The research in this paper has been conducted in Bath, UK and Brantford, Ontario, Canada. All three of us use the living educational theory action research methodology. The originality of the contribution of this account to the knowledge-base of education is in the systematic way the researchers transform their embodied educational values into standards of educational quality. We want to encourage audience involvement in the presentation of this paper through engaged dialogue around values as standards of practice. The paper is written in the voices of Jackie and Cheryl with a response from Jack who is unable to attend the International Conference on Teacher Research for the first time in 10 years.
This paper is focused on the shared responsibility between practitioner-researchers as they account for the educational quality in their educational practices as a Superintendent of Education, a School Principal and a Supervisor of Ph.D. Research Programmes. Cheryl is a current PhD student studying with Jack, while Jackie completed her PhD in July 2002. It seeks to extend the insights of Hiebert, Gallimore and Stigler (2002) from their exploration of the possibility of building a useful knowledge base for teaching by beginning with practitioner's knowledge. It extends the insights from classroom teaching into educational leadership. Educating social formations (Whitehead, 1999) in our context means challenging the habitus (Bourdieu, 1990) that knowledge is owned by the academic community. Teachers are the people best positioned to know and theorize about what works to improve the learning of their students in their classrooms. Therefore, teachers own the knowledge and are in the best position to bridge the theory-practice gap.
In previous presentations we have stressed the importance of our individual contributions to the knowledge base of education (Black, 2001; Whitehead & Delong, 2003; www.actionresearch.net; www.actionresearch.ca). The originality in our present enquiry is focused on accounting for the educational quality of our practice in an educative relationship of shared responsibility- a responsibility that is focused on improving student learning by supporting teachers to conduct research on their classroom practice by asking, 'How do I improve what I am doing?' (Whitehead, 1999).
Ownership of 'Knowledge'
In the Grand Erie District School Board, we are making the research of teachers and administrators publicly accessible (Snow, 2002). In her Presidential Address to AERA 2002, Catherine Snow explained that
the capacity to reflect on and analyze one's knowledge emerges only after considerable knowledge has been accumulated and embedded into practice. The reflections of skilled practitioners in any field deserve to be systematized so that personal knowledge can become publicly accessible and subject to analysis (Snow, p. 3, 2002).
In the Hiebert, Gallimore and Stigler (2002) article, they examine barriers to a knowledge base for the teaching profession and look to future possibilities:
If a new system were to emerge, it would institutionalize, in a cultural sense, a new set of professional development opportunities for teachers and a new means of producing and verifying professional knowledge...Over time, the observations and replications of teachers in the schools would become a common pathway through which promising ideas were tested and refined before they found their way into the nation's classrooms (p. 12).
We would submit that the future directions for research is beginning in our schools. In Grand Erie teachers are researching their practice in their classrooms and sharing their findings in publications, workshops and conferences. Their colleagues are learning from their experiences but recognize that they cannot duplicate the findings. We take issue with Hiebert, Gallimore and Stigler (2002) in their focus on generalizability of classroom research. Generalizability is virtually impossible when one considers the myriad of variables within the context of the classroom. No two groups of children, no two teachers, no two classroom dynamics or contexts are the same. And, there are no control groups.
Within living educational theory (Whitehead, 1989) we recognize that the only one we can change is ourselves. If we change the way we teach and lead, we can research the effectiveness of that change with systematic data collection, analysis and sharing and may be able to provide evidence of our influence.
Teachers change their practice when they control the question, find their own answers and see the direct impact on improving student learning in their classrooms (Delong & Wideman, 1998; Dadds, 2001). George Neeb, a grade 7 classroom teacher stated: ";I learned much from directing my own project. I felt safe to try different things and reflect on them in my journal" (Black, 2003).
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, 2001, p.166).
As part of our non-hierarchical and democratic view of the world, we share our publications and research on the internet. The knowledge is not locked up in costly books. Teachers are making a significant contribution to the knowledge base of the teaching profession that informs practice in our district and abroad. Teachers and teacher educators in the UK, Ireland, Japan and China are using the work of the teachers in Passion in Professional Practice Vol. I (Delong, 2001) and Vol. II (Black & Delong 2002) which is available now on www.actionresearch.ca. We are addressing one of Noffke's concerns in her review of action research that there was a need for broader access to such [publications of action research] networks (Noffke, 1997, p.310). In an e-mail in which he is responding to Jackie's information that the website www.actionresearch.ca is under construction and will include Passion in Professional Practice Vol. II, Jack responds:
Here's why I'm so enthusiastic about getting Passion in Professional Practice onto actionresearch.ca
I really do see it as the missing link!
