Teacher Action Research

Building Knowledge Democracies

Gerald J. Pine

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781412964760, 9781412964753
• eBook ISBN: 9781452278742
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Research in Education

"This is a wonderful book with deep insight into the relationship between teachers? action and result of student learning. It discusses from different angles impact of action research on student learning in the classroom. Writing samples provided at the back are wonderful examples." —Kejing Liu, Shawnee State University


Teacher Action Research: Building Knowledge Democracies focuses on helping schools build knowledge democracies through a process of action research in which teachers, students, and parents collaborate in conducting participatory and caring inquiry in the classroom, school, and community. Author Gerald J. Pine examines historical origins, the rationale for practice-based research, related theoretical and philosophical perspectives, and action research as a paradigm rather than a method.

Key Features

• Discusses how to build a school research culture through collaborative teacher research
• Delineates the role of the professional development school as a venue for constructing a knowledge democracy
• Focuses on how teacher action research can empower the active and ongoing inclusion of nontraditional voices (those of students and parents) in the research process
• Includes chapters addressing the concrete practices of observation, reflection, dialogue, writing, and the conduct of action research, as well as examples of teacher action research studies

 

Part I

Understanding Action Research

The first five chapters of this book focus on the context for conducting action research: its history, different approaches to doing action research, the validity of action research, action research as a paradigm, and action research as professional development. This section of the book is historical, philosophical, and theoretical and lays the groundwork for developing a deep understanding and fundamental grasp of the nature and character of action research. Without such a fundamental understanding, the implementation of action research in education can become merely a mechanical and instrumental process open to exploitation of students and teachers.

1

The Disconnection Between Educational Research and Practice

The Case for Teacher Action Research

What impact does educational research have on individual classroom teachers and their students? To what degree does educational research make a positive difference in the lives of teachers and their students? To what extent does educational research affect teaching and learning? In this chapter, I attempt to address these questions by examining and distilling nearly 40 years of professional literature dealing with the relationship between educational research and practice. In examining that relationship, I conclude this chapter by arguing that teacher action research must play a prominent role in making research work to affect teaching and learning and to transform the school into a knowledge democracy. As you read through this chapter, I believe it would be helpful to reflect on your own experience in using or not using educational research. To what degree have you used educational research to inform your teaching practice? If you have tried to use educational research, what were its benefits and shortcomings? What are the difficulties of translating educational research into practice? What resources do you use in the search for and implementation of educational research? How has educational research affected your practice?

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Historically, educational research consistently has been caught in a fundamental dilemma between the practical or “doing” aspects and the scientific or “knowing” aspects of a problem. On one side are the real, practical demands of teaching, which are multidimensional, multilayered, context dependent, site specific, and continually evolving and changing. On the other side are the demands of the scientific: that knowledge must be generated with rigor and recognized principles of scientific inquiry and that such knowledge is generalizable so that it can be shared and used by a larger community than those with direct experience of a specific event.

Although it has always been assumed that educational research and practice should be intimately tied together, research and practice seem to be more disconnected and alienated from each other than ever before, a situation starkly portrayed by Miller (1999) in his article, “The Black Hole of Educational Research.” Asked why academic studies play such a minimal role in efforts to improve the schools, he asserts that educational research on classroom change and school reform has been inconclusive and weak and that, even in areas of good scholarship, research has little influence on what happens in classrooms. Despite a membership of more than 20,000 in the American Educational Research Association (AERA), despite countless numbers of researchers presenting their findings to more than 12,000 participants at annual AERA meetings, and despite more than 100,000 educational publications and reports produced annually, educational research has had little impact on changing schools or improving student learning because of its disconnection from practice. In the face of the imperative questions, demands, and problems challenging education, education cannot afford a separation between research and practice. It never could. The integration of educational research and practice is essential if any genuine progress is to be achieved in addressing compelling, complex, and significant issues in education. Such integration requires an analysis of the reasons for the divide between research and practice and a reconceptualization of what constitutes beneficial educational research.

