Researching into Teaching Methods

In Colleges and Universities

Bennett, Clinton, Foreman-Peck, Lorraine, Higgins, Chris (All Senior Lecturers, Westminster College)

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135359171
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

This is one of a series of short, practical guides aimed at lecturers and tutors in colleges and universities, to help them get started on research. It covers all aspects of teaching methods, strategies for interactive teaching methods, small and large group teaching and student learning.

Chapter 1

Series Introduction

Kate Ashcroft

The research that colleges and universities engage in covers a very wide spectrum, including basic research into fundamental problems as well as entrepreneurial work, often contracted by a particular customer. Each of the books in this series is focused on a particular form of research: that of small-scale insider research. Each looks at issues of teaching, learning and management within colleges and universities. The aim is to provide you with starting points for research that will improve your practice, that of your students and the context for learning and teaching that your institution provides. The research that you undertake may also help you to understand the context in which teaching and learning is managed and should provide you with the raw material for publication in research-based media.

The series is aimed at creating a range of quick and easy to read handbooks, so you can get started on research into aspects of your practice. Each book includes a version of this introductory chapter by the series editor about insider research, its principles and methods. If you have read the series introduction in another of the books in the series, you may wish to skip parts of this chapter and go straight to the section, Main issues and topics covered in this book towards the end of this chapter.

Each book in the series also includes a concluding chapter by the series editor that provides guidelines on writing for publication and information about publishing outlets, including an annotated list of publishers and journals interested in educational research in further and higher education in general and teaching methods in particular.

The chapters in this book are focused on contemporary issues. They include a range of examples of research instruments and suggestions as to how you might use or adapt them to your own context for enquiry. The starting points for research cover the following areas:

● the perspectives of the main participants in the educational process;

● the context in which they operate;

● their existing practice;

● their existing values; and

● the relationships between the context and the values and practice.

A range of methods used in insider research in education is included within the research tasks.

The book provides an introduction to some of the issues in teaching and teaching methods in today's competitive climate. It cannot include sufficient information for you to complete a research project for publication. You will need to find out more about the subject matter and the research methodology that you decide to use. Similarly, the books will introduce you to some of the theoretical frameworks open to you, but the discussion will not be deep enough, of itself, to ensure that your research is ‘grounded in theory’. For these reasons, an annotated reading list is included at the end of most chapters.

The books in the series should appeal to lecturers in further and higher education who are interested in developing research skills and who would find concrete suggestions for research and some exemplar research questions and instruments helpful. For this reason, the authors have aimed for an accessible and readable style of writing. Care has been taken to keep sentences and paragraphs short and the writing practical, informal and personal. We have tried to avoid using technical terms and jargon unnecessarily, but where these have to be included, we have tried to explain them in as simple a way as possible.

Synopsis of the Series

This book is one of a series that includes the following books:

● Researching into Assessment and Evaluation in Colleges and Universities (Ashcroft and Palacio, 1996);

● Researching into Teaching Methods in Colleges and Universities (Bennett et al., 1996);

● Researching into Student Learning and Support in Colleges and Universities (Ashcroft et al., 1996);

● Researching into Learning Resources in Colleges and Universities (Higgins et al., 1996); and

●Researching into Equal Opportunities in Colleges and Universities (Ashcroft et al., 1996).

The series aims to provide you with a framework of ideas and starting points for research which can be carried out alongside your current practice. The books present these ideas in such a way that, rather than detracting from your practice, they might enhance it. They introduce methods for you to use (adapted or unadapted) for researching into your own teaching. For example, in Chapter 2, the life history method is described. Most of the ideas do not require visits outside of your institution and suggest data that could be available with a fairly modest outlay of energy.

You should find the books useful if you are new to teaching or if you are an experienced lecturer who needs or wishes to develop a research and publication profile within education. In the case of higher education, this is a major focus that involves all tutors. You may be under pressure to publish for the first time in order to contribute to research rating exercises. You might be undertaking a qualification that includes a research element. A masters degree or doctorate is an increasing requirement for promotion in further and higher education. In the UK, more masters degree courses are being developed and geared towards this sector. In higher education, many staff are now expected to achieve a doctorate. Some of the starting points within this book could be developed into a fairly sophisticated research project.

You may be interested in researching your own practice for its own sake. For instance, you may wish to explore innovative uses of IT to enhance learning. The interest in insider research is percolating into colleges and universities from the action research movement within schools and may grow at a comparable rate.

Insider Research and the Model of Reflection

Insider research is a form of participant research. It is principally about understanding and improving practice within the researcher's institution. It can be focused on a problem and involve cycles of data collection, evaluation and reflection, in which case it is called action research. Carr and Kemmis (1986) provide an easy to read account of the process of action research.

