculum (within organisational constraints) as student-centred rather than subject-centred;
- a teacher and students who worked collaboratively to develop new forms of relationship in their department with the help of an external counsellor.
These cases and others demonstrate that there is no single model or procedure to be followed. On the contrary, different contexts require particular processes for each case. However, some fundamental conditions need to be met in order for these processes to be effective. These include:
- a readiness for change (at different levels of the organisation),
- the cooperation of influential members in the implementation stage (those who can turn decisions into practice),
- good communication among members of the organisation,
- a perception of change processes as an on-going inquiry (the need to view the process of action research as a life orientation rather than an discrete episode).
Every case constitutes a special situation with its own unique process. However, all cases share some common aspects:
- being a practitioner and a researcher puts the person in a unique position where their actions and decisions are not directed by others;
- practitioner-researchers have their own voice and opinions,
- they want to lead or at least be heard by the leaders; if not, disappointments can be very deep.
In my discussion I would like to raise some questions about expectations and the prices (intellectual and emotional) that people and organisations are willing to pay by going through a process of practice-based inquiry. For instance: Do stake-holders understand the shift in the location of power that might occur when people begin to make their own decisions as a result of their inquiry? Often, when staff members start to work collaboratively, tensions, rather than understanding, grow because of their different expectations. Who takes responsibility for guiding this process in a productive direction? Does anybody show any appreciation to those who increase their knowledge and understanding by working hard? What kinds of rewards are expected? What are the implications of the internal empowerment of people or groups in the organization on the ecology and power structure of the organisation? For how long can the change last? Is change evident in practices or does it stay at the level of rhetoric? How can this change be understood as progress?
References
Argyris, C. and Schön, D. (1996) Organizational Learning II: A Theory Methods and Practice. Reading, Ma., Addison-Wesley.
Elliott, J. (1991) Action Research for Educational Change, London, Allen and Unwin.
McNiff, J. with J. Whitehead, (2000) Action Research in Organisations. London, Routledge.
Simons, H. (1987) Getting to Know Schools in Democracy. London, Falmer.
About Revital Heimann
Before entering higher education life, Revital was a biology teacher and a junior high school head teacher. Her PhD studies focused on issues of collaboration between groups of science teachers who were undertaking action research projects as part of their continuing professional education.
During the past six years she has worked at David Yellin Teacher Education College in Jerusalem as a pre-service teacher educator and in the school principals training programme. As a member of the research unit, she also acts as PhD supervisor for teachers. She specialises in action research and qualitative research methods, as well as the evaluation of qualitative research projects and supporting students’ evaluations. She is involved with the MOFET Institute, the central agency for supporting teacher education in Israel, where she supports the PhD studies of college teacher educators as they undertake their action enquiries.
DIARMUID LEONARD
Some problematics in school–university collaborative action research
From their different standpoints, university departments of education and schools share an interest in improving practice in education. How is collaboration between them best conducted, and how does their collaboration affect the action research? Where should the action be done? Collaborative action research projects between school and university are particularly open to threat from the instrumental rationality that pervades education systems and from several sources of ambiguity and misunderstanding. A collaborative school–university project should therefore meet some critical conditions: to provide a third space for critical reflection on its collective work that is distinct from university or school, maintain an evolving conception of the project through continuous renegotiation, and create an ethos that integrates its members’ effort through a continuous search for mutual understanding.
About Diarmuid Leonard
Diarmuid Leonard teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses on teaching and educational leadership in University of Limerick. He works with teachers and schools in areas including curriculum development and evaluation, school management and action research.
BREDA LONG
Action research in organisational change
This paper documents the way in which I have come to generate my own theory of leadership through an investigation into my practice as a group leader working with long-term unemployed people, and how I hold myself accountable for my work.
I work through a humanistic, person-centred approach, whose core is the formation of empathic relationships as the grounds for personal empowerment. I am investigating how I can improve the quality of my educative influence in my workplace, and make judgements about its nature and potential impact. My research focuses on how I can improve my educative influence in order to raise awareness of the importance of empathic relationships among other staff. I am developing this focus because I am committed to living to my educational and social values of democracy, justice and personal responsibility, all of which are in danger of denial when they are embedded within organisational contexts that are characterised in terms of power and control and the reproduction of hegemonising practices.
Through reflection on my practice I have heightened my awareness of my several responsibilities as a group leader working with long-term unemployed people. While my primary responsibility is to secure the rights of long-term unemployed people and enable them to find work for themselves, I also have an obligation to safeguard the rights of my work colleagues to choose their own way of working. My investigation into my practice has revealed that I was working in a way that denied the rights of my colleagues to develop ways of working that were appropriate for them. I came to understand that I had effectively been imposing my own theories of work practices on colleagues, rather than encouraging them to explore their own. This constituted, I realised, a denial of my own values of democracy, justice and personal responsibility. I came to understand that if I wished people to adopt my way of working, I needed to demonstrate the value of my way by producing authenticated evidence to demonstrate its effectiveness for helping unemployed people to find work independently. I believed that this would enable me to justify my living theory of practice, and encourage others to adopt it for themselves.
Coming to these realisations has been a long and painful struggle. A breakthrough in personal understanding of the nature of the struggle, and an understanding of the need for the struggle, occurred as I struggled to understand and articulate the difficulties I was encountering in promoting a person-centred approach. Initially unable to identify the source of my discomfort, I came to realise that my working style and approach to colleagues had been not so much invitational as coercive. This was a powerful piece of learning that has led to a change in my own practice.
This paper is an account of the struggle and the very powerful learning that I gained from reflection on it. The paper also sets out the way in which I hope to develop my work, so that it is a living out of my values of democracy, justice and personal responsibility, which are always and inevitably grounded in the idea of freedom.
About Breda Long
I work as a career path advisor with the Local Employment Service, Cork. My role is to support long term unemployed job seekers to access opportunities in training, education and work. The support is offered through individual or group sessions that allow the job seeker to explore fully their career options.
OLIVER McGARR
Action Research and ICT: Providing the catalyst for real change
Despite the perceived educational benefits of ICT and concerns over the emerging digital divide, the introduction of computers within schools has not enjoyed much success (Cuban, 1986; Collis, 1994; Brand 1997; Russell, 2000). Several factors have contributed to the lack of integrated use. Somekh (1997) argues that the low levels of use of educational resources such as IT are due to the complexities of the classroom environment. This finding is supported by Cox (1997), who claims that effective use of ICT requires a ‘substantial change in pedagogical practice’ (p.90). While several studies have highlighted these problems, teacher in-service programmes continue to focus on the acquisition of technical skills rather than the pedagogical knowledge required to effectively use the technology (Mevarech, 1997; Sandholtz et al., 1997). These courses assume that technical mastery leads to pedagogical expertise. A resultant problem of technology-focused in-service courses is that since they do not focus on the educational benefits of ICT they can often lead to superficial use. As Marshall (1997) comments ‘our failure to consider what we want students to learn from working with technology often leads us to accept activity for the sake of activity’ (p.37).
