Small-Scale Research in Primary Schools

A Reader for Learning and Professional Development

Kimberly Safford, Mary Stacey, Roger Hancock

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134722983
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica generale

Small-scale Research in Primary Schools provides guidance and inspiration for students and practitioners undertaking practical investigations and workplace enquiry in the primary school. The 30 chapters are carefully selected to illustrate a range of approaches to educational enquiry, and are particularly relevant to the range of practitioners who may carry out school-based research as part of a course of study: teachers, trainee- and newly-qualified teachers, teaching assistants, learning mentors and staff who support children with individual needs.

Research topics addressed in chapters include children's learning in the core curriculum subjects as well as themes central to teaching and learning. Important concepts and terminology are highlighted throughout. More specifically, areas of research explored include:

• Play
• Special Educational Needs
• Working with parents and families
• English as an Additional Language
• Creativity
• Language development
• Learning environments

Small-scale Research in Primary Schools provides a straightforward, highly accessible introduction to enquiry approaches and research methodologies, and the questions and challenges adults in schools encounter about children's learning. It shows how small-scale research in primary education can impact on professional thinking and learning. It aims to provide constructive support for students and practitioners in extending their knowledge and understanding through workplace enquiry.

Part 1

Contexts for small-scale research

Learning lives and professional roles

Chapter 1

Approaches to small-scale enquiry and research in primary schools

Kimberly Safford and Roger Hancock

Personal enquiry in professional contexts

The term ‘action research’ was coined by Kurt Lewin in 1944. It is a form of enquiry which can involve research with – rather than ‘on’ – others. It is now recognised as a significant means of academic and professional development for school staff, and a way of better understanding school routines and practices which may sometimes be taken for granted (see, for example, Shakir-Costa and Haddad, 2009; Taylor et al., 2006). The accounts in this Reader cover a large territory in educational enquiry, but chapters have a clear unifying aspect: they all arise from questions, concerns, puzzles or problems encountered by practitioners who then carried out enquiries ‘at the chalk face’ in and around school settings to better understand what they practice and experience.

The enquiries gathered here are evidence of the many opportunities practitioners have for investigations into children’s learning and school life. These opportunities are sometimes because a concern or problem emerges from a specific child or a group of children (Chapter 18 on including children with ADHD in mainstream schools); other enquiries involve collaboration between school staff and outside researchers (Chapter 5 on home–school knowledge exchange activities). In other cases, school staff create participatory enquiries, where children and adults work together on shared projects (Chapter 14, What language do you speak at home?). Enquiries can explore the links between children’s experiences in school and outside school (Chapter 9 on children and television gender roles; Chapter 28 on children’s online writing). They can examine school practices and effective pedagogies (Chapter 15, Achieving successful home–school links with refugees). They may reflect collective aims for professional development (Chapter 17 on including disabled children in school playgrounds) and small steps in understanding one child who frustrates or fascinates (Chapter 20 on individual management plans). All of these focuses for learning – in and around school, in personal and professional contexts, with groups and individuals – are opportunities where, through enquiry, adults who work with children can develop what Nancy Martin has called ‘conscious competence – a heightened awareness of what you do’.

If I set out to find an answer to some classroom matter, I am a learner; but in engaging in this enquiry, I am initiating a small piece of research: I am both learner and researcher – two sides of the same coin.

(Nancy Martin 1987: 204)

The small-scale enquiries that we bring together here can be seen as forms of personalised learning which place ‘the self in research’ (Conteh et al., 2005). In the same way that we acknowledge different starting points for children’s development and understanding, enquiry-based learning takes account of adults’ different starting points, histories, careers, roles and learning pathways. Throughout this Reader we suggest the notions of enquiry, investigation or ‘research’ therefore have a dual meaning: enquiry into children’s learning, and enquiry into further adult understanding and learning.

Approaches and methodologies

Stenhouse (1981) defined research as ‘systematic enquiry, made public’. This perspective of what ‘counts’ as research enables school staff to consider small, even idiosyncratic features of children’s learning and behaviour. According to Walter Humes of the University of Strathclyde (2001), in small-scale research based on personal and professional experience ‘methodological purity is an illusion’. Enquiries need to take place in active, unpredictable places (classrooms and schools) and rely chiefly on observational and behavioural data, particularly language data. They may be seen to lack the rigour of a scientific investigation, of course, but they are not usually set up in ways which endeavour to follow scientific methods. Such investigations usually have a short time frame and must take place within day-to-day routines. Results may not be generalizable or replicable, because small-scale inquiries tend to be studies of single instances or cases; conclusions may be subjective, because data is gathered and evaluated by those who are intimately involved in a particular process or context.

Such research however can contribute significantly to the practice and knowledge of the enquirers and of others within the focus of the study. The ‘learner-researcher’ role (as Nancy Martin earlier characterised practice-based enquiry) highlights deeply personal as well as professional dimensions of development. Interpretations of data will reflect specific local circumstances and individuals, and are unlikely to make grand claims. In small-scale workplace enquiry, issues of size and subjectivity, validity and reliability are approached and defined differently to what John Furlong of the British Educational Research Association (BERA) characterised as the ‘Big Science’ model of research, as Table 1.1 below indicates.