More than 20 years ago, Eisner (1985), in describing the chasm between educational research and practice, portrayed a discomforting reality:

Practitioners seldom read the research literature. Even when they do, this literature contains little that is not so qualified or so compromised by competing findings, rival hypotheses, or faulty design that the framework could scarcely be said to be supported in some reasonable way by research. … If educational research is to inform educational practice, researchers will have to go back to schools for a fresh look at what is going on there. We will have to develop a language that is relevant to educational practice, one that does justice to teaching and learning in educational settings, and we will need to develop methods of inquiry that do not squeeze the educational life out of what we study in such settings. (pp. 450–451)

And Bok (1987), a few years later, said of the gap between research and practice:

The prevailing view is that scholars have contributed little to improve practice in schools. Not that the field has lacked for effort: over 100,000 articles are published every year. Nevertheless, education journals are repeatedly described as filled with projects that are imperfectly designed, shoddily researched, and poorly reasoned. Topics are often chosen on the basis of the social significance of the subject with little heed as to what questions are truly researchable. Methods of inquiry are frequently questionable and conclusions politically biased or only loosely related to the evidence. … Few undertakings are more baffling than the effort to isolate the influence of formal education from the myriad of factors that shape the development of a human being.

Both Bok’s and Eisner’s comments establish past understanding of the disconnection between research and practice. Today, the current situation shows little evidence of any progress in bridging the gap between research and practice. Commenting on their work over many years as National Science Foundation senior program officers, Sabelli and Dede (2001) say:

Decades of funded studies that have resulted in many exciting programs and advances have not resulted in pervasive, accepted, sustainable, large scale improvements in actual classroom practice, in a critical mass of effective models for educational improvement, or in supportive interplay among researchers, schools, families, employers, and communities. (p. 2)

Today, even with programs specifically designed to bring research into the classroom, teachers seldom use research findings to improve their practice and inform their teaching. There is continuing concern that educational research has had minimal impact on improving teaching and learning and that translating research into practice remains a persistent, almost intractable, problem (Heibert, Gallimore, & Stigler, 2002)—a situation which the national publication Education Week (Viadero, 2003) deemed serious enough to warrant a series of articles on finding ways to develop “useable knowledge” that could be implemented in the classroom. Four years later, Phi Delta Kappan, believing the gap between research and practice was still wide, opened its April 2007 issue with four articles focusing on the Research/Practice Divide. And in June 2007, the entire issue of the international journal Educational Research and Evaluation was devoted to addressing the gap between educational research and practice.

Recognizing the gravity of the problem, the most ambitious and long-term approach to bridging the gap between research and practice has been launched by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council through the formation of the Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP). SERP is a 15-year program of research and implementation designed to find a way to make significant research findings part of the working vocabulary of teachers, school administrators, and education policymakers (National Academy of Sciences, 2003; National Research Council, 2004). SERP “would foster enduring relationships between the research community, educators, and policy makers so that research is influenced by the needs and insights of those who work most closely with students” (National Academy of Sciences, 2003, p. 3). As an organization, SERP would be an accessible place for teachers and policymakers to go for carefully screened, reliable knowledge with the goal of building and supporting effective demand for research among practitioners.

I am guardedly optimistic about this effort and hope that SERP will not be plagued by the history of similar efforts, which assumed that teachers were simply clients—consumers of research and technicians in research application—with no role as active researchers. Past efforts to transmit research have reflected the traditional research and development (R&D) approach of knowledge transmission. While hopeful, I am troubled that in trying to bring teachers and researchers together, the very language of SERP’s documents reflects a deep commitment to an R&D approach and reveals a continuing conceptual separation of the research community from teachers. As I will discuss further in this chapter, the R&D model is problematic and has not had a history of great success in bridging the gap between research and practice.

Finally, it should be noted that dismay and disenchantment with the impact of educational research on teaching and learning practice is not limited to concerns in the United States. Frost, Durrant, Head, and Holden (2000), commenting on the status of educational research in England, note:

Educational research is under scrutiny. Those professing to engage in research activities are challenged with questions about the quality and the validity of their work, its subject and context, its application and dissemination. There are questions over who conducts the research, who funds it, and who has the power over what is researched and how the results are subsequently used. Despite the vigor of the debate in academic circles, it has been suggested that the impact of current research on the consciousness and practice of individual teachers is minimal. (p. 109)

And from the Netherlands, Korthagen (2007) offers his viewpoint on the gap between research and practice:

All attempts at enhancing the dissemination of research results have not led to a clear, successful, and generally accepted approach to bridging the research-practice divide and despite all these attempts, the gap between research and practice seems to have increased rather than diminished during the second part of the twentieth century. (p. 303)

WHY THE DISCONNECTION BETWEEN RESEARCH AND PRACTICE?

