Reading Educational Research and Policy

David Scott

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9781135699178
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Reading Educational Research and Policy will improve the ability of teachers to deconstruct policy, research and media texts. This accessible book examines in turn the message systems through which educational meanings are conveyed in modern society: official policy texts; written media and spoken media. Through understanding how and why messages are conveyed, teachers will develop strategies for becoming more critical and reflective of the texts that confront them in their work.

1 Introduction: Educational Literacy

This chapter introduces the idea of educational literacy, and suggests that reading educational texts in a critical way allows the reader to reposition themselves in relation to arguments, policy prescriptions and directives in ways which are not intended by the writers of these texts. The educationally literate teacher therefore understands educational texts, whether they are policy documents, Press reports or research reports, as constructed and ideologically embedded artifacts.

The education system in England and Wales has undergone a profound transformation in the last twelve years. These changes have included the introduction of a national curriculum, national testing at key stages of formal education, the removal of influence and power from the Local Education Authorities and Local Financial Management within schools and colleges. Teachers have, furthermore, lost some of their capacity to control events in their classrooms, with a concomitant loss of professional status. They have, we could say, begun to lose the ability to think critically about the processes which they initiate, and to experiment in situ. Part of the reason for this is that central government has tightened its grip on how they should think and behave. With the willing acquiescence of the written and broadcasting media, teachers are now losing their capacity to think in ways which are not prescribed by policy-makers. In short, they are becoming educationally illiterate.

The term literacy is commonplace in educational discussions. Originally it referred to or indicated a capacity to read a text. Both words, 'reading' and 'text', are now understood in different ways. 'Reading' is used to refer to a transforming process where the reader does more than simply decipher the symbols on the page but actively engages with the text, and as a result creates meanings and understandings for themselves. Likewise, the 'text' is now understood as more than just words on paper or on a computer screen, but as a way of thinking and behaving. Furthermore, we now have 'social literacy', 'political literacy', 'emotional literacy', 'technological literacy', 'visual literacy' and 'personal literacy'. For example, social literacy is 'defined as the ability to understand and operate successfully within a complex and interdependent social world. It involves the acquisition of the skills of active and confident social participation, including the skills, knowledge and attitudes necessary for making reasoned judgements in a community', and as 'the empowerment of the social and ethical self which includes the ability to understand and explain differences within individual experiences' (Arthur and Davison 2000, p. 11).

This book will focus on a companionate concept, that of educational literacy. Teachers read various texts which seek to position them within powerful discourses, and this has the effect of restricting their freedom to think and act in alternative ways. In this book, the 'text' will be understood in its more restricted sense as documentary material. Four types of text will be examined: official policy documents, Press reports of educational activities, reports from the broadcasting media and research reports produced by the academic community. Each type of text or document works in different ways, which adds to the complexity of the process of becoming an educationally literate teacher. He or she is defined here as someone who has acquired the capacity to read these texts so that they are not imprisoned within their discursive structures and entanglements, that is, the educationally literate reader allows themselves the opportunity of taking up a position which is not intended by the authors of these various texts. If they read a newspaper report about an educational event, they understand that report as a constructed representation of the event, and not as the only possible way of describing it. Furthermore, by understanding it as constructed and constructed in a particular way, the educationally literate teacher demystifies the processes of knowledge development and dissemination, and is in a better position to make a judgement about the issue referred to. Teachers however, do more than read official or unofficial texts. The practices which they are engaged in are constructed in other ways, not least by the arrangements made within their institutions. Texts influence such practices both at the level of the classroom and at the level of the school, and this is why it is important for teachers to develop strategies for reading these various texts, which, if applied, transform their sense of how they understand their own practice.

This critical and transformative process then becomes an intuitive and barely thought about part of their everyday behaviours as teachers. It is not about developing competencies, though the educationally literate teacher is competent within the practice itself; it is about what Freire (1972) describes as reflection upon action: 'a conscious objectification of their own and others' actions through investigation, contemplation and comment'. The educationally literate practitioner has the capacity to resist and indeed transcend the powerful messages which inform and structure educational texts and documents. These textual messages may also be framed not just to indicate to the reader that they should think and act in specific ways, but that there is no alternative way of thinking and acting. Educational texts attempt at every opportunity to disguise their real nature and deceive the reader into thinking that the knowledge within the text they are reading has a special authoritative character, whether because it is the truth of the matter, or because its evidential base is incontrovertible, or because it distils within it a form of democratic legitimation which privileges it over other texts and other ideological positions.

This meta-knowledge, the core of educational literacy, is, as Lankshear (1997, p. 72) suggests:

. . . knowledge about what is involved in participating in some discourse(s). It is more than merely knowing how (i.e. being able) to engage successfully in a particular discursive practice. Rather, metalevel knowledge is knowing about the nature of that practice, its constitutive values and beliefs, its meaning and significance, how it relates to other practices, what is it about successful performance that makes it successful, and so on.

It empowers in three ways:

• it allows the individual to perform better in the practice;
• it enhances and develops the workings of the practice itself;
• it enables the practice to be transformed.

Understanding how each text is constructed means that the subsequent reading of those texts takes on a different form. This allows the reader to understand both how the author of the text is seeking to position them as a reader and it allows the reader the opportunity to make adjustments to how they are being positioned. In extreme cases it allows the reader to resist the power arrangements implicit within the text itself. Surfacing the power relations which authors of texts have constructed for their readers allows those readers to reflect on the issue in hand and more importantly, make genuine choices about their own practice. They therefore act as critical thinkers. It is also about acting as a critical thinker. Brookfield (1987, p. ix) argues that critical thinking comprises a number of processes:

When we become critical thinkers we develop an awareness of the assumptions under which we, and others, think and act. We seem to pay attention to the context in which our actions and ideas are generated. We become sceptical of quick fix solutions, of single answers to problems, and of claims to universal truth. We also become open to alternative ways of looking at, and behaving in, the world.