Table 1.1 Differences between personal workplace enquiry and ‘Big Science’ research^∗

Topic	‘Big Science’ research	Personal workplace enquiry
Goals of the research	Knowledge which advances current thinking, can be generalised and have wide impact	Understanding which helps make sense of a specific situation, can influence a local context and personal practice
Training which the researcher requires	Background of training in a variety of research methods	Experience gained through the process of supported study and workplace enquiry
Method of identifying the question to be studied	Extensive review of previous research (literature review) and a wish to add to this body of knowledge	Curiosity about something observed or experienced in practice; a puzzle or problem in practice
Approach to research ‘informants’ (those to be ‘studied’)	Random or representative sample; no direct relationship to researcher	Collaborative, possibly drawing upon those you know and work with
Approach to research design and validity	Control of variables, control groups, lengthy time frame, consistency of method for collecting data	Diverse perspectives, short time fame, mixed methods which take account of individual and local circumstances
Analysis of data	Use of quantitative and/or qualitative theoretical frameworks to identify significan statistical trends	Looking for themes or patterns which highlight practical rather than statistical relevance
Application of results	Significance for theory building, impact on policy	Significance for personal understanding (What did I learn?) and potential developments in practice (What might I change?)

∗ Adapted from Indiana University, ‘Classroom Action Research Overview’ http://mypage.iusb.edu/~gmetteta/
Classroom_Action_Research.html

In his 2003 inaugural presidential address to BERA, Furlong argued for greater recognition of practitioner enquiry in educational contexts and less privileging of the ‘Big Science’ model of research. A key aspect of personal enquiry in relation to this Reader is that adults who teach and support children are not detached and looking from a distance but are potentially privileged ‘insider’ enquirers; this is arguably a sound researcher position or ‘stance’ which makes such workplace enquiries more, not less, valid for those involved.

Questions arising from experience

As we have said, enquiry-based learning begins with a query arising from practice, and all adults who teach and support children’s learning frequently encounter such queries and puzzles:

• Why does a child find learning maths quite easy but writing and spelling quite hard?
• Why does a child behave well when working with me alone but not well when working with me in a group?
• What does a child with a physical disability think about my support in PE lessons?

Questions such as these create an instant interplay between children’s learning and adults’ learning, where gaining an understanding of the child’s experience is linked to the practitioner’s personal and professional insights and capacities, for example:

• I want to find out why a child finds writing difficult because this will help me support her more effectively, and our school development plan is for improvements in writing;
• I want to learn how children decide where to play as this will enable me to plan creatively and inclusively for playground activities and resources;
• I want to better understand children’s singing development so I can confidently lead music sessions.

Small-scale enquiries like the ones above aim of course to shed light on issues which regularly arise in day-to-day practice. As a result, they have great potential to enhance the knowledge, skills and understanding of practitioners.

It is often the nature of small-scale enquiry to be more concerned with words rather than numbers, so information from such enquiries tends to be qualitative and interpretive rather than quantitative and ‘countable’. Classroom research, when reported to others, is often presented as a narrative or story, drawing upon children’s and adults’ words and actions (see, for example, Chapter 29 by Ann Bailey and Britta Little on creativity and verbal development, and Chapter 25 by Anna Traianou on the classroom discussions and language that support children’s learning of a scientific concept like ‘friction’). This type of account, focusing on language and behaviour, is usually created through gathering observations, interviews and collection of relevant documents such as children’s writing or drawings, school records or classroom planning. Qualitative, interpretive research can also be carried out with photographs (see Chapter 11 by Michelle Newman and colleagues). Quantitative research, lends itself to graphic presentations (see Chapter 24 by Min Wilkie) and such countable information can also strengthen narrative, interpretive information. Small-scale enquiry can, of course, combine numerical and narrative approaches, and drawing upon a range of information enables adults to create more holistic responses to puzzles and questions which arise in classrooms.

As an example: a teacher and a teaching assistant notice that some Year 3 children always seem to prefer to stay in the classroom during playtime. They are curious about why this is so, because the school has recently refurbished and improved the playground to make it more attractive to all children. They plan a small enquiry which they can undertake in their day-to-day work. As a first step, the teaching assistant counts, over a week, how many boys and girls go outside and how many children stay inside during the morning playtime; this initial activity informs her that there is a gendered pattern to the children’s behaviour. In the second week, the teaching assistant and the teacher make two playtime observations of what children do in the playground and in the classroom during playtime; they make notes during the observations and later discuss and write down further thoughts about what they observed. The teaching assistant then organises an informal, voluntary ‘focus group’ discussion during a lunch time, inviting four children (two girls and two boys) to talk with her about their choices for playtime and she takes notes on their views. Later that afternoon, the teacher invites the whole class to complete a simple, anonymous questionnaire about their playtime likes and dislikes.

Within a short period of time the teacher and the teaching assistant have created four interesting ‘sets’ of information, or data: counting, observation, discussion and questionnaire. To place their information in a wider context and to compare their local experiences to other perspectives, they look on the internet for what government policy and other researchers have to say about school playgrounds and playtimes; in ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1 Contexts for small-scale research Learning lives and professional roles
• Part 2 Contexts for small-scale research Understanding children's experiences and learning environments
• Part 3 Contexts for small-scale research Understanding diversity, inclusion and barriers to learning
• Part 4 Contexts for small-scale research Children, adults and the primary curriculum
• Index