Self-Study Teacher Research

Improving Your Practice Through Collaborative Inquiry

Anastasia P. Samaras

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781506332550
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Research in Education

The first textbook to offer novice and experienced teachers guidelines for the "how" and "why" of self-study teacher research Designed to help pre- and in-service teachers plan, implement, and assess a manageable self-study research project, this unique textbook covers the foundation, history, theoretical underpinnings, and methods of self-study research. Author Anastasia Samaras encourages readers to think deeply about both the "how" and the "why" of this essential professional development tool as they pose questions and formulate personal theories to improve professional practice. Written in a reader-friendly style and filled with interactive activities and examples, the book helps teachers every step of the way as they learn and refine research skills; conduct a literature review; design a research study; work in validation groups; collect and analyze data; interpret findings; develop skills in peer critique and review; and write, present, and publish their studies. Key Features

• A Self-Study Project Planner assists teachers in understanding both the details and process of conducting self-study research.
• A Critical Friends Portfolio includes innovative critical collaborative inquiries to support the completion of a high quality final research project.
• Advice from the most senior self-study academics working in the U.S. and internationally is included, along with descriptions of the self-study methodology that has been refined over time.
• Examples demonstrate the connections between self-study research, teachers' professional growth, and their students' learning.
• Tables, charts, and visuals help readers see the big picture and stay organized.

The 6 Ws of Self-Study Research

PART

I

CHAPTER 1. Understanding Self-Study Research

CHAPTER 2. Overview of the Self-Study Research Process

CHAPTER 3. The Self-Study Learning Community

CHAPTER 4. The Self-Study Methodology

CHAPTER 5. Self-Study Methods

I keep six honest serving-men

(They taught me all I knew);

Their names are What and Why and When

And How and Where and Who.

—Rudyard Kipling, The Elephant Child (1902)

Part I introduces you to the basics of self-study teacher research. It is framed in Kipling’s model of the 6 Ws, also known as the Five Ws and one H, which was an early model of journalist writing: Who? Why? What? Where? When? and How? Chapter 1, “Understanding Self-Study Research,” mainly provides a discussion of the what and why of self-study. Chapter 2, “Overview of the Self-Study Research Process,” charts what your research project entails and provides a suggested timeline of how you might approach it. Chapter 3, “The Self-Study Learning Community,” provides a discussion of the when, how, where, and who. Chapter 4, “The Self-Study Methodology,” provides a discussion of the why and how of self-study. Chapter 5, “Self-Study Methods,” presents a description and examples of self-study methods you may decide to employ for your current and future research projects. Throughout these chapters, you will find invitations to participate in critical friend inquiries.

But please do not mistake Part I as a series of facts about self-study. This 6W introduction to self-study research is more than a list of information. The 6 Ws are used to help you make sense of your research project, the complex and very interesting story of self-study, the beginnings and development of the Self-Study School, and the research methodology that emerged out of the work of self-study teacher educators and some of the self-study research methods they developed. Experience critical friend inquiries as you begin to frame your question, and set a foundation for your self-study research project, which you will launch in Part II.

Understanding Self-Study Research What and Why

1

To my surprise, of all the projects I have worked on to date, my self-study research project has been the most practical. … The insights I gained about myself, my colleagues, and the position have helped me enormously. Self-study forced me to think outside the box in new ways, and it changed my way of thinking, despite myself.

—Mary Adams-Legge (2006), English Teacher and Department Chair, Frederick County Public Schools, Virginia

CHAPTER DESCRIPTION

This first chapter introduces you to self-study teacher research and immediately prompts you to consider its usefulness to your practice. You will have an opportunity to play with your wonderments, to ponder and sketch out what may become your research question. You will also share your unrefined ideas with a peer. In that way, you will learn about self-study while gaining an overview of the research process. You will be introduced to what self-study is and what it is not. Then the discussion moves to the very important question of “Why conduct self-study research?” which includes personal professional accountability, applicability, and reforming in the first person with critical friends. Self-study teacher research puts you at the center of an inquiry you choose.

Reading this chapter will provide an opportunity for you to gain a basic understanding of what self-study is, what it is not, what it entails, and how it broadly benefits students, teachers, and education more generally.

