Research and the Teacher

A Qualitative Introduction to School-based Research

Graham Hitchcock, David Hughes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134854592
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This highly successful introductory text has been updated in the light of recent legislative changes in education - such as the introduction of teacher appraisal, and the move towards more heavily school-based training. The book's guiding principle remains simple: how to produce school-based research that is both useful and rigorous. It offers a clear account of the research process and provides a sound basis from which teachers can realistically conduct school-based research projects. New sections in this second edition include: * a discussion of the impact of feminism on educational research * further coverage of action research and case study research, and * advice on writing up research. The authors have also updated their invaluable annotated further reading lists for each chapter.

Part I
Designs and approaches

1 Introduction

AIMS

We aim to try and do a number of things in this book which we hope will be of value and significance to teachers working in a variety of contexts. Essentially, our aim is to provide teachers, from those working with reception classes to those in further and higher education, with a knowledge and understanding of just how they might go about researching their own practice. However, this is not a simple ‘how to do it’ text. Many complex issues surround, for example, the nature of particular research strategies; what, in fact, to research in the first place, or even what counts as acceptable evidence. These and other questions will all need to be explored and some kind of answers provided. In this book we aim to:

• Provide an understanding of the kinds of relationships which can exist between teaching, teachers and research.
• Develop skills for the critical assessment of evidence about school/college educational processes.
• Present an account of some of the main methodological orientations in social and educational research in general and qualitative research in particular.
• Provide a ‘hands on’ appreciation of major qualitative research techniques.
• Emphasize the socially situated nature of research, and
• Enable teachers to design, conduct and evaluate small-scale research into teaching and learning by use of a variety of qualitative research techniques.

This book is written from a firm commitment that there is an important relationship between teaching, teacher research and reflection. We are not arguing that all teachers must become social/educational researchers. We are arguing that a knowledge and understanding of research and critical inquiry will help teachers to assess more effectively the quality and significance of evidence and claims about teaching and learning. We are arguing, and many initial and in-service and post-graduate courses back this up, that teachers can develop the kinds of skills needed to engage in small-scale research into their own practice and that this is an integral aspect of professional self- and critical reflection and development. A number of ideas and questions are tangled up here. These include:

• What constitutes teaching?
• What is a teacher?
• What counts as research?
• What is reflection and how can it be developed?

We will take each of these in turn and unravel the ideas and assumptions entailed in them, thus setting the scene for our vision of teachers as researchers.

TEACHING

What might constitute an all-encompassing definition of teaching in the 1990s is certainly debatable. Obviously, teaching is that which goes on between teachers and learners in classrooms, but it is also an activity which can take place in a variety of settings and with markedly different groups of learners. What then seems essential to the notion of teaching? Teaching involves the application of technical and professional skills and knowledge to particular situations. It must necessarily involve teachers making judgements in the light of these skills and knowledge. Teachers will, therefore, have to have certain levels of underpinning knowledge, whether it be technical or traditional academic subject knowledge, as well as the skills and competencies required for delivery of that knowledge, and the management of the learning environment. Since teaching and learning are social activities it is reasonable to assume that teaching will be based upon an understanding of the learning process and the specifics of child development and adult learning, for example.

Whilst no one would, we feel, disagree with the above description in broad terms, the particular configurations of these elements which may be regarded as producing effective teaching, is a controversial matter indeed. Most notable are the debates over ‘formal’ versus ‘informal’ teaching styles or the need to get ‘back to basics’. The evaluation of policies, curricula and pedagogic practices is an important aspect of educational research. Hence, whilst on the one hand the notion of teaching is self-evident, on the other hand, it is clearly not.

TEACHERS

Although teachers are professionals, they are also individual human beings. Many reforms over the last few years have failed to grasp the important factor that changes in education also involves changes in teachers’ lives. We regard this as so important that we have devoted a whole chapter to the significance of individual biography in understanding the teaching and learning process. Teaching is made up of individual teachers and these individuals all have their own personal and career histories, their own personalities, their own attitudes, values and experiences. Their views and experiences are shaped by their past, their gender, age and ethnicity. All these factors, or variables have a role to play. Most teachers nowadays will have come into direct contact with ‘research’ either in the form of accepted wisdoms, evidence and information gained through training, or from further study or in-service courses.

