Before class on September 2, please respond at least once to the following prompt and/or peers' responses:
What is the nature of teacher research? Is teacher research, "research"? What are its critical features? Who conducts it, reads it, and uses it? What kinds of questions or theories does it stem from and/or generate? How does teacher research vary in method, analysis, and interpretation? What sorts of topics do teacher researchers explore?
I found myself nodding in agreement as I started reading Chiseri-Strater and Sunstein’s text, What Works! A Practical Guide for Teacher Research. My first teacher institute day consisted of a representative from a prefabricated test-prep company talking to us about how to use the materials that we would be required to use that year. The teachers were jaded, and the administration was looking for anything that would help us avoid being “left behind.” The next three years weren’t any better; while I loved teaching and my students, I hated the system: the overloaded classes because of a lack of funds, the “professional development” days that included a lady from the state coming in to tell us that our students should just make up facts on the writing portion of the PSAE to score well, and the constant clinging onto any new idea that might help us escape being put on the watch list (one year we changed the daily schedule for the juniors to include an extra 45 minute test-prep session!). I knew something was wrong with this picture but didn’t have the extra time to think about completing research, let alone complete it. It wasn’t until I left teaching high school and began both teaching at the college level and pursuing a PhD that I realized the further I got from the K-12 classroom the more time, knowledge, and resources I had to complete research. This was actually my first thought when Janet asked about teacher research: Are you kidding, those in K-12 education have the time or money needed to research?! I didn’t.
ReplyDeleteThere seems to be a couple of key characteristics of “teacher research” as defined by Cochran-Smith and Lytle: completed by teachers, systemic, intentional inquiry, accessible to others, and offering a unique perspective. In thinking about the nature of research and what kinds of research are considered “research,” I believe not only that teacher research is “research” but also that teachers are our greatest resources for research when it comes to knowledge about how to best teach students. I believe it’s thinking contrary to this that has landed us where we are with those not in education making decisions about what is best for our students. As Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1993) state, “those most directly responsible for the education of children have been disenfranchised” (p. 5). I agree with Stenhouse’s argument “that research was the route to emancipation and that ‘researchers [should] justify themselves to practitioners, no practitioners to researchers’’ (p. 8). It’s just a matter of giving teachers the time and resources they need to complete research. I like that the text introduced proposals that would allow teachers the time and money needed to do research, but I’m wondering how often this really happens. This book was published over fifteen years ago, and I can’t help but wonder how much has changed? I’m interested to hear others’ perspectives on this; have those of you who taught K-12 been offered these kinds of incentives?
Action research and teacher research seem to be used synonymously in the What Works? Text, but I think it’s important, like the Inside/Outside text points out, that we establish our own definition, criteria, methodology, etc. for teacher research specifically. While I hope that teacher research does contribute to social change I don’t know that all does or should. Thoughts? Should teacher research be required to bring about social change?
Teacher research should be used both for teachers to better their own classroom practices and made public to help others learn from their experience. Having taken both quantitative and qualitative classes, I have to admit that at first I was more like how Janet explained as wed to qualitative. I think it stemmed from an anger at those who want to reduce students to numbers or objects. We cannot run education like a business where we’re trying to get the best bang for our buck (the banking system, as Freire would call it), so quantitative research is important but only if used responsibility and alongside qualitative research.
Had to add another post because it said mine was too large...
ReplyDeletePart II:
I do not think research has to be able to be reproduced to get the same results, nor do I think that’s desirable. When I read narratives from others’ classrooms, I do not attempt to implement their strategies step by step but instead thoughtfully and critically consider how their classroom and students compare with mine and how I might alter their strategies to best fit my students and test that strategy in my own classroom. The most effective researchers then might use numbers to look for overall trends/issues but then explore that issue by reading numerous qualitative classroom accounts. As quoted in the Inside/Outside text “understanding one classroom helps us to understand better all classrooms” (p. 15). The problem, however, is reading thousands of qualitative studies takes time and, therefore, money, which is not “productive.” As Courtney mentioned in class, when we read Allington’s Big Brother and National Reading Curriculum, we saw that even the government’s best attempt at trying to use “research-based practices” resulted in them making a committee of only one teacher and mostly quantitative research and then slapping together a conclusions as soon as possible. Sadly, as a result, states and schools across the country took this hasty research and reduced it to one way of teaching reading, phonics, without questioning it or researching it for themselves and funded only that method. Why does this seem to echo Dewey’s 1904 criticism that the nature of education development “tended to proceed reactively by jumping uncritically from one new technique to the next” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, p. 9) over one hundred years later?
