Notes for the Tuesday evening session 27/09/05 with Jack Whitehead on educational enquiries and research methods in education.

In this first session, I'll be asking you to share some experiences in which you feel yourself expressing what really matters to you in education. I'll also be asking you to share some recent experiences where you feel a tension because something connected with your pupils' learning could be improved. I want to do this because I find that educational enquiries that really matter in improving education often emerge from a desire to improve something that isn't working as well as we think that it could do.

I am thinking of educational enquiries that focus on improving our educational influences in our own learning, in the learning of our pupils and in the learning of social formations in which we live and work.

Because of my focus on education as a value-laden practical activity I want to emphasise the importance of our embodied knowledge as educators – the knowledge that we live and express in our educational relationships. I also tend to stress the importance of video-data and visual narratives in explanations of our educational influences in learning. Here are five short video-clips which can be accessed from the web (with broadband) and which will serve to communicate my own values and assumptions about the quality of education we are striving for in our own classrooms. The first three clips are from a classroom in Croatia in June 2005, with 10-year-old pupils as action researchers working to improve their own learning with their teachers and a university pedagogue, Branko Bognar. They focus on the action research process, on creativity and on validity. The fourth and fifth clips show Moira Laidlaw's educational relationship with her Year 8 pupil, Hayley, from 2000 and with her education students at Guyuan Teachers College in October 2004. Moira is just beginning her fifth year of Voluntary Service Overseas as an advisor to China's Experimental Centre for Educational Action Research in Foreign Language Teaching. If you have broadband and are willing to wait several minutes for the clips to download you can access them from the live urls in the notes I'm working on about extending the educational influences of Branko Bognar and Moira Laidlaw at http://www.jackwhitehead.com/jwbbmlpaper.htm

I'd also like to introduce two ideas about educational enquiry and research methods in education and connect them to the third idea that you can directly connect your enquiries and research methods, through the creation of your own living educational theories, to the processes of improving pupils' learning in your own classrooms, in families, schools, communities and each others' professional contexts and practices.

I'm also curious about whether you would like to explore with me, in your enquiries, the implications of a fourth idea, that of 'whiteness'. I'm wondering how relevant it might be to your enquiries to engage with the idea that our educational influences in our own learning, in the learning of others and in the learning of social formations could be enhanced through extending our understandings of ideas on anti-racism, multi-cultural education and postcolonial critical pedagogy.

The first idea is that in your educational enquiries of the kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing?' in the contexts of your own professional learning and in helping others (pupils and perhaps parents and colleagues) to improve their learning, you find yourself using a disciplined action reflection cycle such as:

I experience a concern when my values are not being lived as fully as I think they can.

I imagine what I can do to improve matters and form these ideas into an action plan.

I act and gather data to enable me to make a judgement on the effectiveness of my actions.

I evaluate the effectiveness of my actions in terms of my values, skills and understandings.

I modify my concerns, ideas and actions in the light of my evaluations.

I imagine that you will recognise this form of educational enquiry in which you influence your own learning. What I will be focusing on is working with you to share your account of your educational influence in your own learning. I do hope you will access Jean McNiff's website and browse through the resources Jean has made available. You can access Jean's website with the Action Research Booklet that will introduce you to action research (this is also a celebration of our 21 years of working together) at http://www.jeanmcniff.com

The second idea concerns research methods in education and makes a distinction between research methods in education that are derived from the disciplines of the philosophy, psychology, sociology, history, economics, politics, management and leadership of education and the research methods in education that emerge from your own practical educational enquiries of the kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing?' I like the way Marian Dadds and Susan Hart describe methodological inventiveness in relation to this distinction:

" The importance of methodological inventiveness

Perhaps the most important new insight for both of us has been awareness that, for some practitioner researchers, creating their own unique way through their research may be as important as their self-chosen research focus. We had understood for many years that substantive choice was fundamental to the motivation and effectiveness of practitioner research (Dadds 1995); that what practitioners chose to research was important to their sense of engagement and purpose. But we had understood far less well that how practitioners chose to research, and their sense of control over this, could be equally important to their motivation, their sense of identity within the research and their research outcomes." (Dadds & Hart, p. 166, 2001)