He identifies four dimensions of critical thinking:

1. Identifying and challenging assumptions. Those assumptions may be takenfor-granted notions about education, accepted ways of understanding educational matters or habitual patterns of behaviour. They may refer to behaviours at the level of practice, but equally to the way teachers are positioned within political, policy-making and representational contexts.
2. Challenging the importance of context. Being aware of these contexts allows the reader or practitioner to transcend them. It allows the practitioner to develop alternative ways of understanding and alternative modes of practice to those intended by policy-makers, journalists or researchers.
3. Imagining and exploring alternatives. The thinking of the practitioner goes beyond the merely conventional or accepted way of thinking and behaving. Thinking about practice becomes rooted in the actual context of teaching and learning and it allows the practitioner to experiment within their own practice.
4. Developing reflective scepticism. This is not a negative exercise, though it has been construed in this way. It involves being sceptical of all claims to knowledge unless and until the reasons for those claims have been evaluated and deemed appropriate (Brookfield 1987, pp. 7-9).

These four dimensions are central to the practice of critical reflection within teaching.

Reading educational texts in a critical way allows the reader to reposition themselves in relation to arguments, policy prescriptions and directives in ways which are not intended by the writers of these texts. The educationally literate teacher therefore understands educational texts, whether they are policy documents, Press reports or research reports as constructed and ideologically embedded artifacts.

The Theory-Practice Relationship

Furthermore, teachers are now being positioned within a discourse of competence in which they are expected to acquire certain definite ways of behaving and thinking and be in a position to display them. These competencies are meant to reflect good practice per se, but in fact represent a particular position taken by powerful people in society both about what education is for and how teachers should behave.

They reflect a view of the teacher as a technician, whose primary function is to develop the skills to put into practice a set of behaviours determined by policy-makers. The relationship between theoretical knowledge and practicebased knowledge may be understood in five ways.

1. The scientistic approach. This term has been coined by Habermas (1987) to indicate that scientific descriptions of the world are pre-eminently the only sensible and rational ways of understanding it. The scientistic approach refers to: 'science's belief in itself; that is, the conviction that we can no longer understand science as one form of possible knowledge, but rather must identify knowledge with science' (ibid., p. 4). Knowledge of practice is considered to be inferior to scientific knowledge. This scientific approach allows the researcher or policy-maker to identify appropriate knowledge of educational activities, which is, because of the way it is collected, objective, value-free and authoritative. There is one correct approach and one set of methods. Teachers therefore need to put to one side their own considered and experience-based ways of understanding what they do because their view of their own practice is subjective, and based on the local and the particular. Practitioner knowledge is context-dependent, problemsolving, contingent, non-generalisable and is judged not by objective criteria but by whether it contributes to the achievement of shortterm goals and problems encountered in situ. However, if this scientific model is accepted, an assumption is made that the objective knowledge which is produced about educational activities and institutions binds the practitioner in certain ways; those ways being the following of rules which can be deduced from that knowledge. Practitioner knowledge therefore is inferior because it is incorrectly formulated. This has been described as the technical rationality model of the theory-practice relationship.
2. The interpretative approach. The second perspective shares many of the assumptions of the technical rationality model in that it understands the relationship between theoretical and practice-based knowledge in a similar way. What is different is that the researcher constructs the original knowledge differently. For example, the researcher may believe that if they want to understand how teachers and other educational workers operate, then they have to collect data about how those teachers construct meanings about their working practices. Even here, the researcher still believes that the practitioner should divest themselves of their experiential knowledge if it conflicts with knowledge precepts developed by outside researchers. Usher et al. (1996, p. 26) describe this model as:
   . . . the solving of technical problems through rational decisionmaking based on practical knowledge. It is the means to achieve ends where the assumption is that ends to which practice is directed can always be predefined and are always knowable. The condition of practice is the learning of a body of theoretical knowledge, and practice therefore becomes the application of this body of knowledge in repeated and predictable ways to achieve predefined ends.
   Teachers are understood as technicians and in the process are disempowered within their own practice settings.
3. Multi-methodological approaches. There is however a third way of understanding the relationship between theoretical and practice-based knowledges. Researchers would deny that there is a correct way of seeing the world but would advocate a multi-perspectival and multimethodological view. There is no one correct method, only a series of methods which groups of researchers have developed and which have greater or lesser credence depending on the way those groups are constructed and the influence they have in society. The educational texts which they produce are stories about the world, which in the process of their telling and retelling, restock or re-story the world itself. They have influence because enough practitioners see them as a useful resource for the solving of practical problems they encounter in their everyday working lives. Whether or not the practitioner works to the prescriptive framework of the researcher depends on the fit between the values and frameworks held respectively by theorist and practitioner. The outside theorist can produce broadly accurate knowledge of educational settings, but the practitioner then adapts and amends it in the light of the contingencies of their own work practices. However, in all essential respects the practitioner still follows the prescriptive framework developed by the outside researcher.
4. Practitioner knowledge. There is, however, a fourth way of understanding the relationship between theoretical and practice-based knowledges. Walsh (1993, p. 43) argues that the relationship which concerns us here 'turns on the perception that deliberated, thoughtful, practice is not just the target, but is the major source (perhaps the specifying source) of educational theory'. He goes on to suggest that 'there is now a growing confidence within these new fields that their kin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Series Editor's Preface
• 1 Introduction: Educational Literacy
• 2 Reading Policy Texts
• 3 Reading Research Reports
• 4 Reading the Written Media
• 5 Making Connections
• 6 The Educationally Literate Teacher
• References
• Subject Index
• Author Index