I read a great book, Karen Hankins’ (University of Georgia) published dissertation, Teaching Through the Storm, which is a perfect example of ideal teacher research as defined by both texts. She studied her own kindergarten classroom at an inner-city school in Georgia and related the strengths and weaknesses, struggles and triumphs in an attempt to better help others understand the lives of her students both in and out of school. She very candidly stated that her purpose was not to try to create some kind of one-size-fits all method that can be duplicated and distributed to all students throughout the country but to help teachers, parents, administrators, lawmakers, etc, better understand her students as individuals and their varying needs. Reading even one text like this, I believe, would alter the mindsets of those who make the decisions about how money and resources are distributed in schools.
As Freire argues (currently reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed for another class, which may explain my emotionally loaded and critical response...hmmm), “Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students” (p. 73). I believe the same is true of research and practice and professional and theoretical knowledge. Teachers and the students they learn with/from are at the heart of the educational system and need support to complete research so that they can best teach in their own classrooms and share this knowledge with others. Teacher research can be completed in a variety of ways through a variety of methods, as mentioned in the Chiseri-Strater and Sunstein text but not without support. As Cochran-Smith and Lytle point out, “when teachers do research the gap between researcher and researched is narrowed” (p. 58).
Beth, I love reading your posts :-) I think you set the bar a little over my head for this week ;-) I'm still working on it, though.
ReplyDeleteCan’t we all just be hard researchers?????!!!!!
ReplyDeleteWhat is hard research? I think that is really the question. If hard research is this one entity, that may not shape or shift, that may not transform or renovate; but, this one entity that is only defined by science-based experiments and statistical numbers than (I guess) teacher research is not hard research. Because, to me, the heart of teacher research is not about the charts, the surveys, the statistical jargon; but instead, about the transformation of student behaviors and natural shaping of critical thinking. While reading Chiseri-Strater and Sunstein, I started to question this idea of being a “soft researcher” or a “hard researcher”. Okay, so, a hard researcher is one that tackles the hard questions? But what is a hard question? And who gets to determine these adjectives? I think when a teacher asks “do girls and boys experience adventure stories in the same ways” it is a hard question. To me, that looks like hard research. Think about it. I now have to begin collecting data, in a classroom. Yep, that is definitely the easiest thing I have ever done…(she says with heavy sarcasm).
Chiseri-Strater and Sunstein state that most of the “data” in teacher research is narration (done by the observing teacher) which creates a richly detailed, sharply focused snapshot of the students in our classes and their work (21). I agree with this. I have completed two projects where “seeing what I see” was a heavy component to my final observations. I did not have any quantitative findings that would help guide the readers towards believing my theory of young adult literature and its ability to create moral growth among young adult readers. I did not go into a lab and randomly assign students into groups, ask them morality questions, and log their answers onto a bar graph…instead, I observed the young adults. I, then, recalled these observations (used as data), and found that the only way to truly answer my young adult literature question remained in narration.