What accounts for the gap between educational research and practice? Many explanations have been identified by a number of writers over the past 38 years (Atkin, 1989; Bangs, 1998; Barlow, Hayes, & Nelson, 1984; Barnard, 1999; Biesta, 2007; Broekkamp & van Hout-Wolters, 2007; Clifford & Guthrie, 1988; Davis, 2007; Fenstermacher, 1987; Frost et al., 2000; Goodlad, Klein, & Associates, 1970; Goodson, 1993; Graham, 1978; Henson, 1996; Kennedy, 1997; Korthagen, 2007; Lagemann, 2000; McIntyre, 2005; McKenna, 1978; Nuthall, 2004). I summarize them here:

1. Teachers judge much of the research to be lacking in practicality and to be inconsistent with classroom realities. They have been put off by the deadening jargon and the esoteric language of educational research, its concepts of experimentation, and its narrowly conceived search for illusory proofs that one treatment or approach is superior to another. Research has not been sufficiently persuasive to motivate teachers to change their practices, and research findings are not communicated in ways that engage and motivate teachers. Explaining the problem of jargon and language, which distances teachers from research, Back (2001) notes:

Scholarly writing has become self-referential and full of convoluted argot. It seems that we are writing too much to impress our peers. This produces a kind of surfeit of meta-language that passes largely unread from the desktop to the university library. But in order to be published in the right places, work has to conform to conventions that value academic technique over accessible prose.

2. Over the years, the continuing efforts of trying to link educational research with practice has constituted a history of intellectual compromise. Faculties in schools of education located in prestigious universities became ensnared in the academic and political cultures of their universities and neglected their professional allegiances. They became “marginal men, aliens in their own worlds” (Clifford & Guthrie, 1988, p. 3). As a ticket of admission to the university, they bought into a positivistic epistemology inherent in the university culture and construed professional knowledge as the application of research producing an institutional separation between research and practice.

In short, schools of education entered into a devil’s bargain when they entered the academic milieu. The result was their mission changed from being primarily concerned with matters central to the importance of schooling towards issues of status passage through more conventional university scholarship. (Goodson, 1993, p. 2)

In this embrace of conventional disciplinary methodologies, the relevance of educational research to practice was seriously compromised.

3. Many university researchers have lost touch with the reality of schools and the multiple demands, forces, and issues that affect the daily lives of teachers and students. Teaching is besieged with multilayered complexities that are not discernible or well understood by researchers who are removed from the ever-changing contexts of schools.

Only a modest number of faculty members have actually taught in public schools, and, for those who have, many years have passed since their public school teaching days. … For many of my colleagues, their understanding about life in schools is based on their exposure to the literature, their own particular strand of research, episodic campus visits, or the anecdotal reports of those who work in schools. (Davis, 2007, pp. 570–571)

Davis advises practitioners not to trust everything he and his colleagues have to say about schools.

4. Emanating from the institutional separation of knowledge from practice, the R&D model of knowledge dissemination became dominant in educational research. The R&D model assumes that teachers, as consumers of knowledge, will adapt and use knowledge developed by researchers in universities, research institutes, and educational foundations, outside and far removed from the specific situational contexts and circumstances that affect the work of teachers. This view contrasts sharply with Paulo Freire’s (1973)—“The person who has the problem has the solution.” The importation and imposition of solutions from experts in academe to apply within specific school contexts has been fiercely resisted by classroom teachers.

5. Teachers have not been actively involved in identifying research questions and in designing and implementing research studies. Too often, teachers have been the subjects of studies, treated as variables to be controlled and manipulated in experimental studies, regarded at best as peripheral to the conduct of educational research, and not respected for their craft knowledge. “Even in cases … where teachers and researchers have worked together, teachers report that their concerns and those of researchers usually do not overlap. Hence, the teacher’s curiosity and needs remain unresolved” (Stevenson, 1987, p. 234).

6. In the quest to imitate the physical sciences, researchers often tailor educational questions and problems to fit the research design rather than asking the right questions and then deciding on methodologies appropriate to the qu...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• PART I. UNDERSTANDING ACTION RESEARCH
• PART II. COLLABORATIVE ACTION RESEARCH: FOUNDATION FOR KNOWLEDGE DEMOCRACIES
• PART III. PRACTICING ACTION RESEARCH
• Glossary
• Appendix A. Examples of Teacher Action Research Projects
• Appendix B. Annotated Teacher Action Research Web Sites
• Appendix C. Curriculum and Instruction Web Sites
• References
• Index
• About the Author