Under-tapped potential: practitioner research as a vehicle for widening participation

Abstract

Practitioners working to widen participation to universities in England are an increasingly important and professionally diverse group but surprisingly absent from the academic literature and lacking in access to bespoke professional development pathways in HE. In England current approaches within policy and research also tend to position them as gatherers of evidence with a mission to inform change rather than developing their capacity to be(come) agents of change in their own right. Drawing on the perspectives of three widening participation practitioners who had recently completed a research-based MA, this paper explores the opportunity that this provided to illuminate the complexities encountered in routine practice, contributing to positive change. Rather than being methodologically inferior, practitioner research emerged as highly complementary and in the case of WP its transformative potential is currently hugely under-tapped.     

Collaborative practitioner research: opening a third space for local knowledge production

Early childhood education and care is currently experiencing unprecedented policy interest and expansion. This policy and practice landscape requires new forms of adaptive leadership, new spaces for production of the knowledge necessary for this changing context, and tools that can support the development of leadership qualities. This paper examines the potential of practitioner research to produce contextually relevant knowledge and to develop leadership capacity. Our findings show that collaborative practitioner research groups provide a relatively safe environment for the sharing of dilemmas and critical reflections. The practitioners who participated in this research wanted access to narratives of change in typically resourced early childhood contexts as well as in the more highly resourced settings that are more often reflected in academic research and literature. This suggests there is a need for much more of this work to be publicly available. These groups can generate the courage required to open practice based research to public critique. This, we argue is an important element of activist leadership. Collaborative practitioner research opens up the possibility for practitioners to position themselves as knowledge producers and to revitalize the knowledge base that informs teacher education in the academy. In supporting this move, academics need to position themselves as resource gathers and co-learners thus opening a third space for knowledge production. The challenges for the profession are how to fund and effectively disseminate collaborative practitioner research and how to draw it into dialogue with other forms of research.     

Poetic expression and poetic form in practitioner research

The article draws on an experience of classroom-based collaborative research in South African primary schools. After a brief presentation of the overall research methodology, the debate focuses on the complexity of collaborative meaning making and debates the ethical implications of managingthe fluid relational boundaries that characterise narrative research.     

Narratives and activity theory as reflective tools in action research

Narratives and activity theory are useful as socially constructed data collection tools that allow a researcher access to the social, cultural and historical meanings that research participants place on events in their lives. This case study shows how these tools were used to promote reflection within a cultural–historical activity theoretically shaped research project on multi-professional collaborative practice. The tools are shown to individually and jointly aid insight, understanding and action. The participants generated data through narratives and analysed the data with an activity theoretical framework. These were then interpreted as cultural historical artefacts by the researcher. The socially constructed paradigm within which they are situated, their participative use, and their creation of insight, understanding and action make them ideal as action research tools.     

Using images to promote reflection: an action research study in Zambia and Tanzania

This paper focuses on the use of images to promote reflection and analysis of inclusive practices. The image-based work was set in the context of a two-year action research study, which took place in Tanzania and Zambia, 2001–2003, in collaboration with researchers from the Enabling Education Network (EENET), based at the University of Manchester's School of Education. This study, entitled, 'Understanding Community Initiatives to Improve Access to Education' involved the use of a wide range of processes to promote reflection, analysis and documentation, including a range of different types of images. We reflect here on the learning, which took place among the researchers in all three countries in using images as a basis for reflection on inclusive education.     

Inquiry as stance: practitioner research for the next generation

This paper is a reflexive account of the use of critical social theory within my practice as an action researcher. It is set within the ongoing debates between pragmatist and critical tendencies within action research. The paper discusses how a selective deployment of key constructs from the work of Jurgen Habermas has supported my work as a second-order action researcher. It demonstrates how these constructs can help deal with the practical and theoretical tensions faced when supporting groups of action researchers. It focuses on one of the key issues faced by any external agent trying to work within such groups: how to avoid imposing their own agendas and interpretations. It does this by discussing three foundational points within the process of action research – the nature of practitioners’ practical reasoning and the bases of critical self-reflection and collective action.     

