Passionate Enquiry and School Development

A Story about Teacher Action Research

Marion Dadds

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000149753
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book presents a detailed study of the potential of action research in professional education. It depicts a primary school teacher's use of action research, through a series of school-based assignments, to improve her teaching and to develop herself as a person and a professional.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Face to face with her was an education

Of the sort you got across a well-braced gate –

One of those lean, clean, iron, roadside ones

Between two whitewashed pillars, where you could see

Deeper into the country than you expected

And discovered that the field behind the hedge

Grew more distinctly strange as you kept standing

Focused and drawn in by what barred the way. (Heaney, 1991, p. 22)

The journey metaphor is well used. Some would say that it is over used. Yet I can think of no better way to describe the learning of the two action researchers in this story.

Vicki and I began our separate travels at about the same time. She started a two-year part-time Advanced Diploma course for primary and middle school teachers. This was a major professional, in-service undertaking for her. Action research was at the heart of her work on the course. For me, coordinating and tutoring this course at the Cambridge Institute of Education was at the heart of my work. I decided to undertake some research with the teachers to improve my understanding of their learning. Action research, thus, became integral to my work for the next few years. During my action research, I asked questions of Vicki’s. I needed to know how I could improve the course to support the teachers’ research. Before I could do this, I needed to know what it meant for them to do action research, how it impacted on classroom practice, how it worked in the school, or not, as the case may be.

We may never fully understand what brings anyone to a major learning project. Each of the twenty-seven teacher researchers in Vicki’s Advanced Diploma group would have a different story to tell. For myself, I suspect, the reasons were like the layers of the ancient landscape, or the telling of history, each reason on the surface masking a deeper and different one below. On the outer, visible layer there were identifiable professional motivations; an endless fascination with the nature of learning, for example, and with the singularity of each unique learner’s experience. This had been no less interesting in my years of working with mature primary and middle school teachers in in-service education (INSET) than in my twelve previous years with primary children. Surfaces usually mask a world of underlying complexity and intricacy (Gleick, 1987). The visible world of the learner or the classroom which the busy teacher apprehends may be but an illusion or a distortion of the life beneath. As we look more closely at the seething complexity, all is not what it seems. As we take off the outer layer of perception, there are worlds to discover below.

Nor can I resist the pleasure of seeing the rewards that learning can bring, rewards that seem even greater in the face of the difficulties and struggles which have, usually, to be surmounted.

On the other hand, I regret that I also harbour an unshakeable attachment to the protestant ethic, a result, no doubt, of my working class origins. Endeavour has to be for something beyond itself. It has to justify its utilitarian value to the world. Nothing can be wasted. I struggle constantly with this and have made progress over the years, but our work and our learning must also make a small contribution to the human condition; otherwise relaxation and peace of mind are denied. Education solely for its own sake is the privilege of the leisured classes, a luxury the workers could never afford.

These fragments of personal history made it inevitable, then, that I would find a ready identity in the action research work which was thriving at the Cambridge Institute of Education when I joined the staff in 1981. The Schools’ Council project (1983) found me a home as consultant. Here, I was invited to offer critical friendship support to a small group of teacher action researchers in one primary school. The experience taught me much about the possibilities and difficulties which faced teachers as they sought to study their classrooms and as a consequence create even better opportunities for children to learn. The Masters’ Degree in Applied Research offered me a team teaching role. As I worked with colleagues in this context, I encountered the ideas of Stenhouse (1975), Polanyi (1958), Schon (1983) and Elliott (1981), amongst others. Here was encouragement to think seriously about the validity of personal theorizing and to see its manifestation in practice. There were collaborative fieldwork seminars, for example, in which teacher researchers’ own knowledge and experience were valued, and, indeed, considered necessary as a resource for the development of practical theory. These evolving practical theories were also resourced by informal lectures and workshops; by ideas from other writers and researchers in the field. In addition, my parallel Advanced Diploma in Educational Studies gave me all the scope I needed to develop a pedagogy for action research with teachers of children aged three to thirteen.

In all these activities at Cambridge, the value placed on teachers’ own experience and knowledge was heartening. As a primary teacher in the past I had seen myself for many years as a member of an often scorned theoretical underclass. Educational theory was a commodity made by experts in other, higher order institutions. It was difficult. It was exclusive. It was superior. Its creation and purpose were disconnected from the earthly thoughts, practices and experiences of people like myself in schools. After 1981 my professional engagement with the ideas and practice of action research restored the voice of the knower for me. Subjectivity and practitioner reflection were legalized in the making of theory. So too was the practical usefulness of theory in improving education for children. I felt I had found the holy grail.

