School Leadership and Practitioner Research: Criticality or Domestication?

Session Type: WERA Symposium

Abstract

This symposium asks: how does school leadership, including the agency of teachers as well as the Principal, enable or constrain critical practitioner inquiry leading to change in practice? The discussion will be informed by perspectives from three national education systems: Chile, Poland and England. These systems have a shared aim of developing research-informed practice to impact on outcomes for students, but there are different formal expectations for ‘evaluation’ or ‘research’ by schools. The symposium will provoke dialogue about how school leadership, within high accountability contexts, enables practitioner researchers to go beyond evaluation of classroom techniques to ask challenging questions that challenge the purposes of education and locate children’s education within a wider social justice framework and lead towards transformative learning.

Sub Unit

• World Education Research Association

Chair

• Pete Boyd, University of Cumbria

Papers

• Action Research by Early Childhood Teachers in Chile: A Tool for a Broader Change? - Paula Guerra, Universidad Diego Portales; Ignacio Figueroa, Universidad Diego Portales

• School Leadership and Supporting Culture for Quality Improvement in Practitioner Research: Toward a Research Partnership - Joanna Maria Madalinska-Michalak, University of Warsaw

• Teacher Researchers: Position, Knowledge, Power, and Criticality - Pete Boyd, University of Cumbria; Lesley Curtis, Everton Nursery School and Family Centre

Discussant

• Tim Wall, Northwest Missouri State University