Therefore while much of the current drive underpinning the integration of ICT in schools rests on the belief that the technology can promote and support a more student-centred environment, teachers’ existing pedagogical approaches tend to determine use. This can lead to superficial use of the technology to support teacher led instruction rather than increase student participation (Cuban, 1986; Neiderhaus and Stoddart, 2000; Squires, 1999). This superficial use of IT has raised questions regarding its effectiveness and has resulted in a greater need to understand the impact of ICT on the quality of teaching and learning (Kirkpatrick and Cuban, 1998; Holmes et al., 2000). However, despite numerous ICT initiatives in recent years a definition of what constitutes effective use appears to be lacking.
Within this context this paper discusses how action research can help teachers to overcome the classroom constraints preventing integrated use. It also examines how it can help in developing a deeper understanding of the benefits of ICT in teaching and learning. The paper concludes that the use of action research not only raises important issues of how best to use the latest technology in classrooms, but it can also act as a catalyst providing teachers with the opportunity to examine their traditional classroom practice. The resultant changes can have far wider reaching benefits for teachers’ practice.
Brand, G. (1997) ‘What Research Says: Training Teachers for Using Technology’ in Journal of Staff Development, Winter 1997 (Vol. 19, No. 1).
Collis, B. (1994) ‘A reflection on the relationship between technology and teacher education: synergy or separate entities?’ in Journal of Information Technology for Teacher Education, 3, pp. 7-25.
Cox, M. (1997) ‘Identification of the changes in attitude and pedagogical practices needed to enable teachers to use information technology in the school curriculum’ in: D. Passey, and B. Samways, (eds) Information Technology: Supporting change through teacher education. London: Chapman and Hall. pp. 87 – 94.
Cuban, L. (1986) Teachers and Machines: the classroom use of technology since 1920. New York: Teachers College Press.
Holmes, B., Savage, T., and Tangney, B. (2000) Innovation in Learning in the Information Society: A Comparative International Study. Report Commissioned by The Lifelong Learning Group of the Information Society Commission
Kirkpatrick, H. and Cuban, L. (1998) ‘Computers Make Kids Smarter—Right?’ in Technos Quarterly, Summer 1998 Vol. 7 No. 2. Online at: http://www.technos.net/tq_07/2cuban.htm
Marshall, G. (1997) ‘Time for change: critical issues for teacher educators’ in D. Passey, and B. Samways, (eds) Information Technology: Supporting change through teacher education. London: Chapman and Hall. pp. 35 -39
Mevarech, Z. (1997) ‘The U-curve process that trainee teachers experience in integrating computers into the curriculum’ in D. Passey, and B. Samways, e(eds) Information Technology: Supporting change through teacher education. London: Chapman and Hall, pp. 46 –54.
Neiderhaus, D. and Stoddart, T. (2000) ‘Teachers' instructional perspectives and use of educational software’ in Teaching and Teacher Education 17 (2001) 15–31 pp 1–17.
Russell, G., Finger, G. & Russell, N. (2000) ‘Information Technology Skills of Australian Teachers: implications for teacher education’ in Journal of Information Technology for Teacher Education, Vol. 9, No. 2.
Sandholtz, J., Ringstaff, C. and Dwyer, D. (1997) Teaching with Technology: Creating student-centered classrooms. New York: Teachers College Press.
Somekh, B. (1997) ‘Towards effective learning with new technology resources: the role of teacher education in reconceptualising the relationship between task setting and student learning in technology-rich classrooms’ in D. Passey, and B. Samways, (eds) Information Technology : Supporting change through teacher education, London, Chapter and Hall, pp 269 – 277.
About Oliver McGarr
Oliver McGarr is a lecturer in Education at the University of Limerick. He specialises in educational technology and is the course leader of the Graduate Diploma/Masters in ICT in Education. His research interests include ICT in education, teacher professional development, technology education and problem-based learning.
This paper seeks to portray insights into my doctoral studies, in which I aim to improve my practice as a professional educator at third level. The focus of my research is on the nature of my pedagogical relationships with my students and how my values of intellectual freedom and empowerment influence these relationships. In adopting an action research approach I am engaging in critique of my practice and also inviting critique from others so that I may open up opportunities for my own professional development as well as improving my practice with my students.
I draw from the theoretical frameworks of power (Foucault), reflective practice (Schön), educational liberation (Freire) and critical pedagogy (McLaren), so that I may generate a new theory of educational change. In exploring my pedagogical relationships I engage with two dimensions, reflection and action, so as to generate my theory from the lived experience of both educator and student.
I am a lecturer in Education at University of Limerick. I am also the course leader for the Graduate Diploma/Masters in Health Education and Promotion. Having completed a Masters in Education in 2001, I am currently pursuing doctoral study. My research interests include organisational culture and workplace bullying, health promotion and more recently the improvement of my professional practice at third level. At the core of my research are the values of intellectual freedom and empowerment.
Developing a theory of community education for social change
My research documents my professional practice as Facilitator of Specific Adult Education Programmes for marginalized individuals and groups based in community settings in the West of Ireland. I have undertaken this research with a view to effecting social change through enabling individuals and groups to access further educational and employment opportunities.
I espouse the values of social justice, social inclusion, freedom and the rights of others to determine what they learn and how they wish to learn it. I endeavour to create a caring and supportive learning environment in which adults who have been marginalized can gain the confidence to take control of their own development and enrichment through lifelong learning.
I aim to show the significance of my work through generating my own theory of practice and contributing to the wider body of educational knowledge. The form of my practice as a professional educator is in contrast to traditional forms where practitioners are expected to implement theory. Instead, I encourage others to generate their own theories of practice that also show their processes of learning. Together with participants I am aiming to reconceptualise the curriculum in adult education contexts as we consider what constitutes knowledge and how we come to acquire knowledge.
While I examine the question ‘How do I use my educative influence to develop a theory of community education for social change?’ I also examine my own motivation and actions and critically engage with participants and colleagues in order to reflect on and enhance my performance as a professional educator.
About Pauline McDermott
Pauline McDermott has been involved in Adult and Community Education as co-ordinator, facilitator and tutor-trainer for the past ten years. She has worked extensively with people with disabilities, marginalized groups and individuals in rural communities with a specific focus on education and training. She held the position of Adult Literacy Organiser with Co. Mayo Vocational Education Committee for three years and participated in research projects with the National Adult Literacy Agency. Having completed an M.A. in Education in 2000, she is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Limerick. She was appointed Community Education Facilitator with Co. Mayo Vocational Education Committee in January, 2003.