How context shapes practitioner research and professional learning in schools in Singapore and NSW

The New South Wales (NSW) Government Department of Education and Communities and the Singapore Ministry of Education have encouraged teachers to engage in practitioner research as part of their professional learning agenda because it is perceived as a powerful means of investigating and improving educational practice. Drawing on a Schatzkian perspective, where social life is understood as being tied to a context, or ‘the site of the social’, we examine teachers’ experiences as practitioner researchers in NSW and Singapore. We also argue that practitioner research has been remodelled and re-interpreted differently in different contexts and that cultural context is a potent constituent of the practice architecture that prefigures practitioner research. Using data collected from interviews with 42 participants comprising academics, policy makers and teachers, we specifically illuminated those contextual/cultural characteristics respondents identified as factors that actively shape teachers’ experiences as practitioner researchers.     

Planning as action research

Planning contains so much more than the written plan. Early in 2000, an invitation came from the Collaborative Action Research Network (CARN), to people experienced in action research who might want to help plan and present an action research event for elementary school science teachers in Venezuela, South America, in Autumn 2000. This article analyses the outcomes from planning and enacting the resulting workshop to show how planning can be the subject of action research. It goes on to show how planning and teaching interact in a multifaceted way towards technical, practical and emancipatory ends. Planning and teaching are best seen as conversation, a conversation that is both synchronous and asynchronous.     

PAR is a way of life: Participatory action research as core re-training for fugitive research praxis

Abstract

In this article, we present participatory action research (PAR) as a radical act of humanity: a direct response to real dehumanization of vulnerable communities. We argue, as an enactment of critical social theories, that PAR privileges relationships and shared knowledge creations as strategies for transforming everyday worlds. We draw on interviews conducted with nine participants of a 2013 Krueger-Henney, P. (2013). Co-researching school spaces of dispossession: A story of survival. The Association of Mexican American Educators Journal, 7(3), 42–53. [Google Scholar] PAR Institute, which aimed to explore and document the ways in which PAR is taken up in the lives, bodies, and thinking of PAR activists and students. Interviews reveal PAR is not an act of imagination, but rather an act of reclaiming and disrupting realities. As a result, PAR fractures an ongoing dystopia/utopia dialectic, and positions horror and hope side-by-side in the material world. It is through and with participant interview narratives that we frame PAR as a site for re-training one’s epistemic core away from Western, Eurocentric standardized and normalized human conduct rooted in historical and ongoing violence towards a fugitive praxis. We conclude that PAR is a radical commitment to guiding social science researchers towards epistemological fugitivity: a moving with and through current, though historically rooted, devastating social realities, as a possibility for a way to be with each other – indeed with the other – in this world. We find that PAR is a way of resisting and rejecting the nastiness of the world, while not waiting for utopia: It is a way of being in this world, a way of life.     

A mentoring programme based on competency development at a Spanish university: an action research study

This article describes an action research (AR) project for designing and implementing a structured mentoring programme in a Spanish university. A student affairs unit, a team of researchers, faculty-mentors and student-protégés worked together on three cycles of AR. The result is a programmatic mentoring programme for the development of non-technical personal and professional competencies for undergraduate students. This paper describes the original situation that sparked the project, the iterative process followed, the tools and guides developed and the final programme designed. In addition to the increase in the level of satisfaction perceived by the entire university, the paper outlines the five critical factors that emerged from the AR project: the competency development process, programme value added, trust between mentors and protégés, the prominence of the student-protégé in the improvement plans and the continuous improvement culture generated.     

Reviewing work-based learning opportunities in the community for physiotherapy students: an action research study

Physiotherapy became a graduate profession in the 1990s marking a shift from ‘training’ to ‘education’. This means students are required to develop as reflective, innovative and autonomous practitioners. Traditional work-based learning has remained a key component in the curricula of physiotherapy programmes in higher education. This is delivered by qualified physiotherapists who take on the role of ‘practice educator’ with responsibility for teaching, supervision and assessment. The teaching and learning strategies of the university and work-based components of physiotherapy curricula are aligned. Concomitantly the delivery of physiotherapy services have become increasingly diverse and the wider health and social care context has changed. In response to these challenges the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (2006) published guidance on the development of work-based learning in community and non-traditional settings. This study explored how community-based placements could be developed to ensure work-based learning continues to meet students’ needs. An action research methodology was used because any change to established practice is more successful if it involves the people who are responsible for its implementation. Thematic analysis identified three important considerations in the development of community placements: Skill acquisition within community settings; expectations of the available learning and teaching opportunities; effects of health service improvements. This research has highlighted the importance of consultation between all those responsible for physiotherapy work-based learning. A review framework has subsequently been developed to both facilitate this consultation and evaluate placement opportunities available in a specific community setting.     

