A case for the unconventional: Partnering with (vs. studying) teachers and experimenting with writing forms

• In Event: Professional development opportunities: Discourse, dialogue, and collaboration

Proposal

Sub-theme #1, with its emphasis on social justice, equity, and inclusion, invites scholars to question systems that impede authentic and equitable steps towards educational improvement. In this theoretical paper (grounded in experience), we will argue that rigid academic conventions impede authentic explorations of important educational practice issues. In particular we will explore two key issues related to the research into practices and subsequent publishing on teacher-oriented topics: 1) the tendency of academic work to position teachers as subjects instead of as meaningful collaborators, 2) the ways that impersonal and rigid writing conventions alienate and exclude some knowledges about education. We will argue both for more inclusive explorations of equitable practices and for more opportunities for experimental and personal forms of writing, giving examples from our practices.

Our arguments in this paper draw on both theory and practice. Some of the theory that particularly informs our thinking includes that by Freire (1993), Bhabba (1994; 2011), along with Feminist Standpoint Theory thinkers (Collins, 2004; Haraway, 2004; Harding, 1992; Hartsock, 2004; Rose, 2004; Smith, 1972). Our perspectives are also grounded in two recent experimental writing projects. The first was a book we co-edited for Routledge on equitable practices of Global Citizenship Education in primary/secondary schools that purposefully valued educators’ perspectives and invited them to engage in dialogue with and also write with collaborators in academic settings (authors, 2023). Altogether 36 authors from all over the world, a balanced mix of practitioners and academics, co-wrote chapters on shared areas of expertise. This book also experimented with unconventional writing formats including first person narratives and script-style dialogues in every chapter. The second experience we reference in this paper presentation is a journal article we co-wrote for a special issue of Qualitative Studies on unconventional academic writing (authors, anticipated 2022). We again experimented with atypical forms, writing significant portions of the paper in script-style dialogue and first person language. We work with Freiere’s (1993) proposal on the development of critical consciousness as emerging through dialogues by positioning different perspectives about educational knowledge alongside each other but without privileging one over the other. This technique offers a practical means of escaping the binaries that emerge from western academic tradition and hold the possibilities of hybridization as a way to innovate (Bhabha, 2011).

Teachers as collaborators in vs. subjects of educational research
In conventional approaches to educational research, academics tend to dominate in accounts of educational practice. They write about, not with, practitioners, often for specific academic outputs, such as journals, and which educators may not easily be able to gain access to. Such publications may only give educators voices as quoted subjects whose words are only valued through specific analytic framing of the (typically academic) writers. Academic authors then hold all the power of interpreting educational practice. Despite educational research that is designed to influence practice – or educational policy that aims to influence practice - the convention is that academic theorisation of education practice falls some way short of connecting these two different perspectives on education.

Teachers need to be valued and brought into discussions as equal collaborators in pursuit of novel solutions, not as research subjects. Common academic practices leave out some of the most important people. Instead, there is great potential to be uncovered from exploring ways to bring together these two knowledges - theoretical and practical, academic and educator - to learn from each other and move the discipline forward in ways that purposefully aim to connect these silos.

Problematic Conventions in Writing about Educational Reform
In our view, the educational publishing field is a fruitful site for working towards genuinely equitable reform of the imbalance; not just about the writing, also about the conventions of educational research. While so many of the academic practices surrounding educational reforms, especially in the publishing field, minimize the voices of the practitioners we wish to empower, academics inevitably reproduce unequal hierarchies of knowledges and widen the disconnect between theory and practice. We see this in the writing conventions themselves. For example, appersonal writing can force consensus through de-contextualized collective writing. Academic writing is stylistically rigid and inflexible in form, written for other academics to read. It distances itself from the very people upon whose practice academic insights spring from. In our view, there is a need to critique academic writing conventions, particularly to make visible what is masked under seemingly objective, scientific methods and writing practices. We acknowledge some of the ways that academic publishing practices leave out important perspectives and argue against exclusionary forms of educational knowledge communication and argue instead for “equality in difference” (Bhabha, 2011, p. 14) as a way of challenging normative concepts arising from within singular perspectives.

A Call for Novel Approaches
In this paper, we advocate for experimentation in writing and publishing that brings together theorists and practitioners in the pursuit of reform. Further, this is an especially valuable endeavor in applied fields such as education. Experimentation that identifies divides and finds ways to overcome them, will, we say, enable novel dynamics to occur that in turn can support more equitable educational practices and reforms. The act of creating knowledge with vs. creating knowledge of, exploring together rather than finding out about, is an area where we advocate fruitful joint explorations in ways that co-generate new ways of thinking about education. We end on a hopeful note, drawing from examples in practice of creative ways to overcome the problematic patterns explored above and to more fully include teachers in shared efforts.

Authors

• Sarah R Lillo Kang, Southeast Missouri State University

• Shona McIntosh, The University of Bath