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A REVIEW OF WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT TEACHERS’
ENGAGEMENT WITH AND IN EDUCATIONAL
RESEARCH AND A SUMMARY OF WORK THAT LOOKS
AT PARTICIPATING IN RESEARCH FROM THE
TEACHERS’ POINT OF VIEW
Rachel Lofthouse, David Leat, Anna Reid
Newcastle University
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Modes of engagement in educational research
Colleen McLaughlin (2004) suggests that three purposes
can be discerned in the teacher research tradition
• Research and enquiry undertaken for primarily personal purposes
• Research and enquiry undertaken for primarily political purposes
• Research and enquiry undertaken for primarily school improvement
purposes.
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Wider history
Kurt Lewin (1946) first used the term ‘action research’ to describe
‘research that will help the practitioner’
Lawrence Stenhouse and John Elliott by Stenhouse (1981), in which
the ‘teacher as researcher’ is at the centre of curriculum development
and nothing is taken for granted. From this theoretical perspective the
focus of teachers’ research should be on how to effect worthwhile
curriculum change in their classrooms and schools, through systematic
inquiry.
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Evidence of teachers’ voice
Three main sources
• Small scale systematic literature review
• Key informants
• Our own research experiences and reading.
Range of evidence
• Researchers’ interpretation of experience and evidence gained in
collaborative projects
• Teachers’ voices quoted by researchers
Very little evidence of teachers’ voice in their own words.
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Questions and themes
Core questions
• What are teachers’ reported
experiences and perceptions of
engagement in and with teacher
research?
• What do teachers indicate as
conditions which support or constrain
this engagement?
• How do these voices and views
contribute to an understanding of the
wider culture of schools and teacher
professionalism?
Themes
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Purpose
2
Trust, collaboration and relationships
3
Research support and teacher
agency
4
Learning and affective response
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Contradictions and conflicts.
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Theme 1: Purpose
Purpose can be represented as a dimension with two poles:
School control
Teacher control
This dynamic is complicated if there is another entity involved
especially if that ‘entity’ brings critically. e.g.
• HE researchers,
• a course (such as M.Ed),
• a network.
Increasingly school control is a proxy for the influence of government
policy – teacher research in school improvement mode.
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Theme 2:
Trust, collaboration and relationships
In high trust environments where there are strong personal
relationships, professionals are more likely to take
considered risks and share the outcomes or consequences
of their actions.
In low trust environments, it is much harder to step outside
of habitual behaviours and challenge norms.
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Theme 3:
Research support and teacher agency
Support from HE researchers can be vital both for
assistance in research processes and providing a valuable
reference point
Newman and Mowbray (2012) found real teacher
admiration for their university lead partner:
I think the support of the leader of the group … her expertise, research
skills as a practitioner and as an academic was absolutely invaluable.
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Theme 4: Learning and affective response
Teachers are generally very positive about their experiences of engaging in research, and
US evidence suggests that research re-professionalises
Kershner et al. (2013) drawing on interviews with 15 teachers in a two year, partnership
masters programme identify 6 aspects of personal and professional learning:
• being a learner;
• learning as part of professional practice;
• widening repertoire;
• changing as a learner;
• personal growth
• adaptive practice.
A trainee primary teacher quoted from England in Medwell and Wray (2014):
I have really contributed to new knowledge. It’s made think about that … it has made me
think a lot more than I do when I am on planning and evaluating treadmill
This suggests that research is to a degree an antidote to current pressures.
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Theme 5: Contradiction and conflict
Performativity (the targets culture) is a constraint and teachers’ experiences of research
leads them to challenge aspects of school policy
Many masters students engaging in professional inquiries are unsettled by looking at
learning from student perspectives and reading authors such as Stephen Ball, David
Berliner, Jo Boaler and Robin Alexander.
Reeves and Drew (2013) gathered evidence from Chartered Teachers and found friction
between school improvement as a short term, closed process and action research as a
more open discursive process:
There is a difference between our (teachers’) understanding of collaboration and the SMT’s
definition of collaboration. The SMT find it quite scary that teachers will come up with the
content of the project and they are nervous about the whole thing because they don’t feel they
have control.
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Theme 5: Contradiction and conflict
• In the Learning To Learn project, contradiction and conflict were never far away
(Higgins et al., 2007):
• Well it is the initiative …overload really and accountability. The government and their initiatives and
the data driven thing, and it does definitely get in the way as you have different pressures and it is
not always what you believe in and what you feel is right … it is all the time, you are not performing,
your results are not good enough and now the self-evaluation. It (the project) is brilliant in some
ways but it does add a lot of pressure because you are continually feeling that you have to be
Ofsted ready all the time.
