School-based Research

A Guide for Education Students

Elaine Wilson, Elaine Wilson

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781526414151
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Ricerca nella didattica

Focused on the needs of the new classroom researcher, and those studying education on Masters-level courses, this is a thorough and thoughtful guide to the research process, covering qualitative, quantitative and mixed research methods. It guides you through research design, data collection and analysis and how to write up your research findings.

This third edition has been updated to provide further coverage on the best ways to approach, construct and carry out educational research within the classroom including:

• a new chapter on disseminating research knowledge
• expanded coverage of formulating research questions
• a reworked chapter structure better reflecting the research process

This is essential reading for students on education degree programmes including a research methods component, including education studies, undergraduate (BEd, BA with QTS) and postgraduate (PGCE, School Direct, Teach First, SCITT) initial teacher education courses, MEd and professional development courses.

Online resources expanding on and complementing the contents of the book can be found at: study.sagepub.com/wilsonsbr3e

Section 1 Using Existing Research to Understand and Plan School-Based Research

This section is about clarifying the purpose and direction of school-based research. The section starts with Chapter 1 setting out the rationale for why teachers ought to engage in school-based research and then follows in Chapter 2 with a guide to identifying, refining and narrowing a research focus. Chapter 3 helps the reader to find and read literature critically and then explains how to write this up in the form of a literature review.

1 Becoming a Reflexive Teacher

Elaine Wilson

Chapter Overview

This chapter will argue that:

• Successful teaching is about positive interaction.
• Being an effective teacher is also about engaging critically with ideas and being aware of personal values.

The requirement to be critical is often taken for granted and common sense and seemingly unproblematic. For example, the system of labelling children by ability, which is highly prevalent in the UK at the time of writing, is not challenged. The notion of being critical is explored using ability as a context and by looking at three seminal papers that discuss this notion.

Becoming a teacher involves more than just being ‘told what to do’, developing skills or mimicking other teachers. Therefore, reflecting on and in classrooms is an important part of becoming a teacher and is the essence of researching practice. Through the process of researching classroom practice, teachers come to recognize the depth and quality of their individual and collective expertise. Writing about this research is a way of articulating, sharing and examining practice that will also extend knowledge about teaching.

Teaching is about Interaction

Teaching is an action that first aims to bring about learning, second takes account of where the learner is at, and, third, has regard for the nature of what has to be learnt. Therefore, teaching chemistry is different from teaching swimming; teaching how to ride a bicycle is different from teaching how to be virtuous. Each activity requires a different knowledge base on the part of the teacher and a different approach to helping students learn. Indeed, it is difficult to justify an action which disregards either the state of readiness of a learner or the nature of the subject matter as teaching:

The lecture on a complex scientific topic which pays no regard to the level of understanding of the audience could hardly be called teaching. (Pring, 2000: 23)

Consequently, it seems to be the case that obtaining information about the state of readiness of the learner is as important as having extensive subject-specific knowledge. Furthermore, the three components of teaching are more likely to be realized through reflecting in and on actual classrooms, by teachers finding out about learners in those classrooms and through the subsequent adoption of appropriate approaches in order to bridge the knowledge gap between learner and teacher.

Box 1.1 Teaching and the role of the teacher

Teaching, therefore, is the conscious effort to bridge the gap between the state of mind of the learner and the subject matter (the public forms of knowledge and understanding) that is to be learnt, and, as such, the teacher’s expertise lies in understanding both.

It is possible for a teacher to use a wide range of activities – for example, instruction, questioning, arranging practical experiences or structuring the classroom in a particular way – as long as students learn what the teacher intended.

Therefore, becoming a teacher initially involves questioning how expert classroom teachers:

• Decide on how to bring about learning.
• Ensure that the chosen activities are relevant to the kind of learning to be brought about.
• Ensure that these activities are relevant to the state of mind and motivation of the learner.

However, teachers do not act on their own. They are part of a larger enterprise, and their authority derives from their participation in communicating to another generation the public understandings and procedures that we have inherited. Consequently, teachers ought to be aware of the origins of their specific area of public understanding and how the procedures in operation have come about.