Teacher research is an illustration of a story. And because it is a research study that is narrated by a person rather than statistical data, well then, that is what makes our questions, teachers’ questions soft…? Maybe I am missing the point; however, as a teacher, I find it incredibly cumbersome to know that someone who works in a lab doing experiments is any harder of a researcher than I am in a classroom. Just as that scientist in the lab, I have asked a question, I am testing and questioning results, I am logging my findings…I just do it with my own style—there is no reason to split hairs: we are all researchers, all is important to the growth of our society; and therefore, all is relevant research…
Wow! What great, smart posts to begin our discussion. I had many of the same thoughts when re-reading this week's assignments. I have a couple of perhaps new thoughts to share. One is that I think the discussion about who holds the "knowledge" in teaching is interesting: the researchers who research teaching or the teacher researchers? Like Taylor I wish we could "just all get along," but, alas, our world doesn't often seem to work that way. Who holds the knowledge? Well, historically, the knowledge taught in teacher education programs and referenced by policy makers has been the knowledge of the external (i,e, etic) university researcher--not the teacher in the trenches. The knowledge of the working teacher has only been seen as "lore" or "teacher stories." However, as teachers ourselves, we know that teachers' knowledge is more than that. It is often the difference between powerful, successful classrooms and those that are not effective. The teacher makes all the difference--regardless of standards or testing. So is there any way the teacher knowledge and the university researcher knowledge can come together? Certainly. And I think we have begun to see this happen in the last ten years. I think about books I use in the undergraduate teacher education methods courses, and many of them are written or co-written by classroom teachers. There is more collaborative research going on all the time. I think those of us who work in teacher education value teacher knowledge--now if we could only get the policy makers to agree!
ReplyDeleteSecond, I want to emphasize the importance of a socio-cultural perspective, or a social justice perspective, which seems to permeate readings and discussions of teacher research. We seem to not only want to improve our curricula, we want to change the system. Are these two things perhaps inseparable? Is it perhaps our activity ideology that keeps policy makers at bay? Just a few thoughts/questions.
Last, I'm thinking of some important words and phrases which seem to encapsulate teacher research to me:
Emphasis on Praxis (theory + practice)
Activist
Inquiry based
Ongoing
Subjective
Interpretive
Systematic
Participatory
Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow! (please excuse any typos--typing fast!)
Janet
First of all, I have to apologize that my posts may frequently intersect with my personal life, since so often I'm reading, thinking, and writing at the same time that I am going about the business of daily life.
ReplyDeleteYesterday evening, my best friend Katie came over to our house for dinner and to do a little laundry. She's single and lives in an apartment and has a Catholic school teacher's salary; we insist that she bring her laundry over any time so she won't have to pay for the washer and dryer. This is also a partly selfish affair, as Katie also brings tales of school when she comes to eat and do laundry. She tells me all about her students, the lessons she is planning, and the latest juicy gossip on the school improvement process. Sometimes I help her talk through lesson plans and come up with new ideas for her classroom. I share what I am learning in graduate school with her, and she graciously has let me talk through a number of projects and papers with her in order to orally organize my thoughts.
In some ways, I like to think that we are two halves of a very informal university/classroom collaboration. I noticed elements of teacher research as described in both of this week's texts in the informal work we do together. We spend a great deal of time shaping questions as we review what Katie has been doing in her classes. As Katie orally recounts her daily encounters with problem students or difficult material, we apply different critical theoretical lenses to the events to try to understand what might have happened and what she could do differently. She brings the insider observations, I bring the outside theory. Unfortunately, none of this truly seems to qualify as “teacher research” according to Chiseri-Strater and Sunstein becaue it isn't necessarily “systematic” and we skip a lot of their steps. I really enjoyed flipping through this book because I think it is a great resource for teachers who want to engage in a more formal, “systematic and intentional inquiry” (Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 1993, p. 7) and share their findings with other teachers. I believe that until the kind of verbal play Katie and I engage in becomes more formalized, it will be difficult to get policy makers to accept teacher research as evidence of the effectiveness of methods that are difficult to assess through purely quantitative methods.
I shared What Works? with Katie on Tuesday night and offered to loan it to her when I'm through with it. She was not as enthusiastic as I would have supposed. While she agreed that it looked like an interesting book, her main concern was similar to Beth's: when on Earth would she find the time to engage in a formal research process? After listening to her woes regarding department head meetings, school improvement plan committees, and additional training for Advanced College Placement courses, I can't blame her. And my dear friend, who is a fantastic teacher and who devotes a great deal of time to planning interesting lessons that make her students think critically and globally, then proceeded to tell me she was concerned that she wasn't an effective teacher because only three of her students achieved pass plus on their ISTEP last spring. I see this horrible downward spiral taking shape. We burden teachers with the thought that they have to find more time to cram in test prep to protect their jobs; they have no time to formally conduct research; no one accepts teacher research because few teachers have time to formalize and publish what they already do on a daily basis through observation and reflection; teacher “effectiveness” is instead based on quantitative measures such as test scores; and the cycle begins all over again. . .
