What Did the Teachers Learn That Added Value? A Metathematic Analysis of Action Research Findings

• In Event: The Why, How, and Lessons Learned From Meta-Analysis of Action Research

Abstract

In my portion of the symposium, I share a meta-thematic analysis of the action research findings of 125 Pennsylvania and New Jersey K-12 teachers who conducted action research inquiries to facilitate an epistemology of reflective practice (Schön, 1995) and conscientization or a problem-posing, libratory education for their students (Freire, 2003). Teachers developed and enacted their self-designed data collection plans and documented their practice in a field log to make their familiar practices strange to themselves (Geertz, 1973). They wrote analytic memos that examined data through a series of progressive (Dewey, 1997), dialogical (Freire, 2003), social constructivist (Vygotsky, 1978), and sociolinguistic (Delpit & Dowdy, 2002) lenses. They wrote to learn about their data along the way, utilizing a wide array of narrative conventions, including anecdotes, vignettes, layered stories, pastiches, dramas, and poems (Ely et al., 1997; Richardson & St Pierre, 2005). Data were coded (Bogdan & Biklen, 2003) and then categorized in graphic organizers. Theme statements emerged, which teachers shared in their research report write-ups, which are available in the public domain.

My meta-thematic analysis (Ely, Vinz, Downzing, & Anzul, 1997) of these theme statements yielded new insights across studies, identifying the specific actions that teachers took to support student achievement, develop collaboration among learners, differentiate instruction, encourage active student engagement, promote student ownership, facilitate student metacognition, and address inevitable challenges as teachers and researchers.

Meta-analytic challenges I experienced included:
1. Studies share their respective findings in a multiplicity of ways, which sometimes makes it difficult to identify each theme clearly for coding purposes;
2. Theme statements are often complex and may arguably fit multiple coding categories;
3. Some theme statements extol the virtue of the action research methodology without articulating clearly what was learned through the methodology;
4. Some findings statements tend to be outliers or negative cases worthy of separate examination;
5. Researcher stances philosophically ground the methodology and the findings within individual studies, but stances across studies are not necessarily compatible with one another;
6. The meta-themes provide a summary of research findings that bring a collective view of a body of studies into focus, while necessarily obscuring the significant details of each particular study.

By publicly sharing the findings of my meta-analysis, I hope both to engage in new dialogue with other education stakeholders about effective teaching and teacher research practices and make the published accounts of teacher researchers more accessible to fellow educators. In an era in which the value of graduate teacher education is increasingly called into question (Levine, 2005, 2006, 2007; Chingosa & Peterson, 2011), teacher action research holds tremendous promise in helping teachers share with one another what they’ve learned about “adding value” to classroom learning in ways that are far more authentic and hold much more promise than do current positivistic value added measures.

Author

• Joseph M. Shosh, Moravian College