I've concentrated my efforts on demonstrating the validity, legitimacy and procedures of bringing the embodied knowledge of professional educators, educational leaders and administrators into the public knowledge of the Academy. Because I wanted to see this knowledge recognised as making original and substantial contributions to knowledge I've focused on the embodied knowledge and living educational theories of master and doctor educators. This is still my major concern. But I've known that the most significant influence in improving education on a global scale would have to come from the initial growth in the informal networks of teacher-researchers of the kind you have been supporting in GEDSB. Passion in Professional Practice provides the link, together with the accounts from master and doctor educators for a fully inclusional approach to education. Very exciting. (e-mail Mar 12, 2003).
It is disconcerting when you hear the members of the academic community describe their sincere attempts to include the voices of the practitioners expressed with the feelings of 'miserable failure' and 'painful awareness' so vividly described by Grant and Graue (1999) at the end of their three years as editors of the Review of Educational Research. They focus their awareness of their failure on the lack of practitioners' voices in the Review:
We tried to take some small steps to promote a more inclusive approach in research. In some ways it seems quite self important and arrogant now to think that we tried to make changes in a journal with such a long and esteemed history. But in other ways, we were trying merely to bring RER back to its roots of including diverse voice from the educational community. And that is where we failed most miserably. In looking back at the early volumes of the journal, we became painfully aware that we had been just as insular and just as provincial as our predecessors. We set up a conversation so that we, as academics, could talk to ourselves. We left out those off campus, who were actually doing much of the work of education. The editors of RER has spoken to them: "The Editorial Board presents this first issue in the confident expectations that it will be of great service to teachers, administrators, and general students of education." We had not. We got so caught up in the production of scholarship that we missed an opportunity to bring it to a broader audience. (p. 395).
We want to engage in a process of review and learning about educational research and theory which could help to avoid similar mistakes and pain for future editors of RER (Delong, 2002).
This continues the debate about how we get theory into practice. When we think about researching the practice of others, we are reminded of the proverb
Give a man [sic] a fish, Feed him for a day; Teach a man [sic] to fish, Feed him for his life.
We believe that the gap between theory and practice will never be filled until academics see the infinite possibilities of sharing responsibility for the knowledge base of teaching and learning with practitioners, and teachers see that they have 'real' knowledge. We are focusing our energy on teaching and supporting teachers while they research in their own classrooms. We have confronted and been in conflict with the habitus:
The habitus, a product of history, produces individual and collective practices -- more history -- in accordance with the schemes generated by history. It ensures the active presence of past experiences, which, deposited in each organism in the form of schemes of perception. Thought and action, tend to guarantee the ' of practices and their constancy over time, more reliably than all formal rules and explicit norms. (Bourdieu, 1990, p.54).
That habitus that we are confronting is the assumption that academics hold the knowledge. When students in a research group seemed disinterested in the research project Marion Dadds and Susan Hart learned a lesson: ...what one does not participate in creating, one may have difficulty 'owning' (Dadds & Hart, 2001) By educating social formations (Whitehead, 1999), we are building a culture of reflection, inquiry and scholarship (Delong 2002).
Building The Evidential Base
Publication of the professional knowledge of teachers and administrators is part of educating social formations (Whitehead, 1999) in the Grand Erie District School Board. We believe that they address Dewey's concern,
...the successes of [excellent teachers] tend to be born and die with them: beneficial consequences extend only to those pupils who have personal contact with the gifted teachers. No one can measure the waste and loss that have come from the fact that the contributions of such men and women in the past have been thus confined. (1929, p. 10). How many times have we sat in a group discussing what works or doesn't work with the children in their classroom and commented on the resident knowledge that we need to get recorded on paper (Dewey, 1929, p.10 in Hiebert, Gallimore & Stigler, 2002, p. 12).