Unlike, for example, the education of nurses, teaching has never been wholly ‘research based’. Yet, research has often been referred to as providing the evidence for preferred curricular, classroom or pedagogic options. What individual teachers choose to do with, or make of, research is what concerns us. Research and reflection, as we will define them shortly, are regarded by us as central ingredients in the individual professional development of teachers. The skills of either conducting research or being able to assess research evidence, and the ability to engage in critical self-reflection, have major advantages for professional development. Teaching can become more than simply the application of technical and professional skills and knowledge, and teachers become more than simply practitioners. This, of course, begs the question of what we mean by research and reflection.

RESEARCH

As we use the term here, ‘research’ refers to ‘systematic inquiry’, inquiry that is characterized by sets of principles, guidelines for procedures and which is subject to evaluation in terms of criteria such as validity, reliability and representativeness. In this sense, ‘social research’ refers both to the collection and analysis of information on the social world, in order to understand and explain that world better. ‘Educational research’ or ‘classroom research’ is based on the world of education. Research, therefore, refers to the process of obtaining and analysing information and data. ‘Research finding’ refers to the products of that research. Both the process of researching and research findings must be looked at critically and with a fair degree of caution. We will try to show how this can be done.

The link between teaching and research is a complex one. It is our view that research has and continues to contribute much of significance to our understanding of the educational process. Research can function to generate questions about teaching and learning. It can explore and test existing theories and explanations. Research can be used to open up difficult and problematic areas, providing descriptions of them and through evaluation studies, research can focus upon the effectiveness of existing curricular and pedagogic policies and processes.

Definitions of kinds of research

Research is often prefixed by words such as ‘pure’, ‘basic’, ‘applied’ or ‘action’. What do each of these terms mean, and what are the connections, if any, between them? A distinction is often drawn between ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ research. It is often argued that pure research is not primarily concerned to develop understanding of practical problems but rather to advance knowledge within a particular area of human life or one academic discipline. Whereas applied research is in no way less rigorous in its approach, its attention is focused on certain issues from the beginning. An example is modern research into learning theory which, while extending general knowledge, has as one of its objectives the application of its findings to a number of areas. The point is that applied research seeks generalizations from a large number of cases and the link between the research findings and their application need not be immediate. Another feature of applied research is that the link between those who do the research and those who apply it need not normally be a close one. The dissemination of information is often secondhand, via books, articles and teaching.

Action research, on the other hand, which has often been put forward as the model for teacher-researchers to adopt, might be described as inquiry conducted on a particular issue of current concern, usually undertaken by those directly involved, with the aim of implementing a change in a specific situation. Cohen and Manion (1986) have drawn the distinctions between action research and applied research by suggesting that the conditions which usually govern applied research are somewhat more relaxed in action research since the latter focuses upon a specific situation or problem in a specific setting (Cohen and Manion 1986:209).

In contrast, by ‘evaluation’ we mean the systematic study of a particular programme or set of events over a period of time in order to assess effectiveness. This kind of research may be a case of simple appraisal carried out by an individual teacher into an aspect of curriculum, or a nationally conducted survey, such as that currently being undertaken by the National Foun-dation for Education Research into the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI). The emphasis in evaluation is on the assessment of the effectiveness of a particular programme or how well it has worked in terms of its aims.

Underlying these various definitions of research are debates about the relationship between research and practice. Nowhere is this more crucial than in research undertaken by the teachers’ research movement:

• Is the role of educational or teacher research to provide tips for teachers?
• Is the goal of research the development of more effective teaching strategies?
• Alternatively, ought research to throw light on the social and cultural processes which affect a student’s learning or help teachers and policy-makers obtain a better understanding of the context in which teaching and learning takes place?