Presenting Voice in Research Practice
In investigating the quality of learning experience for pupils with specific learning disabilities, my research aims to generate a form of educational theory that values children's learning abilities rather than their difficulties. By celebrating children’s learning strengths I aim to make a case against the negative labelling of children. I explain how the transformation of practice, through critical reflection, results in helping children to see themselves as knowledge generators, rather than as consumers of others’ knowledge. I have come to see how this transformation of perception applies also to me. My research documents how I have come to understand how I have been as disadvantaged as the children I teach in the sense that I have not been seen by those in power in education as a legitimate knowledge generator. I explain how I have moved to the situation where both I and the children I teach have come to see ourselves as legitimate generators of our own knowledge of practice. This of course has implications at institutional levels. I believe that the theories that I have generated from my practice-based research have potential significance for others involved in similar work situations by placing reasons and strategies which focus on children’s learning at the heart of the development of appropriate classroom pedagogies.
The significance of my research
My enquiry documents my investigation into learning theories, especially those affecting children with specific learning disability who are withdrawn from primary school classes for individual teaching. From an initial focus on improving the learning experience for such children, the core significance of my work became an awareness of the need to transform my own understanding of how those who are labelled as ‘disabled’, should in fact be appreciated as able learners. By focusing on how I might help them to learn, I have found that the pupils involved in my research have come to construct new personal ways of learning, develop their own critical capacity for reflection and accept responsibility for their learning.
Through helping pupils to articulate their thinking and voice how they learn, I have developed a new pedagogic approach for pupils with specific learning disability. I have developed a holistic and cohesive practice that celebrates the integrity of the individual’s ontological and epistemological stance, both my own and that of my pupils.
Validity and Legitimacy in Action-Research – Making Practical Judgements
Several writers have voiced concern over whether it is possible to make meaningful judgements about the validity and legitimacy of action-research accounts given that the knowledge required to frame criteria for such an act will, like all knowledge, be context-bound. I suggest that where there is a shared language that enables a shared understanding of action-research accounts there can also be a shared agreement that a particular account is authentic (valid and legitimate). In this way the community of scholars that makes up the academy (‘makes up’ as in ‘comprises’and ‘makes up’ as in ‘imagines into existence’) can make validity judgements within the context of the tradition of scholarship that is the literature of action-research. I have used this literature to derive some questions, which I use to interrogate either action-research texts or the authors themselves, in order to make my own validity judgments. I use these questions not as a checklist but as a prompt to dialogue and critical reflection where I seek out what makes the author think there is validity and whether I can agree.
Creating Living Theory from Living Practice: A Theory Forming Incident
This paper tells two stories. The first is the story of how critical reflection on two instances of assessment led a nurse-tutor to improve her own practice – and subsequently document it as the assignment for a module within an MA programme. The second is how that assignment caused the tutor responsible for marking that assignment to revise his ideas about what constitutes valid and legitimate action-research. It illustrates why criteria should not be seen as written-in-stone but merely as prompts to a dialogue wherein both the author and s/he who would make a validity judgement both put their prejudices and assumptions at risk.
About Tim McMahon
Tim McMahon is a Teaching Development Officer at University College Dublin. Prior to moving to Ireland he was Principal Lecturer in Educational Development at Anglia Polytechnic University in the UK. He has worked for a Local Education Authority as a Staff Development Officer and, for many years, taught Humanities and Social Science subjects in UK Further Education Colleges.
Evaluating the Reflective Practitioner – A Contradiction in Terms
The hero of David Lodge's academic novels, Professor Maurice Zapp, remarks in relation to his own field, the work of Jane Austen, that ‘any fool can have questions, it’s having answers that separates the men from the boys’. This is all very well in so precise a field as literary criticism but in Schön's famed ‘swampy lowlands’, which characterise much of the social sciences, particularly education, it is a different matter entirely. This paper unfortunately would be one of those which ‘drive him (Zapp) insane’ since it largely raises questions to which the authors have no answers or at least not ones that they find fully convincing.
Some time ago in a paper at the conference of the European Evaluation Society (McNamara and O'Hara, 2001) the authors caused controversy by suggesting that a collaborative and outwardly successful whole school evaluation process may have in fact caused more damage to the organisation than any benefit that may have accrued. Admittedly, the idea that a collaborative and largely sympathetic evaluation could be a bad thing seems absurd but in this case there was considerable evidence that it would have been better if it never had happened.
Subsequently therefore the suggestion by Cullingford (1999) that more intrusive evaluative interventions such as those of OFSTED may cause deep and lasting tensions came as no surprise to the authors given the impact that relatively benign evaluations can have.
These concerns about best practice in the area of school evaluation, quality assurance, inspection and so on are becoming increasingly pressing. The debate to date has largely centred on inspection and evaluation and whether these are best seen as an internal school driven process or alternatively in the interests of accountability and quality enforced and monitored from the outside.
This of course is not just relevant in Ireland – the recent work of Geoff Whitty, Director of the London Institute (Whitty, 2000) and the pages of Educational Researcher in the US are full of much the same debate. I hope to add something to it, however, by suggesting that systems-wide research, no matter how ‘rigorous’ or ‘scientific’, can achieve nothing if it de-skills and disempowers teachers. The locus of power in inquiry must shift to practitioners but this will involve changing conceptions of both curriculum and research – placing autonomy in professional teachers much more centrally in both.
To an extent this is somewhat accepted in the fields of teacher education and teacher professional development where the influence of practitioner led research has been strongest.
In evaluation, however, the instrumentalist concern with ‘external’ judgements of quality and standards remains strong. The question to be raised in the paper is whether a practitioner-driven concept of evaluation can be elaborated and defended and if so what this might mean for educational evaluation as a profession.
References
Cullingford, G (1999) An Inspector Calls: OFSTED’s Effects on School Standards. London, Kogan Page.
For example see Educational Researcher, Vol 31, Nos 7 and 8 (2002)
McNamara, G. and O'Hara J. (2001) ‘Process and Product Issues in the Evaluation of School Development Planning’, in Evaluation 7, (3).
Whitty, G. (2002) Making Sense of Education Policy, London, Paul Chapman Publishing.
About Gerry McNamara
Gerry McNamara is Head of the School of Education Studies at Dublin City University. His research interests include his long-term work in policy and curriculum development and evaluation with particular reference to innovative programmes and interventions for those least well serviced by the education system.
Beyond Tinkering: action research for organisational change
Action research encourages practitioners to look closely at their‘situated’ workplace experience using their experientially acquired pragmatic and practical knowledge. The action research framework for collecting and analysing evidence empowers people to make changes in both their individual practice and their immediate work environment. But is this enough?
Research whose function is primarily to support individuals in their desire to improve their personal practice in current circumstances is in effect a mechanism for maintaining the status quo. It helps individuals get better at doing what the situation demands but leaves unexamined the organisational structures, processes and values that have constructed that situation. Responsibility for ‘success’ at work remains with the individual (who must work more efficiently to achieve it) while the organisation is relieved of its share of responsibility.