Yet all was not settled. Glad though I was to find that theory had been located in its human and practical origins by Stenhouse, Polanyi and Schon their perspectives were essentially cognitivist. Something was missing from the views of subjectivity which I was meeting; some deeper parts of being. There were, also, gaps in the action research literature at the time, I felt, even though the major texts were illuminating and educative in many ways and had been an invaluable resource for my learning. The seemingly tidy and logical shapes of the action research process (Kemmis and McTaggart, 1981; Elliott, 1981) did not appear to match adequately the experience of the teachers with whom I was working, as they struggled, persisted and endured from week to week on their research projects in schools. The teachers’ descriptions and accounts of their work bore little resemblance to the tidiness of the action research models. Their research stopped, started, lurched forwards, regressed, travelled blind alleys, reached peaks. Good research planning sometimes failed. Serendipity often prospered. The teachers fretted, declared, delighted, cried, argued with colleagues, suppressed frustrations with their word processors and caretakers, left their wives and husbands in the pursuit of development and practical theories. Affective views of subjectivity were missing from my reading but not from the teachers’ experiences. Affective dimensions of the action research process were missing from the neat models but not from the teachers’ untidy lived realities. I had a daily urge to lift the flaps and corners of the action research arrows, spirals and boxes; to take a closer look at the embroiled underworlds below the clean theoretical diagrams. I had a need of additional and different action research discourses.

Also, the protestant ethic had become double-edged, for conscience saw me encouraging others to do what I was failing to do adequately myself. If action research was such an eminently valuable way of improving one’s work and if I was persuading my in-service teachers that this was so, why was I not doing anything substantial myself? The only significant action research I had undertaken had been completed several years before as a primary school teacher (Dadds, 1978), though I had not known it as action research at the time. Since then I had only been skirting around the edges of enquiry into my practice. Credibility was becoming an issue for my conscience. I was teaching what I seemed not to know substantially from personal knowledge. There was a need to improve the professional capital of my inner world as a basis for teaching. When I searched for a focus for a substantial action research project, therefore, the possibilities were endless. There was much I did not understand about most of my in-service action research work. The main difficulty lay in limiting the choice.

The focus fell upon the in-service Advanced Diploma course. Like many other courses at the Cambridge Institute, this one sought to help teachers to relate their in-service (INSET) learning to practical classroom and school developments. The action research projects were promoted to help this. Also, many teachers before Vicki had been keen to share their learning with school colleagues, for many wanted to benefit the school in practical ways in return for the privilege, as they saw it, of day release for their attendance on the course. Some were successful in this. Others were less so and I was curious to understand what made the difference. From discussions with teachers on previous courses, several hypotheses were raised which caused me to make changes. First, I encouraged the practice of ‘negotiated’ research (Dadds, 1986a) between the in-service teacher and her school colleagues in anticipation that this would foster more collegial involvement and ownership and, as a consequence, help the research to find its practical value in school. The course had previously operated on a more individual mode of development, promoting more ‘idiosyncratic’ or individualistic research (Dadds, 1986a). Research which arose from the interests of the individual, rather than the group would, I hypothesized, be less likely to serve the needs of the school. It would be less effective in supporting practical developments beyond the teacher researcher’s own classroom.

I also started to think more seriously about the role of the academic text in dissemination of research within the school. The texts which teachers were creating for the purpose of assessment for the academy might not be the most helpful for school audiences and for the development of practice. The requirements of the awarding academy might, thus, be in conflict with the needs of the school (Holly, 1984). So I suggested a range of alternative forms in which the students might present their research. These went beyond the more traditional research report to incorporate school discussion documents, school policy documents, audio-visual presentations, in-service or teaching materials. I hypothesized that this might encourage teachers to construct texts for school purposes and school audiences, texts that might be more user-friendly and oriented to practical development work. These alternative texts should, nevertheless, emerge from the systematic enquiry, analysis and reflection of the research process.

As part of my action research, I wanted to learn something of how these new features of the course were operating. I also wanted to gain deeper understanding of how in-service (INSET), teacher development and school development linked. The teachers’ experiences presented something of a black box which I needed to look inside if I were to understand these matters further.

Enthusiastic beyond belief, I jumped into this bottomless research pond - and almost immediately drowned because all twenty-seven teachers on the course were willing to respond to the innumerable questions I wanted to ask in questionnaires and interviews. No one declined in the preliminary stage, contrary to my expectations. Here was my first lesson in time management within part time, no-budget action research.

In the second stage, some did decline. Now I wanted to gain perspectives from the teachers’ school colleagues. I wanted to triangulate the teachers’ data. So I developed questionnaires, with the possibility of follow up interviews, for the headteacher and another school colleague. Six teachers on the course acknowledged that they would feel uncomfortable with this. The other twenty-one gave me permission to go ahead. This did little to improve my time management problem. The Institute generously made available the help of Pauline Minnis as part-time research assistant for a short time to help with the interviews. The puritan boundaries of the no-budget action research creed were broken for a while. Relief and data overload set in.

In the third stage, Jo, Christopher and Vicki agreed to be the subjects of case studies. So did their school colleagues. The database was extended to include in-depth interviews with Jo, Christopher and Vicki; interviews with other school colleagues; interviews with pupils; analysis of the teachers’ action research reports submitted for assessment. Jo agreed to be ‘shadowed’ on several occasions after return to school from the course.