If our aim is to create conditions that facilitate methodological inventiveness, we need to ensure as far as possible that our pedagogical approaches match the message that we seek to communicate. More important than adhering to any specific methodological approach, be it that of traditional social science or traditional action research. may be the willingness and courage or practitioners – and those who support them – to create enquiry approaches that enable new, valid understandings to develop; understandings that empower practitioners to improve their work for the beneficiaries in their care. Practitioner research methodologies are with us to serve professional practices. So what genuinely matters are the purposes of practice which the research seeks to serve, and the integrity with which the practitioner researcher makes methodological choices about ways of achieving those purposes. No methodology is, or should, cast in stone, if we accept that professional intention should be informing research processes, not pre-set ideas about methods of techniques... (Dadds & Hart, p. 169, 2001)

Dadds, M. & Hart, S. (2001) Doing Practitioner Research Differently. London; RoutledgeFalmer.

Because I want you to feel confident that you are on the inside of current debates about the nature of educational research and enquiry and I am asking you to look at and respond to Geoff Whitty's 2005 Presidential Address to BERA on the 17^th September 2005. You can access this paper in pdf format from http://www.bera.ac.uk/pdfs/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20Bera2005_presidential-address_CircFin.pdf

The third idea is that in producing explanations of your educational influences in your own learning, in the learning of others and in the learning of social formations you are creating your own living educational theories. The importance for our professional knowledge base of the living theories of educators like ourselves can be understood in relation to a mistake that was made in the approach to educational theory that held that it was constituted by the disciplines of the philosophy, psychology, sociology and history of education:

Much understanding of educational theory will be developed:

"... in the context of immediate practical experience and will be co-terminous with everyday understanding. In particular, many of its operational principles, both explicit and implicit, will be of their nature generalisations from practical experience and have as their justification the results of individual activities and practices.

In many characterisations of educational theory, my own included, principles justified in this way have until recently been regarded as at best pragmatic maxims having a first crude and superficial justification in practice that in any rationally developed theory would be replaced by principles with more fundamental, theoretical justification. That now seems to me to be a mistake. Rationally defensible practical principles, I suggest, must of their nature stand up to such practical tests and without that are necessarily inadequate." (Hirst, 1983, p. 18)

Hirst, P. (Ed.) (1983) Educational Theory and its Foundation Disciplines. London; RKP

It was the recognition of this mistake in 1971 that changed the emphasis of my vocation in education from enhancing the quality of education within schools through teaching to reconstructing educational theory through educational research in the Academy. Hence, in 1973, I moved from a post as Head of Science at Erkenwald Comprehensive School in Barking to become a Lecturer in Education at the University of Bath. I imagine that you are like me in experiencing one of the pleasures in living a productive life in education in seeing that something one has produced is of value in the life and learning of another. In seeking to live such a life as an educator I enquire into enhancing my educational influence in my own learning, in the learning of others and in the learning of social formations. In seeking to live such a life as an educational researcher I enquire into enhancing my contribution to educational knowledge through the creation and testing of living educational theories that can explain these educational influences in learning. This is what I produce in my educational research. I identify the creation and testing of living educational theories with the mission of the University of Bath because the mission includes a distinct academic approach that emphasises the education of professional practitioners, fosters high achievement and promotes original inquiry, innovation and collaboration. (University of Bath, Corporate Plan, 2004-2005/6 Draft Update June 2005).

I just want to draw your attention to my referencing of quotations. You might think it a little early for me to emphasise the importance of appropriate referencing, but I know just how much time is saved in the final writing up by making a note of the page numbers, title, author and publisher of quotations!

In this first session I also want to introduce you to the resources available to you from the Library and on the web.

The electronic resources are an excellent resource and you can access these with your user name and password. I'll just take you into the library from http://www.bath.ac.uk/library/about/ to show you how to access the catalogue and the on-line resources.

A google search on your topic of interest is a good way of seeing references to your topic.

The living educational theories on my own web-site at http://www.actionresearch.net , especially the practitioner-researcher accounts in the masters programme and living theory section show the explanations of educational influences in learning of colleagues in local schools and researchers around the globe.

Jack Whitehead, 27/09/05