Research is a political act. For me, the function of research is not only to improve practice but also to foster critique, reflexivity and dialogue in the expectation that the possibility of alternatives becomes ‘institutionalised’. As an ‘academic’, I am interested in starting practitioner colleagues on a journey towards the exploration of ambiguity and the opportunities it provides for achieving something different. So how might action research fulfil such a function?
One answer is that it can focus critically on the complex range of factors that shape and constrain practice, including formal and informal communication networks, decision-making structures, arenas for exploring difference and contexts for supporting mutual education. Another, that it can enable critical study of where power lies in relation to the legitimation of texts and the distribution of resources. And yet another, that it can reflexively evaluate corporate values. It can, in other words, be research done as parallel explorations. On the one hand it can explore alternative forms of action possible when the situation is as it is now. On the other, it can investigate the range of actions that might change the context in ways that make it more likely to facilitate core professional values.
Some commentators have argued that it is inappropriate for inexperienced or busy-practitioner researchers to be expected to participate in highly demanding research of this type. This presentation will argue that it is vitally important for them to be involved because early commitment to reflexivity, critique and dialogue is a necessary precondition for the development of pro-active rather than responsive practice. As an example, a brief account will be given of collaborative action research by bus drivers in Copenhagen that incorporated the principle that taken-for-granted assumptions should be questioned, brought together through qualitative and quantitative theoretical perspectives and sought out points of disagreement as a source of information about underlying values. This account will introduce the concept of vigilant serendipity as an alternative form of systematic enquiry.
About Terry Phillips
Terry Phillips is Senior Lecturer in Applied Research in the Centre for Applied Research in Education (CARE) in the School of Education and Professional Development at the University of East Anglia (UEA, Norwich). He was a primary school teacher and teacher trainer before becoming a university lecturer where he has worked closely with teachers, doctors, nurses, therapists, police officers, counsellors and managers. Among his research activities he has co-directed three national evaluations of nurse and midwife education and practice, conducted a countywide evaluation of education staff well-being, carried out a case study of truancy in a rural secondary school and another case study of inter-professional learning in a rural care of the elderly unit, researched the language of teachers and children in classrooms and the discourses of professional practice. In his role as director of UEA’s EdD he has been active in developing narrative and poetic ways of representing research. His most recent research, in which he was a partner in the collaboration between the Danish Institute for Occupational Health, the Copenhagen Transport Authority, the Danish Bus Drivers Trades Unions, the Bus Company Executives and bus drivers themselves, was an action research project.
RON RITCHIE
Encouraging and supporting action research for school improvement
through multi-levelled approaches
The use of action research as a process to support school improvement is well recognised. In that context, the ‘location’ for action research is clearly the school, although such enquiries can be supported by university tutors, other facilitators and structures. This paper will explore, through a project in which the author has been involved, the benefits and issues related to ‘multi-levelled’ approaches to providing support and challenge to those engaged in action enquiries in primary school settings. The levels include: within the school; a network of primary schools; a learning and research centre; secondary school partners; a university; a national advisory group; and international networks. In particular, the nature of the pedagogical relationships involved in such approaches and the distinct contribution provided at different levels will be discussed. The specific project was focused on introducing innovative approaches to first and second language learning and teaching.
About Ron Ritchie
Ron Ritchie is Associate Dean in the Education Faculty at the University of the West of England, Bristol where he is responsible for academic programmes and quality assurance. Over the last few years he has led a number of school improvement initiatives including work with numerous groups of teachers and head teachers. These projects have often involved local education authority advisers as co-facilitators. He has published several books concerning primary education and school leadership.
Setting the ‘what if…’ free: talking and thinking in an infant classroom:
an investigation into one teacher’s practice
In this paper I hope to explain how and why I have generated my own theory of teaching philosophical enquiry to young children. I encourage children to use their philosophical imaginations (Whitehead, 1999) in order to come to think independently and exercise their freedom of choice and creative spirit in deciding how they should live their lives. I explain how the values of freedom of mind and spirit act as animating principles for my work as I encourage children to develop their spirit of enquiry, and I show how I try to create a democratic classroom in the interests of fairness for all to think independently and free from constraint, while justifying their right to do so. I go on to describe the tensions involved when my values of freedom and fairness are challenged by the power-constituted settings of traditional classrooms. I explain how I am attempting to transform a culture of traditional didactic pedagogies, in my own school and elsewhere, into a culture of creative and collaborative dialogue in which teachers and students imagine how they can transform their present realities into creative new futures.
In my view, young children are natural philosophers. They question persistently in order to understand the world. However, many children who enter primary school, full of wonder, soon learn to conform to norms of behaviour in classrooms that often lack or even deny opportunities for questioning. This situation denies my values of freedom and creativity. To combat the closing of young minds through the rigidity of traditional curricula and pedagogies, I have introduced ‘Thinking Time’ into my classroom. This is a time during which children are encouraged to exercise their philosophical imaginations. I believe that philosophy begins in wonder and is about retaining a capacity to remain astonished at life. It is about finding new ways of thinking that lead to new ways of acting. Through this ‘Thinking Time’ process of classroom dialogue, I believe I have discovered a way of setting the ‘What if…’ free again. I explain the processes of ‘Thinking Time’ and I discuss the significance of weekly classroom discussions for the quality of learning experience of the children involved.
I have been involved my own ongoing process of enquiry since 1996, when I first began my masters studies in education (Roche 2000). At that time I investigated how I could understand and improve the quality of my work as a teacher through doing philosophical enquiry with my students. I am now developing the work further. I continue to work with young children, and I also find ways of encouraging colleagues to develop classroom pedagogies that stimulate imaginative dialogue among their students. My work with colleagues has already generated a noticeable change in my school culture. Gaining confidence from this, I have also begun to hold workshops and seminars to disseminate the work in the wider educational field and I hope to raise other educators’ awareness of the power of philosophical enquiry with children.
In my presentation I hope to articulate what I understand to be the significance of my work, and I aim to produce authenticated evidence to support my claims. I believe I have encouraged my children to exercise their philosophical imaginations to the extent that they are able to critique existing forms of living, their own and those of others. I believe I have encouraged colleagues also to exercise their philosophical imaginations to the extent that they are able to critique their existing practices, and imagine new ways of practising that demonstrate organisational learning of the kind that can generate sustainable organisational change.
Reference
Whitehead, J. (1999) ‘How do I improve my Practice? Creating a Discipline of Education through Educational Enquiry. PhD thesis, University of Bath. Available at http://www.actionresearch.net/
About Mary Roche
Mary Roche is a primary teacher currently working with Junior Infants. Having taught boys for nearly 30 years in various disadvantaged urban settings, Mary is now a member of the nucleus staff of a developing co-educational mainstream primary school. Mary was awarded a MA in Education from the University of the West of England, Bristol in 2000 and is now pursuing her doctoral studies at the University of Limerick. Mary is also a committee member of The Association of Teachers of Philosophy with Children (ATPC).