These Ontario and Grand Erie publications of action research commenced with Act Reflect Revise Revitalize in 1996 (Delong in Halsall & Hossack, 1996), continued with the Action Research Kit in 1998 (Delong & Wideman, 1998), The Ontario Action Researcher electronic journal www.nipissingu.ca/oar (Delong & Wideman, 1998-2001) and recently, Passion in Professional Practice Vol. I (Delong, 2001) and Vol. II (Black & Delong, 2002). In April 2003, our web site (www.actionresearch.ca) was launched for sharing the knowledge base of our teachers and administrators. As Peter Moffatt, Director of Education, said at the 2000 and 2001 OERC Conferences, "We now have a critical mass of teacher researchers in Grand Erie" (Delong, 2002).
Publication of Passion In Professional Practice Vol II
Part of our accounting for the quality of our joint work is in the publication of Passion in Professional Practice Vol. II (Black & Delong, 2002). It is a collection of the 2001-2 work of the action researchers in our school district, Grand Erie District School Board, in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. The writings in the book came from a system project group facilitated by Educational Consultant, Diane Morgan, focused on reading/writing and math literacy, the areas of emphasis for our district, another project led by Teacher Consultant, Christine Stewart, which focused on parental involvement and then a number of individual projects. The Brant Action Research Network, led by Cheryl and Heather Knill-Griesser, provided further support for some of the members of the projects.
In order to produce this publication, we called for the research articles in electronic form, as CDROM and as e-mail attachments, and they flowed in from May 30 until late September, 2002. To standardize the first page format, each article started with the question, a photo, and author's name and biography. Researchers were encouraged to include visual representations of their research, including photos of the classrooms, examples of student work and charts and graphs. We read and edited each article. For some, the editing included simply minor typos; for others, it was actually filling in blanks in order to improve understanding of the context -- we needed to ensure that the work of the teachers was accessible to a wider audience while remaining true to the teachers' voices.
Cheryl loaded the articles onto her computer, made the changes and returned them to the authors for their approval and missing items such as photos and biographies. Early on we made the decision to make the work a bound book as opposed to the spiral binding of the first volume. We felt that it gave more credence to the work of the teachers; that is, it looked like a book, not just a collection of articles. Then Teacher Consultant, Geoff Suderman-Gladwell, converted the book to PDF and took it to the publisher.
Our personal deadline for the Ontario Educational Research Council (OERC) conference December 6-7, 2002 was met with a first run. The authors, many of whom attended OERC received a copy and were asked to check for errors before we printed the large run of 500.
Our learnings in the publication of Passion in Professional Practice Vol. II included the fact that the teacher-researchers needed assistance in writing on the computer, especially with regard to inserting photos and in 'how to write for publication' as well as sustained support. As part of our plan for continuous improvement, 'How can we improve our practice?', subsequent to the publication, a guideline for publication (Delong, 2003) was drafted and shared it with a new group of action researchers on January 16, 2003. While we have long written about the essential requirement of sustained support for teachers researching their practice (Delong & Black, 1999), that knowing is reinforced each time we read the writing of the teacher-researchers.
Providing Sustained Support
Another factor in confronting the habitus (Bourdieu, 1990) is providing 'sustained support' (Delong, 2002) for teachers as they research their own practice. Noffke & Zeichner (2001) state that "the sharing of practitioner research serves a function perhaps quite different from that of academic writing. It supports classroom practice directly through substantive detail of the work and the development of supportive networks" (p. 313). By holding regular meetings, we create supportive networks in our school district, where teachers can support each other and have an expert facilitator (Delong, 2001a, 2002) In a survey (Black, 2003), teacher-researchers articulated their regard for this network support: Peggy Callaghan said, "Support is the key to continuing formal research." Heather Knill-Griesser stated, "It is the support from critical friends that kept her involved in her project. The group meetings are key for encouragement and accountability." "The support of experienced researchers is critical to promote growth of the inexperienced," commented teacher, Cindy Aldred.