Self-study has always been a part of my teaching although I did not call it self-study. I remember my early years of teaching junior high school students in the early ‘70s. After a day of teaching, I would come home and reflect deeply and silently about my role in classroom events, how my teaching philosophy played out in my actual practice, the problems I encountered, and what part of myself I brought to students’ learning. I welcomed conversations with my teacher colleague, Kathy Lawson, whom I talked with about ideas to improve my teaching. I had not been taught to study my teaching in any teacher education methods course. It just seemed to be what I did. Now, after four decades of teaching and researching in a wide variety of education settings, I still have an insatiable passion toward self-study teacher research. I still enjoy personal inquiry and spend enormous amounts of energy thinking about and talking about my teaching with colleagues. I find self-study to be a challenging, yet emancipating, process because it allows me to better understand who I am as a teacher and who my students are as learners.

A Self-Study Teacher Researcher Can!

I can design a study driven from my questions situated in my particular context.

I can work in an intellectually safe and highly supportive collaborative inquiry community with critical friends.

I can question the status quo of my teaching in order to improve and impact learning for myself and for my students.

I can study my practice through employing a transparent, open, reflective, and systematic research process.

I can hold a disposition of openness to outside views, questions, and critique.

I can use various self-study methods to study my practice.

I can contribute to the knowledge base of teaching as a knower and not just a receiver of knowledge.

I can generate and share knowledge that can be useful to other teachers and educators.

With these privileges comes ethical responsibility, which you will read about in Chapter 7.

You might be wondering if self-study research and collaborative inquiry are an oxymoron. Now, this may surprise you, but self-study research actually requires that you work with someone else: a critical friend. Granted, the word self-study doesn’t sound like it is collaborative, but actually this research necessitates collaboration (LaBoskey, 2004a). That is right. First, teacher inquiry begins with you. The power of your personal narrative to define the parameters of your own classroom inquiry must be at the forefront of your academic thinking and professional development. You are a generator of knowledge who can learn about your teaching and about your students’ learning by studying your own classroom. Despite any frustrations you might have in trying to change the educational system, the one thing you know you can try to improve and change is yourself. And yet, that change requires support and constructive critique.

The Beatles’ famous 1967 song, “With a Little Help From My Friends,” reminds us of how our lives, relationships, and work are interconnected. Self-study research builds on the necessity of a relationship between individual and collective cognition in teachers’ professional development and the power of dialogue in building a learning community of engaged scholarship (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009; Samaras, Freese, Kosnik, & Beck, 2008; Vygotsky, 1978). Thus the textbook’s subtitle, Improving Your Practice Through Collaborative Inquiry. As teachers raise their own questions generated from their practice, critical friends serve to mediate, provoke, and support new understandings. Self-study requires working with a critical friend, which is a term used widely by self-study scholars. McNiff and Whitehead (2006) note that it is “a term coined by Kemmis and McTaggart (1988) to denote a person who will listen to a researcher’s account of practice and critique the thinking behind the account” (p. 256). Although related, “critical friends” in self-study research are not the same as Critical Friends Groups (CFG) established by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform in 1994 and with the CFG training coordinated by the National School Reform Faculty since the summer of 2000 (http://www.nsrfharmony.org/index.html).

Critical friends are trusted colleagues who seek support and validation of their research to gain new perspectives in understanding and reframing of their interpretations. Critical friends also “nurture a community of intellectual and emotional caring” (Pine, 2009, p. 236) through their commitment to inquiry and ongoing support throughout the research process. We will talk more about critical collaborative inquiry throughout this text, but for now, try your hand at Critical Friend Inquiry 1.1 as an exercise to practice sharing your personal insights for feedback and critical review from a colleague (Loughran & Northfield, 1998).

CRITICAL FRIEND INQUIRY 1.1

Self-study research allows you to openly ask questions about your teaching practice. It is a research process that allows you to choose your own research question about something that captures your attention and needs your attention in your classroom. Self-study allows you to enact research inside your classroom while you receive support and direction from your peers. It allows you to plan, enact, and assess your efforts and examine the impact of your efforts on your students’ learning.

What questions have you been asking yourself lately about your teaching? What teaching issues or tensions do you find yourself thinking about and talking about constantly with your colleagues? What do you want to better understand? Is there something you wish was different? Do not worry that your ideas are not polished. These are sketches and not final research questions.

First, like artists, take pen or computer in hand and sketch out what you wonder about in your practice. Write your first initial thoughts. Be curious about your teaching. Reflect on a problem that might initiate a study, but as Loughran (2004) illuminates, a “problem in this case is not a negative term … [but] linked to the notion of a curious or puzzling situation or dilemma, tension, issue, or concern. It is something that causes one to stop and pay more careful attention to a given situation” (p. 25).

I wonder about__________________because __________________.

Take a moment to jot down your initial and very ...