BERNIE SULLIVAN
Democratising Practice as a means towards achieving Social Justice
My research centres on my belief in the right of all pupils to equality in regard to educational services. It is a denial of my values around social justice when some children, for example those from the Traveller community, are discriminated against in the area of educational provision. To redress the imbalance resulting from unequal treatment meted out to some pupils by educational institutions, I make a conscious decision to give Traveller children a voice in making choices relating to their education. Through the process of carrying out my research, I generate a theory that empowering children in the field of education will help them to transcend the oppressive and dehumanising effects of institutional prejudice and bias. I am also theorising dialogical practices as potential sites for sustaining education as a process of transformation.
Significance of my work
The significance of my research is that it has enabled me to reconceptualise how minority groups are perceived in education and to regard Traveller children as individuals rather than as a sub-group of the school population. Living out my values around social justice and equality has helped me to ensure more equitable treatment for Traveller children in my school. Through democratising my practice in the classroom I have generated a theory of the positive effects of allowing children’s voices to be heard in education by enabling them to make choices around their own learning. I have formulated a theory of the significance of consciousness-raising as a strategy towards the empowerment of marginalized or oppressed minority groups. The theories on democratic practice and empowerment that have emerged from my research have significance not only for other teachers of ethnic minorities but also for educators of other minority groups such as disadvantaged and special needs pupils. My work has begun to have an influence on colleagues who have noticed the transformative effects resulting from my policy of allowing children to make educational choices for themselves. The concept of engaging in dialogue with Traveller children in order to transcend the boundaries imposed by dominant educational structures has, I believe, the potential to influence educational theory in general.
About Bernie Sullivan
Bernie Sullivan is a primary school teacher in a disadvantaged area in Dublin. She works as a Traveller Resource Teacher, taking Traveller children on a withdrawal basis from their mainstream classes. In her research she is challenging normative systems of education that devalue the contribution that marginalized groups can make to their own learning situations and, in the process, is generating a theory of the potential for transformative measures that can be engendered through engagement with emancipatory practices in education.
JACK WHITEHEAD
Educational Enquiries: How do I judge my educational influence in the education of myself, others and social formations? Do my judgements on my educational relationships have any significance for the generation and testing of educational theory?
‘There is no more important educational question, however, than how we foster educational judgement in students, teachers, and researchers. How do we learn to exercise our freedom understood as responsibility?’ (Coulter, & Wiens, 2002: 23).
I like this point about the importance of educational judgement and of learning to exercise our freedom understood as responsibility. However, rather than beginning with how ‘we foster educational judgement in students, teachers, and researchers’, my preference is to begin with questions that accept a responsibility to be accountable from the ground of my own ‘I’ in the above educational enquiries. I am asking these questions as a professional educator and educational researcher who is seeking to answer them in terms of values-based standards of judgement. I am thinking of being accountable to myself and others for my educational influence in my educational relationships with myself, others and social formations.
In a multi-media presentation I will explore the possibility of communicating the educational influence of a loving spirit as an educational standard of judgement in the education of myself, others and social formations:
‘… living is the place of secular miracles. It is where amazing things can be done in consciousness and history. Living ought to be the unfolding masterpiece of the loving spirit. And dying ought to set this masterpiece free. Set it free to enrich the world. A good life is the masterwork of the magic intelligence that dwells in us. Faced with the enormity of this thought, of the Damascene perception, failure, despair, unhappiness, seemed a small thing, a gross missing of the point of it all’ (Okri, 2002, p.230).
I will also explore the nature of living educational standards of judgement in the creation and testing of shared living educational theories (Smith, 2002), while exercising my pedagogy of the unique (Farren, 2003) in my educational relationships.
References
Coulter, D. and Wiens, J. (2002) ‘Educational Judgement: Linking the Actor and the Spectator’. Educational Researcher, Vol. 31, No.4, pp. 15-25.
Farren, M. (2003) ‘A Pedagogy of the Unique.’ Retrieved 7th April 2003 from http://www.computing.dcu.ie/~mfarren/pedagogy.html
Okri, B. (2002) Arcadia. London; Weidenfeld & Nicholson.
Smith,C. (2002) ‘Supporting Teacher and School Development: learning and teaching policies, shared living theories and teacher-research partnerships’, in Teacher Development, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 157–179.
RICHARD WINTER
Marxism, Buddhism and Action Research
Marxism and Buddhism seem in many respects to be diametrically opposed structures of thought. What they have in common, and what they can both offer to action research, I think, is what might be called their 'radicalism'. Action research can be put forward simply as a pragmatic approach to social problem-solving: its procedures are effective in making change happen. But action research also has a radical tradition which presents a model of enquiry that (a) requires a democratic restructuring of social relations and (b) offers scope for re-discovering personal meaning in professional practice. Buddhism and Marxism, combined, offer theoretical support for the validity of this radical action research tradition. Buddhism says that the source for change is one’s own mind, but that self-change is inseparable from helping others to change; Marxism says that the fundamental structures of social relations must change, but that this entails the changing of human ‘nature’. From different directions, they both offer the hope that through our own actions new possibilities for a more authentic mode of being and relating can be disentangled from within the frustrations and blockages, the injustices and systematic errors that characterise our immediate experience of ourselves and the institutions in which we live.
They offer a hope that we can substitute:
ˇ critical understanding for ideology
ˇ authenticity for alienation
ˇ humanity for commodification
ˇ wholeness for fragmentation
ˇ a sense of freedom for a sense of constraint
ˇ mutual self-transcendence for egotistic competition
ˇ a sense of continuous change for a sense of static structures
ˇ compassion, appreciation and equanimity for defensiveness, fear and exploitation
ˇ creativity with and through others for individualism and self-isolation
Both Marxism and Buddhism are emphatic that valid understanding is only grasped through a continuous interplay between general theory and local practice, rather than through ‘mere speculation’ or ‘mere’ activity. And the provocative radicalism of both Marxism and Buddhism is that for both of them the above programme of ‘substitutions’ is not a matter of wrestling with reality in order to install a tenuous ideal, but of substituting a genuine reality for the distorted illusions among which we live most of our lives. Which is not to say that to achieve this radical programme is easy but to say that it is, in principle, possible. From this perspective, then, action research is an attempt to glimpse a positive future for humanity.
About Richard Winter
Richard Winter is professor of education at Anglia Polytechnic University, where he is based in the social work department and teaches action research for social workers, nurses and university staff engaged on courses for professional work. He is the author of books and articles on action research methods and methodology and has a particular interest in creative writing for professional development and in Buddhism. His current research concerns the ‘Patchwork Text’ as an alternative to the essay as a coursework assignment format.
