Susan Groundwater-Smith

Ethics in Practitioner Research: An Issue of Quality.

This contribution is set in the context of the burgeoning of practitioner inquiry in Australia, taking account also of various European and North American initiatives, against the background of the notion of action research as an emancipatory project. Practitioner inquiry, under these conditions, requires that the work move beyond a utilitarian function, important as that may be in terms of enhancing practice, and that it develops a greater capacity to critique underlying policies. It will argue that if those engaged in practitioner inquiry, in particular in education, and those who support and sponsor them, are to move beyond a celebratory mode, then it is critical that a set of criteria are developed that may be used to govern quality; both in terms of the quality of the research and the quality of the policies at the local and state levels. The case will be made for developing such a platform founded upon principles of ethicality in the interests of all stakeholders, including consequential stakeholders, that is the students themselves, and will clearly have implications for policy and practice. For us, however, the matter of ethicality transcends stakeholder interests and is a central validation issue. Thus, the contribution will draw attention to the ways in which quality is not only determined by sound research practices but also must be such that ethical principles are manifested in the structures and processes of practitioner inquiry. In this sense ethical research practice is of a substantive rather than procedural kind.

Teacher Professional Learning in an Age of Compliance

PART I: Present, past and future. 1. Introduction: Current Problematics in Teacher Professional Learning. 2. How Did we Get Here? Historical Perspectives on Inquiry-based Professional Learning. 3. Developing courage. PART II: Professional Knowledge Building: Tenets and tools. 4. Mode 3 Knowledge: What it is and why we need it. 5. Inquiry as a framework for professional learning: Interrupting the dominant discourse. 6. Reclaiming Quality. PART III: Tensions, contradictions, competing agendas,- 7. Whats at stake and whats at risk? 8. Who pays the piper? Agendas, Priorities and Accountabilities. 9. What Learning Community? A Knotty Problem. PART IV: Closing the gap,- 10. Case Study: The Higher Degree. 11. The Coalition of Knowledge Building Schools. 12. Closing the Gap - Conclusion.

From data source to co-researchers? Tracing the shift from ‘student voice’ to student–teacher partnerships in Educational Action Research

This article provides a review of the concept of student voice as it has been represented in Educational Action Research from the 1990s to the present day. Contextualised within an exploration of the challenges posed by educational action research that incorporates student voice in the current age of accountability as reflected and understood in academia, we explore issues of power and authority, issues of process and issues of ownership as they emerge in the literature. We note ways in which these challenges are manifest in primary and secondary schooling and in tertiary education. Finally, we survey some recent representations of student voice in Educational Action Research, observing something of a shift from earlier conceptualisations of students as a ‘data source’ to a more active involvement as co-researchers and joint constructors of knowledge, progressing toward more active student–teacher partnerships.

Seeking for the unwelcome truths: beyond celebration in inquiry-based teacher professional learning

This paper seeks to interrupt the dominant discourse of action research that emphasises the celebration of achievements, paying less attention to the ‘unwelcome truths’ that can sometimes be revealed. Building on our work in supporting inservice teacher professional learning thorough practitioner research in contexts such as the Coalition of Knowledge Building Schools, we examine the capacity of practitioner inquiry and student voice to contribute to teachers’ broader professional knowledge base. Welcoming ‘unwelcome truths’ requires a robustness on the part of teachers, an openness to the professional learning and growth that can ensue from genuine critique and reflection. Among other things, asking questions of young people in schools can sometimes yield new and challenging insights into school and learning. We draw on examples from our work with schools and teachers to consider what might be done to make these ‘unwelcome truths’ the basis for the reconceptualisation of practice and catalysts for the ongoing formation of teacher professional identity.