Insider research need not be problem-centred. It is an appropriate approach for a matter of personal curiosity or interest that you decide to investigate in a systematic way. Many tutors who have used the approach have found that insider research is an empowering process. It often comes up with surprises and enables you to see problems in new ways. It is probably the most effective way of exploring the functioning of real-life classrooms and investigating the effects of your interventions. It deals with the real problems and issues you face and, in doing so, may transform those problems and the way you construe teaching and learning. It has a moral base, in that it allows you to explore your actions and those of others in the light of the values that supposedly underpin them.

If you are to be a successful insider researcher, you will need to identify a critical group or community that will help you identify appropriate research questions, refine your research instruments and evaluate your reflections and data as you go along. You will also need to seek alternative interpretations of your data from a number of sources and to read widely, in order to locate your insights in a wider context.

When I have engaged in this kind of research and publication, the key thing I have discovered is the need to relate my findings to a theoretical framework (see, for instance, Ashcroft and Griffiths, 1990 or Ashcroft and Peacock, 1993). Very occasionally, I have developed my own framework, but more usually I have used an existing one to analyse my findings. Without such analysis, the results of insider research tend to be anecdotal and descriptive.

The series is built on a theoretical framework provided by the reflective practitioner of education as described by Dewey (1916) and developed by Zeichner, Ashcroft and others (see, for instance, Ashcroft, 1987; Ashcroft and Griffiths, 1989; Deakin, 1982; Isaac and Ashcroft, 1986; Stenhouse, 1979; Zeichner, 1982; Zeichner and Teitlebaum, 1982). The model takes the view that ‘knowledge’ is not absolute or static and that lecturers in further and higher education should take an active role in constructing and reconstructing it. This process of action does not take place in a social or political vacuum. It is part of the lecturer's role to work collaboratively with others to create morally and educationally justifiable solutions to problems.

This suggests that educationists have some sort of moral responsibility for the truth, and indeed that it is part of their duty to act as whistle-blowers when the powerful define truth in ways convenient for their purposes. It sees reflective practice as much more than a passive ‘thinking about’. It embraces active professional development, directed at particular qualities: open-mindedness (a willingness to seek out and take account of the views of a variety of other people), commitment (a real and sustained attachment to the value of your work and to improving its content) and responsibility (a concern with the long- as well as the short-term consequences of action). The enquiry considers the question of ‘What works?’ but also moves on to pose questions of worthwhileness. This demands investigation into action, intervention and the perspectives of a number of the participants in the educational process: students, tutors, institutional managers, employers, funding agencies and community representatives. It also suggests that intentions, attitudes and values are explored, as well as behaviour and outcomes. Each of the qualities of open-mindedness, commitment and responsibility has particular definitions and demands prerequisite skills and understandings, particularly research skills and skills of analysis. Our intention in introducing you to the research process is to enable you to collect data and to analyse them in the light of your emerging theory of practice (see Argyris and Schon, 1974, for more details of this notion of theory in action.)

I have stated that research skills are an essential prerequisite to reflective practice. This should not be taken to mean that they are sufficient. Reflective practice in teaching also requires that you acquire a range of other skills. These include technical teaching skills, such as voice projection; interpersonal skills such as counselling skills and the ability to work as part of a team; communication skills in a variety of contexts; and the ability to criticize the status quo from a moral point of view. Insider research, perhaps uniquely, can help you to acquire each of these skills. By providing feedback on your actions, insider research directs you to problems that you are creating or failing to solve. You can then experiment with new ways of approaching them and use insider research to provide information on the effectiveness of your new ways of thinking and acting. For instance, in Chapter 2 you are introduced to a method of course evaluation, the nominal group technique.

An elaborated form of this cycle of evaluation, action and data collection is known as action research, and is a particularly potent form of research for developing reflective practice, especially if you test your interpretation of results in a variety of ways: for instance, through using a variety of research methods to look at the same issues or by testing your interpretation of data against those of other parties to the educational process.

Nobody is able to sustain reflective practice at all times. During the process of teaching and research you may frame your problem according to assumptions that you feel comfortable with, you may interpret data to fit your preferred solution or you may fail to notice the most important data. For this reason, we suggest that your methods and interpretation should be made public in some way. You need other people to challenge your assumptions.

Reflective practice requires that you question your deepest beliefs and compare your actions with your values. In doing this, you may find that you must abandon cherished beliefs or practices. Despite the loss that change brings and the risks that it involves, the value of reflective practice is in the process of continual questioning and renewal that is essential fo...