MARION DADDS
Validation practices and practitioner research in award-bearing contexts:
a discussion paper
The focus here is on validity and the accreditation of practitioner research by higher education. As an academic action researcher myself working in a College of Higher Education, I am involved in judging practitioner research for degree and diploma status. This involves me in top-down judgement-making processes with colleagues. In this context, the academy is in a strong (and, often, uncontested) position of power and control over practitioner research. This should bring with it a responsibility for seeking plurality of voice in judgement-making – but usually does not. The academy often does not see its singular validating voice as problematic as it seeks assurance that practitioner research is, to quote Ernest House’s (1980) concept of validity, ‘worthy of being recognised’.
First, there are issues related to criteria for judging validity, or worthwhileness. In the past few years I have moved from one university which operated on a minimalist ‘pass or fail’ grade, in which no explicit criteria were ever committed to paper, to two different contexts in which a grade has to be chosen from a range of possibilities, and each grade has explicit criteria and standards to define it.
The first context was as loosely defined as one is likely to achieve. Validation discussions tended to be exploratory, often provocative and usually contributed to our learning in the university as we battled over different notions of worthwhileness in each unique practitioner research project. Uncertainty, ambiguity and disagreement tended to be the order of the day. No singular view of quality or validity was ever committed to print and we were fortunate enough to be supported by an external examiner who seemed to see this as a possible strength rather than a weakness. Each practitioner research study was seen as unique and, therefore, deserving of unique consideration. Criteria were driven by, and emerged from, this uniqueness. This was not, however, without its tensions, for many practitioner researchers felt they were left ‘second guessing’ what the assessors would come to see as valid in their work. Power rested, ultimately, in the academy.
In the other contexts, the explicit frameworks of criteria and standards were supposed to help develop common judgements and shared understandings. Here we have an external locus of control, intended to guard against the ravages of individualism, ambiguity, uncertainty and difference. Rigid frameworks, however, have a tendency to narrow practitioner research: knowing the game pressurises award-seeking practitioner researchers to play the game. Only the courageous diverge from the criteria path, being inventive, living dangerously with their research, taking risks with their award.
Even within set criteria, however, we often disagree. Our validation discussions elicit a variety of values and beliefs. We argue variously for, and against, the supremacy of watertight arguments in the research; perfect match between questions and methods; impeccable ethics; ‘knowledge of the field’; rigorously confronted subjectivity; tangible moral and educational benefits for the research beneficiaries; originality in thought, deed and method of reporting; conservatism; evidence of collaborative epistemologies (Winter, 1989); proof of independence; radical re-construction of the researcher’s view of the world; ‘conceptual clarity and coherence’. There are no absolute agreements about what constitutes ‘worthwhileness’. Yet our formal institutional judgements are ultimately constrained by the power of the criteria.
So, many questions have occupied me as academic validator in these, and a range of external examining, contexts. How does the level of power and control over practitioner research exerted by the academy enhance or depress its quality? Are our academic criteria standards and criteria constraining or liberating? Do they foster inventiveness, creativity and humanity in practitioner research or do they standardise, formulate and ‘straitjacket’? Does the academy value more highly sound arguments on paper than good deeds in a classroom, hospital or community?
There is a further question about “who is qualified to judge” (Lomax, 1993). The top down control and power of the academy does not sit comfortably with the democratic spirit of practitioner research. Could we seek greater congruence through a process of ‘democratic validation’ (Dadds, 1995)? Here is a case for hearing the voices and perspectives of others in the academy’s validation discourses – the voices of the practitioner researchers as well as the community participants and the beneficiaries. Democratic validation should be less concerned with the powerful ultimate judgement; more concerned to create a reflective exploration of worthwhileness as viewed from several exchanged positions of interest. The multiple voices which are drawn into the processes of good practitioner research would not be disconnected and silenced at the point of validation to make way for the monologue of the academy. Rather they would continue to play their unique and different parts in speaking validity or worthwhileness. Some universities already have validation practices incorporating this democratic principle where, for example, colleagues from the practice workplace join the validating university, the practitioner researcher and critical friends in exploring the many-sided validities of work in progress.
But I cannot rid myself of the discomforting thought that the academy may, in general, be acting like doormen (and women) at exclusive clubs (Belenky, 1986), deciding how to bestow membership on an aspiring research underclass, without involving them in the shaping of these validation discourses. Do we have the right to that singular voice of authority in the academy? Are we content with validation discourses that are rooted in the academic culture and not, at the same time, in the practitioner researcher’s practical culture? If validity criteria and processes emerged from the practice context, as well as the awarding context, how would they be different?
Let me try a final question. What would happen if we had the courage in the academy to ‘de-regulate’ practitioner research (Guba, 1996) such that we broke away from the ‘Overweening concern with validity, reliability, objectivity… generalisability’ and its other associated traditional research criteria (Guba, 1996) and focused instead upon the work practices needing to be examined and improved at the heart of practitioner research? In its sometimes-obsession with water-tight epistemologies, methodologies, linear questions and unquestioning certainty about its own perspective, is the academy missing the practical point of practitioner research? Does validity, rather, lie in the capacity to shed light on a ‘good’ question (in a moral and political sense) and to summon the motivation and courage to transform a needing situation into something better for the beneficiaries? Can academic validation encompass this? Are there existing practices in universities from which we could all learn?
References
Belenky, M.F., Clinchy, B.M., Goldberger, N.R. and Tarule, J.M. (1986), Women’s Ways of Knowing. New York, Basic Books.
Dadds, M. (1995), Passionate enquiry and school development: a story about teacher action research. London, Falmer.
Guba, E.G. (1996), ‘Foreword’, in E. T. Stringer, Action Research: a handbook for practitioners. Beverley Hills, Sage.
House, E. (1980), Evaluating with validity. Beverley Hills, Sage.
Lomax, P. (1993), ‘Standards, criteria and the problematic of action research within an award bearing course’, in Educational Action Research, 2, 1, pp. 113-126.
Winter, R. (1989), Learning from experience: principles and practice in action research. Lewes, Falmer.
About Marion Dadds
Marion Dadds has been actively involved in action research/practitioner research for more years than she cares, now, to admit. Her own research has been in ‘second order’ action research, in which she has studied aspects of her own work as a facilitator of professional development and action research. She has written about two of these projects on ‘Passionate Enquiry and School Development: a story about teacher action research’ (1995) Falmer, London and ‘Doing Practitioner Research Differently’ (2001) with Susan Hart, RoutledgeFalmer, London.
Marion is Professor and education research co-ordinator at St Martin's College, Lancaster. She is currently involved in a practitioner research project with Vanessa Champion and Heather Johnson, looking at ‘Emotional and Spiritual intelligence in the workplace’.
