"Back to the Rough Ground": Practitioner Inquiry and Education as an Academic Discipline in the 2020s

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

This symposium offers a ‘state-of-the-art’ picture of education drawing from four new studies addressing practitioner enquiry. It is framed by three clusters of traditions of the development of education as an academic discipline in universities internationally. Presentation 1 features close-to-practice (CtP) research, including a systematic review of the quality of published practitioner research. Presentation 2 addresses practitioner enquiry from the perspectives of a school-university partnership; presentation 3 from researchers carrying out professional doctorates; and presentation 4 from the voices of children in the research-practice arena. The dichotomy between the trend in national (and increasingly supra-national) control of the work of teachers versus the emancipatory roots of practitioner enquiry forms the basis for recommendations for research, and education as a discipline.

Sub Unit

• International Aligned Organizations / British Educational Research Association - BERA

Chair

• Dominic Wyse, IOE, University College London

Papers

• Introduction to the Symposium and the Close-to-Practice Research Project - Dominic Wyse, IOE, University College London; Chris Brown, University of Southampton

• Professional Learning and Experience: The Road Not Taken - Vivienne Baumfield, University of Exeter

• Power, Positionality, and Practitioner Research: Understanding Schoolteachers' Experiences of Professional Doctorates in Education - Gerry Czerniawski, University of East London

• Too Close to Practice: Understanding the Tension Between Professional and Academic Knowledge in Professional Inquiry - Mhairi Catherine Beaton, Leeds Metropolitan University

Discussant

• Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Boston College