I'm sorry if I've gotten a bit off topic, but Katie's despair over her students' performances really spoke to me as I was contemplating the readings this week.
Just wanted to let everyone know that the posts from "Ella's Mom" are mine before I realized that I needed to change my display name! Sorry!
ReplyDeleteHello All. These are some really great posts! I find that my conceptions of teacher research mimic much of what’s been said in the posts I’ve read here, so I will try to include some others thoughts to add to the pot. One statement I found interesting in the Cochran-Smith and Lytle text was the Bissex and Bullock argument that “teacher research is…not necessarily bound by the constraints of traditional research paradigms” (p.9). While you may be inclined to agree or disagree with this statement, I think seeing teacher research outside of “traditional research” is one of the reasons it continues to be viewed as a softer form of research. I find it disheartening because teacher research can be “a rich and unique source of knowledge” (p.20).
ReplyDeleteI agree with Beth that one of the reasons teacher research is not more prevalent is because of time and money. But I also think, as one of our texts points out, one reason for a lack of teacher research maybe that teachers aren’t supported in research endeavors. Cochran-Smith and Lytle write, “teachers have not been encouraged to work together on voluntary, self-initiated projects or to speak out with authority about instructional, curricular, and policy issues” (p.21). But why? And why, since I am asking questions, don’t we see more research collaboration between universities and practicing teachers? I have talked to a few people on this subject before, but I am eager for all of your thoughts on the topic.
Bringing my discussion back to knowledge itself, I really liked the title of chapter three in the Cochran-Smith and Lytle text – Teacher Research: A Way of Knowing. Often times the “practical knowledge” (p.41) that teachers bring to the table is overlooked. As both of our texts discuss, the emic perspective teachers have is and invaluable source of knowledge (Cochran-Smith Lytle p.43 / Chriseri-Strater and Sunstein p.52). Why doesn’t this count? Teacher research can help the immediate school setting, it can help communities, and it can even have larger implications for society (as Taylor mentioned in the end of her post).
Even though practicing teachers have their own knowledge from which to draw when it comes to research, I do wonder if teachers feel like they cannot engage in research because they do not have certain academic or theoretical knowledge to tie to their own experiences and understandings. Does it seem too much of a daunting task (time and money aside)? To be honest, if I were still in the classroom, I may not know where to start – which is where Chriseri-Strater and Sunstein’s text comes in.
I did enjoy reading this text, and I like how it really broke everything down for someone who is not familiar with such research and is looking for a place to start. One minor critique I have of this text was of the “surveys and inventories as Data Sources” section (p.74). I don’t have a problem with creating such things; I just wish that the text went into the “unpublished teacher-generated surveys” a bit more (p.74). Having taken qualitative research course during my graduate work, I’ve come to realize that there is a lot that goes into creating these kinds of questions. Like I said, this may seem minor, but I would like to see more in this part of the text since it goes into grave detail in some other areas.
Well, I think that’s it for me right now. If I think of anything else, I will be sure to post more! ☺
THIS IS FROM SUDHA:
ReplyDeleteSince the teachers are the insiders, they
should be the ones conducting the research.
The perfect example of Teacher Research and
Action Research is Maria Montessori who believed
that any child could learn. She developed this philosophy
by observing the first group of students she taught which
were special needs students. She then went on to apply
her theory that anyone could be taught to all students.
Montessori discovered that through observation of the
students' behavior, the appropriate teaching methods could
be developed. If each teacher could participate in teacher
research, one class at a time, perhaps it would not be so
overwhelming.
There are those parents who homeschool; they are participating
in teacher research, on their own, because their children are allowed
to do projects on their own initiative, pursuing their interests, based
on the curriculum they are studying, which is not allowed in the school
system that promotes conformity with standardized tests.
Testing is based on performance, and especially in special education,
there are students who choose not to respond to questions.
Teacher Research makes sense because the teachers have the opportunity
to work with their own students in their classroom on problems that directly
affect them. As with Maria Montessori when changes are implemented
based on student feedback, the results are immediate and the most
rewarding.