RACHEL DEITCHER
The Implicit Learning of Action Research
In addition to the conscious and explicit problem-posing and solving that occur during the action research process, and the palpable learning that takes place as a result, there seem to be unconscious, implicit learning processes that take place simultaneously and which result in significant changes in professional practice. In my own case I became aware that such learning had occurred more than a year after the close of the active stage of my research, when I felt a significant change in the comfort and confidence with which I approached my teaching of preservice teachers. This learning did not seem to be directly connected with any of the research questions I posed at the outset or during the action research process.
In considering this important effect of my action research I will present a number of areas of research which I have identified which may shed light on these developments in my teaching. These are the theory of situated learning, research conducted on vocational expertise and psychological research on the phenomenon of implicit learning.
About Rachel Deitcher
Before moving to Israel I received my Masters Degree in Education at Lesley College in Boston, where mathematics pedagogy was only a small part of the programme. I was greatly affected by one ‘methods and materials’ course in particular, which led me to become involved in mathematics education in this country. For fifteen years I worked as a teacher specializing in mathematics teaching at an alternative school in Jerusalem. Since then I have taught pre-service courses in mathematics education at the David Yellin Teachers College. Two years ago I returned to the Experimental School as a mathematics supervisor of the early grades, and along with the teachers have been developing a programme emphasising experiential learning and mathematical thinking, in which the children learn without the use of a mathematics textbook.
In 1997 I began to do action research into my teaching of an introductory course in early childhood mathematics education as part of my doctoral work at the University of Sussex. I submitted my thesis two months ago.
MARGARET FARREN
How do we exercise our pedagogy of the unique in educating for social formations?
Margaret Farren, with Fionnuala Flanagan and Chris Garvey, Dublin City University
It is clear from local, national and international studies, with respect to teaching and learning (Irish Universities Training Network Colloquium, 1998; Ramsden, 2000; Skilbeck, 2001), that teachers have a central role in their own professional development. However, set alongside this view is a growing move towards external performance assessment of teaching. Doubts have been expressed about the effectiveness of external assessment. For example, Pickering (2002), in her thesis ‘Becoming a University Lecturer’, casts doubt on the approach used by the Institute of Learning and Teaching (ILT) in the UK that she believes promotes the view that effective teaching can be defined in terms of a set of skills or techniques which are to a significant extent transferable between teaching and learning contexts. Van Manen (1990) states a similar view when he says ‘modern conceptions of theorizing are more often guided by the useful (the manageable, the pragmatic, the efficacious) than by the good’.
In our presentation we will describe and explain how we have researched our own educational practice using Information and Communication Technologies, and developed our own ‘living’ educational theory (Whitehead, 2003). Living educational theory is constituted by the descriptions and explanations which individual teachers produce for their own learning in enquiries of the kind: ‘How do I improve my practice?’ It involves using our values as ‘living standards of judgement in testing the validity of our claims to educational knowledge’ (McNiff, et al., 2003). The classroom environment offers a unique setting for teachers to develop their educational practice by exploring, discovering, interacting, articulating, and communicating how they have improved educational practice. This calls for each one of us to exercise our own pedagogy of the unique (Farren, 2003) in our educational relationships.
References
Irish University Training Network Colloquium (1998) University Teaching and Learning: Policy and Practice Proceedings. http://www.aishe.org/resources/links.html
Farren, M. (2003) A Pedagogy of the Unique. Accessed from http://www.computing.dcu.ie/~pedagogy.html
McNiff, J., Lomax, P. and Whitehead, J. (2003) You and Your Action Research Project (Second Edition). London, RoutledgeFalmer (in press).
Pickering, A. (2002) ‘Becoming a university lecturer: an exploration of the pedagogic beliefs and practices of four novice university lecturers enrolled on an in-service teaching development programme.’ EdD thesis. London, Kings College, University of London.
Ramsden, P. (1994) ‘Using research on student learning to enhance educational quality.’ http://www.aishe.org/resources/links.html
Skilbeck., M. (2001) ‘The University Challenged - A Review of International Trends and Issues with Particular Reference to Ireland’. Accessed from http://www.actionresearch.net/
Van Manen, M. (1990) Researching Lived Experience. New York, State University of New York.
Whitehead, J. (2003) ‘What counts as Evidence in Self-Studies of Teacher Education Practices?’ Accessed from http://www.actionresearch.net/
About Margaret Farren and colleagues
Margaret has experience of teaching at different levels - secondary, further, adult and community education and training - and has worked in industry. She has a Masters degree in Educational Technology from the University of Bath and is currently completing her Doctorate which focuses on developing a knowledge base of teaching and learning using ICT. She has taught Computer Studies and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in different contexts in London and Brussels. For the past five years she has been lecturing at Dublin City University. Margaret teaches on the Masters Degree in Information and Communications Technology in Education and Training.
Fionnuala Flanagan and Chris Garvey are second level teachers. They completed the Masters Degree in Computer Applications for Education at Dublin City University in 2002.
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MÁIRÍN GLENN
Multimedia, the celebration of creativity and multiple forms of learning
I am a teacher in a primary school on the west coast of Ireland, teaching ten and eleven year old children. I am exploring my own learning and drawing on my work with my class to inform my thinking. Through this process I have come to understand how various aspects of the education system in Ireland, including the form of curriculum, have had immobilising effects on me as a teacher. I have come to understand that many teachers use didactic pedagogies, and how, in my opinion, these pedagogies often constitute a form of social and educational injustice because they deny my values of individual creativity and spontaneity in learning. They also deny the capacity of all to learn according to their individual strengths, and the celebration of their embodied forms of knowing as well as cognitive forms of knowing. My work offers a critique of dominant forms and aims to develop a form of pedagogy that is grounded in the values of creativity and freedom of mind in education. My work aims not only to celebrate creativity and spontaneity in learning but also aims to show how creativity and spontaneity are core values for life-affirming forms of learning.
I believe that the inclusion of ICT in classrooms can help to facilitate multiple forms of learning, provided ICT is used in an educative way. By this I mean that the use of technology can be a creative and emancipatory resource in learning. This view is contrary to dominant views that regard ICT as a form of technology that is used to control behaviour (Rosak, 1994). I hope to demonstrate through my work how the educational use of ICT can provide opportunities for learners to explore their own learning in a creative manner, where respect for oneself and others is valued.
Through studying my own workplace practice I believe I am generating a theory of education that is grounded in the values of creativity and freedom. I believe that my work may have implications for wider practices because it shows how I have emancipated myself in terms of developing the capacity to make critical judgements, both on the wider literature and also on my own practice. I believe that the critical perspective of ICT that I am developing has much to contribute to a new form of theory of curriculum from which other educators in Ireland and elsewhere can learn.
Reference
Roszak, T. (1994) The Cult of Information. San Francisco, University of Berkeley and Los Angeles.