From these three, Vicki’s was the case story which, almost pragmatically, had the full run of my pen before the others. First I started writing the story of Jo but hesitated in the presence of sensitive and highly personalized data. Jo’s story was telling of a new and undiscovered ‘self’ that had emerged through the research and in-service process. It was a ‘self’ that propelled both her research and her career forward in a strong and positive way. She found new confidence and positive self-esteem. But these also propelled her into a passionate love affair and temporary breakdown of a seemingly stable and comfortable marriage. Jo gave full clearance on the data and I started writing the story in a partially fictionalized form to disguise sensitive issues. Yet the delicacy of her story and the curious, uncomfortable prospect of committing it to permanent research text caused me many months of anxiety, inhibition and hesitation.

In the hesitation I considered beginning to write Christopher’s story, but there were difficult data there, too, and difficult ethical challenges. The data were showing Christopher’s as a divided school. Everyone in the field gave clearance but exposure of those controversial data in the written case story could have been harmful and hurtful to some. I hesitated over constructing a text which could reflect back that divided reality to participants. Whose responsibility would it be if the text caused further divisions and hostilities? Were some hoping that the research text would be the channel through which controversies and differences would be spoken in a way that had not happened face-to-face in the school? Was I, in that sense, being manipulated as research agent to speak publicly of others’ unspoken hostilities? These were difficult research questions which inhibited me from telling the second story, despite all the many interesting and illuminating insights it raised about my areas of enquiry.

So into both these ethical chasms, Vicki’s story stepped, unique in its case, as all cases are, different in many ways from the other two, yet bearing many similarities to them, and to some of the stories emerging from other teachers on the course. Vicki and Springfield School took over my pen.

To preserve anonymity as far as possible, many details about Springfield have remained invisible. Only those which arise naturally in the data or which are essential to understanding the case are revealed. Suffice it to say, here, that Springfield was a large urban school, drawing upon a varied catchment area. Many families were depressingly poor. Many led a comfortable material existence. Most parents were keenly interested in their children’s education. Relationships with the community were open. The school was well resourced in comparison to many others in which course members worked.

As the reader may eventually conclude, this was a more than comfortable case to write. Most of the data was ethically unproblematic to use. Indeed, had I not had the parallel case experience of Jo and Christopher, with all their dilemmas and discomforts, I might have been more than suspicious of the positive tenor of the Springfield School material. The methodological problem of my triple role with the teachers was evident. At one and the same time I was the tutor and examiner as well as the researcher. As the tutor I would make judgments about the teachers’ work in the awarding process. In offering accounts of their learning and its impact on practice to me, I often wondered if the teachers would, thus, be motivated, consciously or otherwise, to portray themselves in a favourable light. I wondered if they, and their colleagues, would only tell me what they wanted me to know, using the research to foster positive images for the purposes of assessment. There was good reason why they should. This is not to question the integrity of the teachers and their school colleagues. Rather, it is to acknowledge the difficulty all researchers have in fully believing in their data. The doubts and role conflict are exacerbated for insider researchers studying their own practice. This overlay of role relationships and role conflict are not ideal conditions for the ideal research speech situation (Dadds, 1991), for many unknowable motivations and stories may lie beneath the spoken words and deeds of field participants (Stronach, 1989). We do well to remember this when we are creating our theories. We can develop our methodologies in response but ultimately, we have to live with our inevitable doubts. To this end, one measure I employed was to invite uncomfortable and critical data about the effects of the course on teachers and practice at several points in the research. Some such uncomfortable data were forthcoming in the Springfield case. These spoke of the disruption to the smooth running of staffing arrangements and to the management of Vicki’s class caused by her day release. A supply teacher was required one day weekly to release Vicki to attend the course. Extra planning, preparation and coordination were therefore required of Vicki, the supply teacher and senior management to optimize teaching continuity. There was, however, added pressure and disruption on Vicki, her colleagues and her pupils. Vicki’s school colleague, Jeff, spoke assertively of this and of the added stress on Vicki from doing the course; of her tiredness as a result. Vicki spoke openly, too, of difficulties in her own learning.

Disconcerting though some of these data were to me as course tutor, they helped to provide some reassurance; they helped me to place more faith in the constantly ‘comfortable’ data, for I had evidence that Springfield participants were not reticent in feeding back ‘uncomfortable’ perspectives. Also, the openness of the Springfield teachers and headteacher seemed in itself to be evidence of the integrity of the data. Pauline and I ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Vicki: Teacher Action Researcher
• Chapter 3 Seeing Changes and Development
• Chapter 4 Developing the Humanities Curriculum at Springfield School
• Chapter 5 Learning About Children with Special Needs
• Chapter 6 The Gendered Curriculum at Springfield School
• Chapter 7 Valuing Teacher Action Research
• Chapter 8 Valuing Knowledge and Understanding
• Chapter 9 Valuing Text
• Chapter 10 Valuing Action
• Chapter 11 Valuing Development
• Chapter 12 Valuing Collaboration
• Chapter 13 Final Reflections
• Chapter 14 Summary
• Bibliography
• Index