From Knowing to Acting on What We Know: Action Research for Critical English Education

• In Event: Literacy in the 21st Century: Reenvisioning Teaching and Research

Abstract

In her description of the 2012 AERA theme--“Non Satis Scire: To Know Is Not Enough”—AERA President Arnetha Ball explains that what we as educational researchers can know is certainly important, but our knowledge must translate into practice and policy if it is to truly benefit the public good. Ball says, “We need to act on what we know.” As teacher educators who use action research to prepare beginning English teachers to engage the classroom as a site for social justice and change, we understand the process of coming to know—of coming to critical consciousness, or conscientization--is prerequisite for the deliberate, localized “acting on” that teachers do (or don’t do) for the betterment of the classroom and society.
But how do beginning English teachers come to know about inequities that exist in their schools and school districts? What knowledge incites them to act, and why? What do beginning English teachers’ actions look like when they come to know—and care—about the systemic inequities implicated in the very schooling practices and structures they deem to serve?
These are the questions we take up in our session, as we describe a component of our year-long student teaching internship experience at [University]: the Action Research Project. For us, Action Research is more than just teacher self-study, or learning how to develop better classroom management skills or a better unit plan. Instead, it is a methodology for unmasking and unmaking the systemic oppressions that surround the act of teaching itself. We feel this unmasking process is necessary, as we know beginning teachers do not always have a clear understanding of the degree of inequities that exist in schools. As they come to know, however, they begin to see how they can work to unmake inequitable schooling practices.
In this session, we describe our methodology and the processes of “coming to know” and “acting on knowledge” as experienced by our beginning English teachers as they conducted their Action Research Projects during the 2011-2012 school year. Specifically, we will describe:

● The history of Action Research as grounded in the theory and work of Freire and how to develop a project focused on social justice in today’s standards-driven classrooms;
● The development of research questions that move beyond inquiry and into the realm of social activism;
● The use of Frattura and Capper’s (2007) Equity Audit as a methodological tool that can be used to uncover, understand, and change inequities that are internal to schools and school districts;
● The actions of beginning English teachers that resulted from equity audit analysis and teacher inquiry, and
● The maintenance of Action Research beyond the internship as an ongoing tool for the betterment of the classroom and society.

Arnetha Ball explains, “Education must become the agent rather than the object of change.” We would argue that educators also have the power to be agents--and not objects--of change, as well. Social justice-oriented action research can give beginning teachers the tools they need to be change agents in schools.

Authors

• Susan L. Groenke, The University of Tennessee - Knoxville

• Judson Crandall Laughter, The University of Tennessee - Knoxville