About Máirín Glenn
I am a primary school teacher in a small rural school on the west coast of Ireland. I have spent most of my teaching career teaching younger primary school children, but am currently working with ten and eleven year olds. I have an interest in including ICT in my work because I believe it can facilitate multiple ways of coming to know.
REVITAL HEIMANN
Action research for organisational change: power restructure, empowerment or tension
The use of action research for the professional development of individuals and organisations is neither new nor surprising. Since Kurt Levine's day, a good deal of research evidence exists that advocates the practitioner as researcher approach to facilitating improved practices of individuals, groups and organisations (for example, Argyris and Schön, 1996; Elliott, 1991; McNiff and Whitehead, 2000; Simons, 1987). Frequently, the research process leads to new understandings and is followed by deep emotional experiences that influence conceptualisations of practitioners’ living theories and their decision-making processes.
The methodology of the learning process differs from one case to another. Based on my experience, I will describe four prototype cases that demonstrate varied relationships between practitioner inquiry and its potential influence in the organisation where it is located:
- theory-driven inquiry – the case of a school principle who learned how to share her duties with others while participating in a training course for principles;
- a staff member who was encouraged by the head of the organisation to explore possible procedures for improving mentoring practices in the organisation;
- a group of teachers who reorganised the curriculum (within organisational constraints) as student-centred rather than subject-centred;
- a teacher and students who worked collaboratively to develop new forms of relationship in their department with the help of an external counsellor.
These cases and others demonstrate that there is no single model or procedure to be followed. On the contrary, different contexts require particular processes for each case. However, some fundamental conditions need to be met in order for these processes to be effective. These include:
- a readiness for change (at different levels of the organisation),
- the cooperation of influential members in the implementation stage (those who can turn decisions into practice),
- good communication among members of the organisation,
- a perception of change processes as an on-going inquiry (the need to view the process of action research as a life orientation rather than an discrete episode).
Every case constitutes a special situation with its own unique process. However, all cases share some common aspects:
- being a practitioner and a researcher puts the person in a unique position where their actions and decisions are not directed by others;
- practitioner-researchers have their own voice and opinions,
- they want to lead or at least be heard by the leaders; if not, disappointments can be very deep.
In my discussion I would like to raise some questions about expectations and the prices (intellectual and emotional) that people and organisations are willing to pay by going through a process of practice-based inquiry. For instance: Do stake-holders understand the shift in the location of power that might occur when people begin to make their own decisions as a result of their inquiry? Often, when staff members start to work collaboratively, tensions, rather than understanding, grow because of their different expectations. Who takes responsibility for guiding this process in a productive direction? Does anybody show any appreciation to those who increase their knowledge and understanding by working hard? What kinds of rewards are expected? What are the implications of the internal empowerment of people or groups in the organization on the ecology and power structure of the organisation? For how long can the change last? Is change evident in practices or does it stay at the level of rhetoric? How can this change be understood as progress?
References
Argyris, C. and Schön, D. (1996) Organizational Learning II: A Theory Methods and Practice. Reading, Ma., Addison-Wesley.
Elliott, J. (1991) Action Research for Educational Change, London, Allen and Unwin.
McNiff, J. with J. Whitehead, (2000) Action Research in Organisations. London, Routledge.
Simons, H. (1987) Getting to Know Schools in Democracy. London, Falmer.
About Revital Heimann
Before entering higher education life, Revital was a biology teacher and a junior high school head teacher. Her PhD studies focused on issues of collaboration between groups of science teachers who were undertaking action research projects as part of their continuing professional education.
During the past six years she has worked at David Yellin Teacher Education College in Jerusalem as a pre-service teacher educator and in the school principals training programme. As a member of the research unit, she also acts as PhD supervisor for teachers. She specialises in action research and qualitative research methods, as well as the evaluation of qualitative research projects and supporting students’ evaluations. She is involved with the MOFET Institute, the central agency for supporting teacher education in Israel, where she supports the PhD studies of college teacher educators as they undertake their action enquiries.
DIARMUID LEONARD
Some problematics in school–university collaborative action research
From their different standpoints, university departments of education and schools share an interest in improving practice in education. How is collaboration between them best conducted, and how does their collaboration affect the action research? Where should the action be done? Collaborative action research projects between school and university are particularly open to threat from the instrumental rationality that pervades education systems and from several sources of ambiguity and misunderstanding. A collaborative school–university project should therefore meet some critical conditions: to provide a third space for critical reflection on its collective work that is distinct from university or school, maintain an evolving conception of the project through continuous renegotiation, and create an ethos that integrates its members’ effort through a continuous search for mutual understanding.
About Diarmuid Leonard
Diarmuid Leonard teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses on teaching and educational leadership in University of Limerick. He works with teachers and schools in areas including curriculum development and evaluation, school management and action research.
BREDA LONG
Action research in organisational change
This paper documents the way in which I have come to generate my own theory of leadership through an investigation into my practice as a group leader working with long-term unemployed people, and how I hold myself accountable for my work.
I work through a humanistic, person-centred approach, whose core is the formation of empathic relationships as the grounds for personal empowerment. I am investigating how I can improve the quality of my educative influence in my workplace, and make judgements about its nature and potential impact. My research focuses on how I can improve my educative influence in order to raise awareness of the importance of empathic relationships among other staff. I am developing this focus because I am committed to living to my educational and social values of democracy, justice and personal responsibility, all of which are in danger of denial when they are embedded within organisational contexts that are characterised in terms of power and control and the reproduction of hegemonising practices.
Through reflection on my practice I have heightened my awareness of my several responsibilities as a group leader working with long-term unemployed people. While my primary responsibility is to secure the rights of long-term unemployed people and enable them to find work for themselves, I also have an obligation to safeguard the rights of my work colleagues to choose their own way of working. My investigation into my practice has revealed that I was working in a way that denied the rights of my colleagues to develop ways of working that were appropriate for them. I came to understand that I had effectively been imposing my own theories of work practices on colleagues, rather than encouraging them to explore their own. This constituted, I realised, a denial of my own values of democracy, justice and personal responsibility. I came to understand that if I wished people to adopt my way of working, I needed to demonstrate the value of my way by producing authenticated evidence to demonstrate its effectiveness for helping unemployed people to find work independently. I believed that this would enable me to justify my living theory of practice, and encourage others to adopt it for themselves.
Coming to these realisations has been a long and painful struggle. A breakthrough in personal understanding of the nature of the struggle, and an understanding of the need for the struggle, occurred as I struggled to understand and articulate the difficulties I was encountering in promoting a person-centred approach. Initially unable to identify the source of my discomfort, I came to realise that my working style and approach to colleagues had been not so much invitational as coercive. This was a powerful piece of learning that has led to a change in my own practice.
This paper is an account of the struggle and the very powerful learning that I gain