Practitioner Researchers: Hybrid Roles in the Generation and Use of Research Knowledge

Session Submission Type: Symposium

Abstract

When practitioners are researchers, they conduct their own systematic and intentional inquiries into practice informed by, but also critiquing, the knowledge and theories of others. Thus practitioners are uniquely positioned as both consumers and generators of knowledge, and inquiry communities are contexts for making sense of and disseminating research generated by university-based researchers. This session, which features four practitioner studies at different educational levels and on different topics, explores the multiple and complex roles practitioner researchers play in both using and generating knowledge from various sources to improve education for the public good. These four studies have in common provocative visions about the ways research knowledge may be used to improve education in a range of local contexts.

Sub Unit

• Presidential Session

Chairs

• Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Boston College

• Susan L. Lytle, University of Pennsylvania

Papers

• Dialect, Difference, and Discursive Tension in a Ninth-Grade Literacy Class - Robin M. Hennessy, Boston Public Schools

• Building a Brotherhood? A Teacher Researcher’s Study of the Construction of Gender at an All-Boys Catholic Secondary School - Kirstin Pesola McEachern, Boston College

• What Does It Mean to Be Literate in This Class? A Teacher-Researcher’s Investigation of Scripted, Thematic, and Improvisational Curricula - Rebecca Akin, Oakland Unified School District

• Hybrid Learning in a School-University Partnership: Teacher Research Integrating Common Core Standards, Scripted Curricula, and Innovative Practice - Diane Waff, University of Pennsylvania

Discussants

• Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Boston College

• Susan L. Lytle, University of Pennsylvania