Thank you
Sudha
We sent Ethan to a Montessori school for his first two years of preschool and loved it. All of the "tools" they had for the students helped them to teach themselves, and they had a philosophy of community building (they started together at the beginning of the school day, singing and dialoguing, and then moved to time where students had a choice of what "job" they wanted to do) and not interrupting the students' while they were concentrating. I felt like instead of teaching students to be dependent, like some schooling methods do, they taught them to think and teach themselves. I don't know as well what this looks like in the higher grades since Ethan now goes to public preschool because it's so much cheaper...isn't that the way it always is?!
ReplyDeleteWow! Everybody has such great thoughts! When I think about teacher research, I find it interesting that the research is somehow outside of "traditional" research. I think that in many ways this hurts the product of our research because it as seen as different and more informal than "traditional" research. At times, maybe this is the case, but often times, I find that teacher reserach has been conducted in the same way as other qualititaive research projects in other fields. I wonder if teacher research has somehow fallen outside the realm of "traditional research" because much of teacher research turns out to be qualitative research, which was not always recognized in the ways that it is today. Maybe this somehow connects to hard versus soft questios, or maybe it has something to do with the fact that our only audience is other teachers or others connected to the field. Hmmm...
ReplyDeleteIn thinking about whether teacher research is "research," I would definitely say that it is. Much of what we do in the classroom as teachers is research in some form of another. We are constantly evaluating, observing, and making changes according to better serve our students needs. Whether this is done formally or informally, it is research. Although we all do it in some way shape or form, we often times do not give ourselves credit in this area and recognize ourselves that we are researchers.
“If one of the goals of staff development is to ‘get everyone to do the same thing,’ then teacher research would be a bad model to follow. If, however, the goal is to get each teacher to look more critically at teaching and learning (rather than acting as thoughtless drones who ‘implement the program’), then enabling teacher to become reflective practitioners could be one of the best forms of staff development.”
ReplyDeleteHahn (as quoted by Cochran-Smith and Lytle, p. 39)
This quotation captures the essence of why I am at Purdue University. I could no longer be treated like a “thoughtless drone” that had to copy what my colleagues were doing. Although I was questioning and raising points that conflicted with the intentions of the administration, I was not educated in “researcher talk” to articulate my thoughts convincingly. Because I was the one who would not just go along, I was not asked to participate as a teacher-leader in school-wide initiatives. I was too critical of my teaching and my students’ learning. When Cochran-Smith and Lytle use the words “teacher talk” to describe what teacher research is not, I understand. There was too much unproductive “teacher talk” in the professional development I received as a teacher and very little opportunity for teachers to learn and function as researchers. There is a distinct difference. I think teachers are interested in improving their practice and can make the transition from teacher to teacher-researcher should the environment allow for questioning of practice to take place. For as long as teachers are expected to implement what others created outside of the school and classroom setting and are told this one way is best, teacher talk will prominently be displayed.
The goal of teacher research is to improve the individual teacher in her or his individual classroom. The individual research question may not always connect with overarching school improvement goals because daily experiences in a specific teacher’s classroom could and should encompass more than what the improvement goal targets. Teacher research stems from the questions that come from daily experiences in the classroom, the questions that arise when the teacher identifies discrepancies between theory and practice. Students have different abilities and different learning styles. Classroom make-ups based on these two factors alone are enough to prompt a teacher to arrange instruction differently for two different sections of the same course. Through observation and trial and error, teachers make pedagogical decisions that vary according to what works for individual students. Teacher research is not a one-size-fits-all approach to education. It is about knowing the context of when certain strategies work, when certain strategies do not, and the thought processes of the teachers as they determine which strategies to employ.
Teachers are not trained to be researchers, therefore the expression of their ideas do not follow the model expected in the research world. With training and exposure to the research field, I think this can easily change. A difference in language should not make the planned observations by teachers about intentional actions any less valuable in the quest to narrow the gap between educational theory and practice. As teachers are prepared for the classroom, learning how to conduct empirical and conceptual research can shorten this distance and empower teachers as professionals.