Painting the educational landscape with tea: rereading becoming critical

Abstract Two decades ago Wilf Carr and Stephen Kemmis published Becoming Critical. Its impact upon burgeoning action research, particularly in the field of education, has been substantial and sustained. However, times have changed. The purpose of this article is to revisit this influential text and explore its currency today. The article is written from an Australian perspective in the light of the many changes that have occurred in the educational landscape in the intervening time in that country. The discussion also recognises the enduring nature of the core message; that is, the need to seek for a critical social science that can guide, illuminate and liberate educational practice. In its conclusion, it is argued that taking the book as a whole, its continuing impact is undeniable. Practitioners and academic researchers are in danger of becoming even more estranged than at the time of its writing. Carr himself recognises that research in education is an unfinished story; successive waves of varying paradigms underpinned by varying philosophies contribute to the education debates in an evolving rather than culminating fashion. We shall be reading this work for some time to come.

Revisioning the Physical and On-Line Museum: A Partnership with the Coalition of Knowledge Building Schools.

Abstract The Australian Museum has been working with the Coalition of Knowledge Building Schools over the past five years. Students aged from 5–18 years have been advising the Museum on the development of exhibitions and programs, as well as how the Museum can best use the digital environment to showcase its research and collections. This paper outlines these projects and discusses how the findings suggest ways museums could construct learning experiences that have the potential to transform young visitors through a process of changing as a person.

Teachers’ Workplace Learning and the Learning Portfolio

Abstract During the years 1994‐1996 the Federal Government of Australia conducted the National Professional Development Program (NPDP) for teachers. This paper reports on a project concerned with investigating the views of significant stakeholders about the issue of accreditation of teacher learning in NPDP projects and developing a means by which such accreditation could take place. The project was carried out in the final year of the NPDP and sought to provide a vehicle for teachers to gain university credit for their workplace learning in many of the projects conducted during the three years of the NPDP.

Action Research in Education and Social Work

This chapter discusses action research as it is practised and understood in education and social work. It argues that the major purpose of action research is practical, leading to the development and improvement of practice. It is participative and inclusive of practitioners and consequential stakeholders. The authors address the use of evidence forensically, that is that it informs the understanding of particular phenomena, rather than adversarially, where the pressure is to prove one treatment may be better than another. The authors argue that action research can make a powerful contribution to professional knowledge building. They claim that, while formal knowledge may be seen at one end of the continuum, action research is concerned with practical knowledge underwriting the moral disposition to act wisely, truly and justly at the other. A task for the academy is to assist in the building and understanding of that continuum.

Why Global Policies Fail Disengaged Young People at the Local Level

School retention rates appear to have an iconic status in the global world. This chapter discusses the failure of global educational governance as an economic remedy specifically in relation to the raising of the school leaving age in Australia. It argues that global policy-making for economic competitiveness not only “sidelines the social purposes of education” (Ball S, Curriculo sem Fronteiras 1(2):27–43, 2001) and is designed to exercise control over the education process but also fails to recognise the particularity of the local. To make the case two threads are pursued. The first is a critique of the research on the returns for schooling per se. We argue that the research evidence promoted by organisations such as the OECD is dogged by methodological and data problems. The second thread draws attention to the need to identify heterogeneity in returns, particularly with reference to those young people who are currently disengaged and reluctant learners. It will draw attention to the work of Dockery (Assessing the value of additional years of schooling for the non academically inclined. LSAY research reports. Longitudinal surveys of Australian youth research report #38. ACEReSearch, 2005) who has found compulsion is adverse for non-academically able children and if it is the national desire to provide an inclusive schooling for all, up to the age of 17 years, then pathways and pedagogical practices for those young people who are expressing resistance and alienation will need to both change and be appropriately resourced.

Teacher Research: A Knowledge-Producing Profession?

Teacher research has a long and proud history, stretching back to at least the 1970s, of supporting and valuing teachers as creators as well as consumers of knowledge about educational practice. In this chapter, we explore the shape and rationale of these historical ideals and the ‘architectures of practice’ that frame them, juxtaposed with the more instrumentalist notions of teacher research expressed in recent years by, among others, proponents of ‘evidence-based practice’. We argue for an opening of the discussion around evidence in education and what constitutes good evidence of practice, and a reclaiming of the notion of ‘evidence-based practice’ as a generative rather than reductive interpretation of educational practice, consistent with rather than antagonistic to the notion of praxis as morally informed action .