Values As Standards of Practice and Judgment
Through our research we have determined our values which serve as the standards of judgment we use to test the validity of our claims to be contributing to the knowledge-base of education. Both of us value our relationships with others and encourage the action researchers to act on their shared responsibilities to each other. Krista Swanson, the grade 8 teacher at Walpole North Elementary School, after reading Cheryl's Masters thesis, commented, "Imagine knowing yourself that well when becoming a principal as opposed to learning that as you go along."(oral conversation with C. Black, Jan. 2003).
The originality of the contribution of this account to the academic and professional knowledge base of education is in the systematic way the researchers transform their embodied educational values into standards of educational quality. These standards of educational quality can then be used critically to evaluate the effectiveness of a shared sense of responsibility in improving the quality of teaching and learning in relation to the educational development of individuals and social formations.
The nature of this kind of research is that it is values-based inquiry. In order to encourage this type of research, the culture of the organization must be open to the questions such inquiries generate.
I find that as I am supporting individuals in dialectical and dialogical processes that we are learning and improving ourselves and at the same time educating social formations (Whitehead, 1999) with a vision of a whole system dedicated to the learning of everyone in the organization, but most especially the learning of the students. That vision is wrapped up in an ethic of inquiry, reflection and scholarship, of valuing the other in a relational leadership as we create our own living educational theories. (Whitehead, 1993, 1999). Working at a systems level is a study in the complexity of cultures and historical relationships and a test of political 'nous' to tap and enhance its resources and influence the way it works (Delong, 2002).
To address Noffke's criticisms of living educational theories by addressing the issues of interconnection between personal identity and the claim of experiential knowledge, as well as power and privilege in society, we cite Jackie's research:
The results of my research and work go far beyond simply "personal transformation" and affect entire systems through policy and procedures implemented over long periods of time. This thesis provides evidence to demonstrate that committed individuals and groups researching their practice with questions like "How can I improve?" are indeed capable "of addressing social issues in terms of the interconnections between personal identity and the claim of experiential knowledge, as well as power and privilege in society (Dolby, 1995; Noffke, 1991 in Noffke, 1997, p. 327) (Delong, 2002).
We have noticed a limitation in our use of language in communicating some of the meanings we think are significant in our explanations for our educational influences with teacher researchers and for our influence in the education of social formations. We have become increasingly aware of the significance of this limitation in viewing video-tapes of our educational relationships and practices in a range of different contexts. For example a video-tape made by Whitehead of Delong's presentation on her work supporting the development of networks of teacher-researchers, showed Delong communicating what we are describing as a life-affirming energy as she described with passion and pleasure her work in supporting a network of teacher-researchers in the Grand Erie District School Board. Her face lit up with delight at the point she was describing the support an individual teacher received from colleagues in the Board when she expressed an interest in carrying out an action research inquiry into her classroom practice. It is difficult to communicate using only words, without the visual record, the significance of such expressions of Jackie's embodied values in explanations of her influence.
We have a video-tape of Cheryl in her last day with a group of students in a music lesson. A student notices some chalk dust on the back of Cheryl's jacket and spontaneously brushes it off. Cheryl feels the touch, turns round and the pleasure of shared recognition between Cheryl and her student carries for us the life-affirming energy and value we noticed in Jackie's response to the support she is giving to the teacher-researchers in GEDSB.
With the help of video-tapes of tutorials between Jackie and Jack where they are working together on Jackie's doctoral enquiry we can vividly recall some tense and difficult experiences. One of these was at the time when the Ontario government restructured the School Boards and it looked like that Jackie's post as Superintendent would be removed. We have visual records of Jackie continuing with her job during this time and dealing with the uncertainty with persistence and course in relation to continuing to live her values as fully as she can in supporting the teacher-researchers.
We are making these points to stress the importance of the significance of our embodied values and knowledge in explanations of our influence. The difficulty in communicating the nature of these explanations is that we need to show ourselves in visual accounts of our inquiries, 'How do I improve what I am doing?'. We need to do this so that you can appreciate the significance of who we are in our explanations: we do need to show how our unique personalities are engaged in what we do in influencing the education of others and the social formations in which we live and work. As two of us (Delong and Black) stand in front of you, giving this presentation, we believe that you will be exercising your intuitive judgement, in relation to our embodied expressions of our relationship with each other and to you. We think that your intuitive judgement about the nature of our educational influence will include spiritual, aesthetic and ethical appreciations/appraisals, of how these qualities, embodied in what we are doing, may influence the education of ourselves, others and social formations.