It is clear that teacher research can embrace any of these aims. Teachers may find themselves engaged at different times in a variety of types of research, each having rather different aims.

Teacher research refers to the research that the practising teacher is able to conduct in the context of immediate professional practice. This utilizes and modifies the insights and procedures of social and educational research in applying them to school or college circumstances.

In this sense, research will have a number of benefits. Carrying out research will encourage a systematic approach to the collection of information and, furthermore, will help to develop a respect for evidence which, in turn, will lead to more critically informed opinions. Those involved in research will have the opportunity to rethink assumptions. A distinction may instantly be drawn between professional researchers and teacher-researchers.

Despite the fact that the number of teachers with research experience has grown over recent years, teachers are not professional academic researchers they are teachers. For many, the terms ‘teacher’ and ‘research’ are mutually exclusive. Doubts are raised about the knowledge base from which teachers might carry out research. Their jobs are so demanding, it is argued, that they simply have no time in which to do any research. Furthermore, they have not received any training in the skills required and lack the appropriate objectivity or distance from the subject of their research. Although many argue, quite rightly, that teachers should be made more familiar with the assumptions and methods of educational research so that they might better evaluate its products, the process of researching itself is best left to professional researchers.

In contrast, we have taken a rather different view of the relationship between teaching and research. Whilst not underestimating the difficulties involved in teachers undertaking research, we emphasize the importance, positive value and excitement of teacher school-based research. There is also an important sense in which teacher research, viewed as a critical, reflexive and professionally oriented activity, might be regarded as a crucial ingredient in the teacher’s professional role. This ought to have the effect not only of enhancing the teacher’s professional status but also of generating self-knowledge and personal development in such a way that practice of teaching can be improved. It should also have the additional advantage of enhancing the intellectual status of teachers as they demonstrate these skills in numerous aspects of their work. However, we are not saying that teachers must become researchers, but, rather, that engagement with the process and products of research can enhance professional development.

Another view which is often expressed is that teachers themselves have little regard for the findings of conventional educational research, seeing it as having limited, if any, practical value. They are especially critical, it is contended, of the divorce (as they perceive it) between theory and practice, and to the abstract and alien language of the social sciences of which conventional educational research is part. The obscurity of the language and the high level of generality implied in much research has often resulted in teachers perceiving this work as being remote and divorced from their needs and situations. This has led some to argue that, whereas teachers should engage in systematic inquiry into their practice, such research should have a strictly pedagogic intent, and teachers need not become over-involved in the methodological issues of social science.

Here again, we will argue a different viewpoint. Although research into education, especially that undertaken by teachers, has its own individual focus, schools inhabit the same world that is explored by all social scientists. That being the case, educational research cannot divorce itself completely from the methodological issues which social science research raises, nor from understanding the language in which such research is conducted. As such, it is important for teachers considering undertaking research into their own practice (at whatever level) to acquire an appreciation of the frameworks within which research has been discussed and practised in the social sciences. Any piece of social or educational research is informed by some basic underlying assumptions and employs certain procedures. It is vital, therefore, to know what these are in order to carry out research and to assess in any meaningful way the products of such research. Our ideas are reinforced by the increasing amount of research which is now being conducted by teachers, some of it being published, and by the enthusiastic way in which some of the teachers we have worked with have tackled the methodological and substantive issues raised by investigations of topics such as gender and schooling, multicultural issues, parental involvement, and mainstreaming children with special educational needs. An understanding of models of research design in education and the human sciences is important since both conventional educational research and that which is applied to the solution of particular problems undertaken by professional academics and others has always been closely linked to educational policy and training. The modern teacher needs, in our view, to be equipped to understand the methodologies and language that und...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• FIGURES
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• PART I: DESIGNS AND APPROACHES
• PART II: QUALITATIVE RESEARCH TECHNIQUES
• PART III: QUALITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS, CASE STUDY AND WRITING
• REFERENCES