Educational Discourse

To engage in dialogue with other teachers, parents and students involves using educational discourse, that is, the way in which we talk about educational practice. However, educational discourse, like other forms of specialist discourse, is constructed by the specialist group and serves the interests of the particular group. In some situations, where such discourse remains unchallenged, it comes to be perceived and experienced by groups as though it offers an explanation of a natural, shared process or common-sense wisdom. An example of this is pupil grouping in secondary schools, where the common practice is to group students according to ‘ability’. In this case, ‘ability’ has become a ‘common-sense’ concept that in the UK is seen as a natural way of talking about children. However, there are those who dispute this – for example, Bourne and Moon (1995) argue that, although we have words such as ‘intelligence’ and ‘ability’, this does not mean that they exist. Talking about ability seems a natural way of talking and so people do not normally challenge this idea, although there is considerable scope for confusion. For instance, Hart et al. (2004) pose the following questions:

• When young people are identified as ‘more able’ or ‘less able’ than others, are we saying something about innate intelligence or the inherent capacity to learn?
• Are we implying a fixed or stable difference in degree between those deemed more able and those deemed less able?
• Or are we simply saying something about differences in their current ability to perform certain tasks, their observable ability to do certain things – like reading or mathematical calculations – according to agreed criteria?

Furthermore, if it is important that teaching activities are related to the state of mind and readiness of our students to learn, ought not we examine this ‘common-sense’ idea of ‘ability’ more closely? To do this may require us to open our minds to new ideas, to become a reflexive teacher.

Becoming a Reflexive Teacher

Reflexivity is an interactive process which takes into consideration the relationship between the teacher, the students and the learning context, and also examines the underlying assumptions and priorities that shape interaction within a given time, place and situation. In other words, a reflexive teacher can stand back and examine the underlying beliefs and values that are informing decision-making and actions in classroom situations (see Figure 1.1). These ‘hidden’ beliefs and values influence our interpretation of ‘grey, common-sense’ areas such as ability labelling, but it is the ability to be reflexive that will enable us to look at situations, ask further questions and find alternate interpretations.

Figure 1.1 Becoming self-aware

Challenging ‘Common-Sense’ Ideas

A feature of common sense is its changing content. What is common sense at one time may no longer be so at another; what is not known at one time might become part of the unquestioned folklore later. On the other hand, common-sense understanding also includes beliefs that seem undeniable, particularly in relation to the physical, personal and social worlds that we live in. To differentiate between ideas that might be classified as part of an indispensable framework within which we identify and think about the physical and social world, and the second category in which ideas are part of a shared discourse of unquestioned beliefs about education, we need to test out these ideas. Teacher-led, classroom-based research may provide an authentic way of testing out such ideas. Pring (2000: 84) argues that classroom-based research ‘percolates down to the unquestioned assumptions of everyday life’ and that the ‘education of common sense’ lies in the acquisition of a questioning and critical approach to ideas that appear to be accepted uncritically. Moreover, this framework of ordinary language, together with the accompanying beliefs about the world of education, provides both the starting point and the point of application of existing theoretical knowledge about teaching. In other words, to try to address Hart’s questions, we must recognize that ideas emerge from different disciplines and that different theoretical accounts help us to arrive at a clearer understanding of the various perspectives held.

Box 1.2 Establishing your world view

How you try to understand the world around you will colour what you consider to be evidence. Searle’s big question below brings this point across well:

How can we square the self-conception of ourselves as mindful, meaning-creating, free, rational, etc., agents with a universe that consists entirely of mindless, meaningless, unfree, non-rational, brute physical particles? (2007: 5)

Searle’s question confronts us with ideas that we don’t usually stop to think about in the rush of everyday life. Nonetheless, these ‘hidden’ views influence how we think about complex issues and raise further questions. What is your world view (see Figure 1.2)? How does your world view influence how you behave in your everyday and professional life? How will you study the world? Are the rules for ...