• … we are not as enthusiastic as we were… The things that haven’t helped are when you are
discouraged from the point of view that you feel not valued, that your work isn’t valued… The other
thing that hasn’t helped is that we are not allowed to disseminate as such to other people. We did
have one opportunity to give one session feedback but the Head looked disinterested and the rest of
the staff felt that it wasn’t particularly important.
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Theme 5: Contradiction and conflict
• HE researchers (reflecting one discourse) can find it difficult to engage with schools as
institutions reflecting a dominant political discourse, as illustrated in Jones & Stanley
(2010) :
• They argue that action research involving university researchers and ‘public
stakeholders’ challenges the democratic traditions that underpin critical enquiry. They
attribute this friction to a context of micro-politics, embedded in a culture of
performativity, driven by national agendas. Thus there were disagreements over
obtaining parental consent, questionnaire design, the tone of reports and content of
journal articles.
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Making sense of the themes
We see an important distinction
between:
• Research as a body of knowledge
This emphasises the varying
potential impact on teachers’
thinking. It echoes Barnett & Coate’s
(2005) differentiation between
knowing, acting and being:
(noun)
• The domain of ‘knowing’ refers to the
• Research as a professional learning
core knowledge of a discipline.
process (verb)
• ‘Acting’ foregrounds skills and actions
• Research as a social practice (a set
of norms and values)
networking in all kinds of situations … it’s
kind of like being a busybody
that students are expected to master and
refers to how a student’s expertise grows
and develops through activity.
• The domain of ‘being’ denotes the
formation of student’s personality and
identity.
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Making space
The metaphor of space is a recurring theme in writing about professionals
trying to construct alternatives
For example in the context of Scottish Qualification for Headship (SQH), an
example of a hybrid between CPD and teacher inquiry, Reeves and Forde
(2004) see the members of the course encountering three ‘spaces’
•
Space generated by the workplace
•
Space generated by the course
•
Space in the workplace ‘conceived as a set of permissions to enact the values and
knowledge acquired in the course/project environment’.
If you are committed to being a learner and wanting to change and improve, and do things in a different way, and not being
afraid of doing that then people have to have permission.
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Recognising other voices
When teachers engage in research
they break their routines – and they
are exposed to alternative
viewpoints/voices. E.g.
• Pupils
• Peers
• Influential academic writers
• Network or partnership leaders
• Speakers at conferences
• Adults other than teachers
(including teaching assistants and
parents).
These voices can be very influential,
promoting spoken and internal
dialogues, which often result in new
personal perspectives or even
transformations (Hermans, 2001).
it then developed on to talking to other
colleagues about what they felt was central
to developing learning for themselves and
for the children … it was just really
fascinating to be able to have that
professional conversation and really unpick
what people feel are important for them and
what they feel is important to school and
children
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Conclusions and implications
Local ecologies for teacher
research
The importance of
curriculum development
It is vital for the efficacy and integrity of
the teaching profession that there are
local conditions, within or across schools,
which allow teachers to hear other
voices, as well as hearing the ‘official
line’.
There should be a strong relationship
between teacher research and the
curriculum.
This is harder to manage but ultimately
more democratic.
This would address some of the tension
between teacher researchers and their
school leaders who are over-exposed to
narrow modes of accountability.
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References
Barnett, R. & Coate, K. (2005). Engaging the curriculum in higher education, Berkshire, UK: McGraw-Hill Education.
Hermans, H. (2001) 'The dialogical self: Toward a theory of personal and cultural positioning', Culture & Psychology, 7(3), pp. 243281.
Jones, M. & Stanley, G. (2010). Collaborative action research: a democratic undertaking or a web of collusion and compliance?
International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 33 ,151–163.
Kershner, R., Pedder, D. & Doddington, C. (2013) Professional learning during a schools–university partnership Master of
Education course: teachers’ perspectives of their learning experiences, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice
Lewin, K. (1946) 'Action research and minority problems', Journal of Social Issues, 2(4), pp. 34-46.
McLaughlin, C. (2004) Partners in research: what's in it for you? Teacher Development, 8 (2-3). pp. 127-136.
Medwell, J. & Wray, D. (2014) Pre-service teachers undertaking classroom research: developing reflection and enquiry skills,
Journal of Education for Teaching: International research and pedagogy, Vol. 40(1), pp. 65-77.
Newman, L. and Mowbray, S. (2012): ‘We were expected to be equal’: teachers and academics sharing professional learning
through practitioner inquiry’, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 18(4), pp. 455-468.
Reeves, J. and Drew, V. (2013) ‘A Productive Relationship? Testing the Connections between Professional Learning and
Practitioner Research’, Scottish Educational Review, 45(2), pp. 36-49.
Reeves, J. & Forde, C., 2004. The social dynamics of changing practice. Cambridge Journal of Education, 34, 85-102.
Stenhouse, L. (1981) 'What counts as research?', British Journal of Educational Studies, 29(2), pp. 103-114.