In relation to our influence in the education of social formations we would draw your attention to the evidence on the web that shows the accounts of learning produced by practitioner-researchers in the Grand Erie Board. These accounts provide evidence of the education of the social formation of GEDSB in the explicit support provided by the Board, through its policies and resources, in enabling teacher-researchers to bring their embodied knowledge as master educators into the light of day where it can be accessed by others and contribute to their learning. You can access some of these accounts from the site www.actionresearch.ca
We wish to draw your attention particularly to Heather Knill-Griesser's (2001) MEd dissertation on A Vision Quest of Support to Improve Student Learning: Validating My Living Standards of Practice.
The idea that standards of practice are themselves living was developed by Moira Laidlaw in her Ph.D. programme with Jack as a supervisor. Moira's influence, mediated by Jack, Jackie and Cheryl can be seen in Heather's account.
If you wish to move further into the international context you might like to access the evidence of educating social formations provided by Moira Laidlaw in her voluntary service overseas at Guyuan Teacher's College in China.
My aim is to promote sustainable educational development, but in making a claim to know my own practice, i.e. developing a living educational theory about it, I now want to chase not just the professional judgements I and others can make about my educational influence but also about the ways in which I have achieved this being themselves part of the knowledge that we develop together as a group, as not a unit, but a group of individuals, who share now certain things in common, for the common good. My desire for my validating evidence lying in communally-shared agreements of benefits is not necessarily paradoxical in the light of promoting development that should remain sustainable after my departure. What I think I am saying is that I believe that it is a measure of something's durability if it is so closely shared as to be, at some fundamental level, indistinguishable as an isolated value residing in an individual, but a living dialectic between us. In other words, if we share our processes and the values underlying them (yet to be fully articulated) so closely that we are woven together in a sense of momentum and achievement, then I believe the process itself will retain something of that reality when I in person have left (Laidlaw - e-mail correspondence 14/03/03).
You can access evidence on Laidlaw's educational influence at: http://www.actionresearch.net/moira.shtml
Conclusion and Next Steps
Our belief in sharing responsibility is also evident in our process of writing this paper. After frequent collaborations, we have learned that we both work well by randomly brainstorming issues around our topic, verbally, before consolidating some thoughts on paper. Sometimes, we even plan a dinner as a warm-up discussion before our scheduled writing time. We take turns typing and searching out quotes. As we near the end, we have sent the whole paper back and forth by email but we still prefer to work in person. Part of this process was two, three-way videoconferences with the three of us in different locations, Jack, of course, in Bath.. For us, the visual contact adds a dimension to the dialogue that cannot be attained in print. Our use of the technology continues to enhance communication and representation of our research and collaborative community of learners.
We continue to create the knowledge base of teaching and learning by writing and presenting papers and articles (ICTR, AERA), editing teacher research publications (Passion In Professional Practice; www.actionresearch.ca; www.nipissingu.ca/oar), designing conferences as platforms for teachers sharing their learning (Ontario Educational Research Council -- Nov. 27-28, 2003 -- www.oerc.net) and by sustained support for teachers and administrators as they create the evidential base for the professional educator. In acting locally and sharing ideas globally we intend to stress the importance of researching how we are living our values as fully as we can within our particular local contexts. By sharing our ideas and visual accounts of our practice with others through the inclusivity provided by the web we are hopeful that our emphasis on the importance of creating our own living educational theories and sharing them with others will make a positive contribution to the future of humanity. Given the present conflicts in the world, especially in the Middle East, our world needs the increasing influence of the efforts of professional educators who can see the significance of education for the future of humanity.
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Jacqueline Delong, Superintendent of Education - Program,
Grand Erie District School Board,
349 Erie Avenue, Brantford, Ontario,
Canada
jackiedelong@gedsb.net
Cheryl Black, Principal, Walpole North Elementary School,
Grand Erie District School Board, Ontario
Canada
cherylblack@gedsb.net
Jack Whitehead, Lecturer, Department of Education,
University of Bath,
England.
edsajw@bath.ac.uk
