Teacher Researchers: Position, Knowledge, Power, and Criticality

• In Event: School Leadership and Practitioner Research: Criticality or Domestication?

Abstract

Teachers in England have pursued forms of action research and professional inquiry for forty years, building on the legacy of Lawrence Stenhouse (1975). Some of this activity is supported by university-based academics acting as research mentors within teacher projects or as tutors on part-time Masters level programmes of advanced professional education. In an increasingly neoliberal policy context it is important to ask questions about the health of this community of teacher researchers, about the level of criticality achieved, and about the impact on learning and learners.

Levels of accountability in the school sector in England have arguably increased steadily since the Education Reform Act of 1988 which introduced a national curriculum, national testing, school league tables, a high stakes inspection regime, and central rather local government funding of an increasing number of schools. More recent and erratic policy, since 2010, appears to offer both opportunities and threats to practitioner research. Central funding for part-time Masters study by teachers has been stopped, causing a decline in research capacity building among teachers. A drive towards a ‘school-led system’ for teacher education and professional development may have decreased critical engagement with learning theory and educational research by teachers. However, the government has also required alliances of schools to pursue research and development activity, albeit with an emphasis on large-scale randomised control trials and meta-reviews of quantitative studies rather than small-scale qualitative or mixed methods approaches that are typical of professional inquiry by teachers. This policy context prompts a question about how the distributed leadership of schools, involving the agency of teachers as well as Principals, might enable or constrain critical practitioner research rather than mere evaluation of classroom techniques (Schleicher , 2015; Kemmis 2006).

This conceptual paper considers the discourse of school leadership and educational research in England and how teachers and Principals may be positioning themselves in relation to different kinds of knowledge (Harré, R., & Moghaddam, 2003). In order to ground the discussion in practice we critically reflect on an example of a collaborative practitioner research project involving eight early years teacher researchers using video and focused on adult-child dialogue (Boyd 2014; Boyd et al., 2015). A sociocultural perspective is adopted that acknowledges how agency of teacher researchers and mediation of external pressures by their Principals may help to shape a more expansive workplace learning environment (Hodkinson & Hodkinson 2005). However, teachers’ professional learning communities may have a narrow focus imposed on them by overzealous managers (Watson 2014). Within the ‘learning organisation’ a focus on instrumental knowledge may lead to 'appropriation' of critical reflection by the organisation (Fenwick 2001). On the other hand, an understanding of school leadership as more distributed and based on identification might recognise the power also held by teacher ‘followers’ (Haslam, Reicher & Platow, 2014). We argue that teacher inquiry is a useful position that helps to mediate the unintended managerialist consequences of the wider neoliberal policy context.

Authors

• Pete Boyd, University of Cumbria

• Lesley Curtis, Everton Nursery School and Family Centre