基于教师中介学生自主学习能力发展的行动研究报告

本文基于行动研究探讨大学英语学习环境下教师在学习者自主中的作用以及教师如何中介学生自主能力发展。通过对自主学习模式和课堂教学模式的对比分析, 及对自主学习模式的行动干预结果分析,发现: 1) 教师是大学英语学习环境下学习者自主的必要构念: 2) 基于行动研究范式的教师介入有助于提高学习者自主学习能力、 心理和行为。文章最后讨论本研究结果对实施大学英语自主学习的启示。     

Writes of passage: writing up qualitative data as a threshold concept in doctoral research

Effective writing is an essential skill for all doctoral students, yet it is one that receives relatively little attention in training and supervision. This article explores extensive feedback from participants in a series of workshops for doctoral candidates engaged with writing up qualitative data. The themes arising from the data analysis are discussed in terms of the affective domain of writing, and the main claim is that writing up qualitative data has been identified as what Meyer and Land would call a threshold concept for doctoral candidates employing qualitative analysis. Drawing on Turner's notion of liminality, the article concludes that interdisciplinary workshops can be instrumental in helping doctoral candidates understand the role of writing, and of writing up qualitative data in particular, in their development into independent, autonomous researchers.     

Umbrella action research projects as a mechanism for learning and teaching quality enhancement

ABSTRACT

Umbrella action research projects link together a number of small action research projects under a common organizational and thematic umbrella. This article provides an example of an umbrella action research project, which aimed for teaching quality enhancement. There are two mechanisms by which teaching quality can be enhanced. The first of these is through the improvements initiated in the small projects, which are normally conducted by teachers in the courses they teach. The second mechanism is that of the collective reflective discussions of the whole project team. The collective umbrella that over-arches the individual projects provides a mechanism for participants to collectively transform their understanding of the common thematic issue. There is, therefore, the possibility of an emancipatory transformation, so that the whole achieves more than the sum of the individual projects. This article substantiates the impact of umbrella action research projects by presenting case studies from an overall project that focused on online learning. The cases highlight our reflective discussions on promoting student engagement in online learning. They show how our collective understanding of engagement in online learning was advanced and some of the means tried in the small projects to encourage student engagement. As there is evidence of teaching quality enhancement through the umbrella action research project, we discuss the possibility of redirecting some of the resources currently devoted to quality assurance to quality enhancement through encouraging action research projects.     

Human rights education and the research process: action research as a tool for reflection and change

Human rights education (HRE) aims to achieve a change of mindsets and social attitudes that entails the construction of a culture of respect towards those values it teaches. Although HRE is a recent field of study, its consolidation in Latin America is a fact. During the latest decades several authors have carried out research related to HRE that has made it easier to understand the process of inclusion of HRE in public policies as well as reflection about research processes as a whole. They favour a discussion about the most frequently used strategies and tools, how the latter contribute to strengthen the production of knowledge in HRE, and to what extent there is an actual interrelation between theory and practice. This research article intends to show the state of these questions in HRE, building on the research and studies carried out in Latin America during the last 10 years. At the same time, the article aims to discuss the importance of action research for HRE, understanding its potential as a tool for reflection and change. In general terms, this research article concludes that the studies on HRE rely more on field research and experience report than on action research methodology. The article is concluded noting an important and current challenge for HRE: a more frequent use of participatory action research in human rights-related work, so the knowing-understanding and applying fields can be constructed.     

Exploring the use of complexity theory and action research as frameworks for curriculum change

This paper considers the impact of a small-scale action research project which focused on the development of an emergent approach to curriculum making in a general certificate in secondary education course in geography. In this context, we argue that complexity thinking offers a useful theoretical foundation from which to understand the nature of dynamic pedagogic change resulting from the application of action research methods. Results show that process-focused curriculum change can bring about shifts in both learning and assessment. This is seen as being the result of an emergence orientated approach to action research as a counter to more reductionist approaches which are often used and advocated in educational settings by teachers. We conclude that a combination of complexity thinking and action research can offer a valuable medium through which the educational needs of learners and teachers can be addressed in different, localized contexts.     

Relationality as a response to challenges of participatory action research in indigenous contexts: reflections from the field

ABSTRACT

Three researchers share their reflections on the challenges and goodness of fit of using participatory action research (PAR) in studies with indigenous peoples in the United States and Canada. Three central challenges of participatory methodologies are identified: (1) defining what constitutes participation; (2) the extended time required for a PAR study; and (3) researcher positionality. The authors discuss tensions inherent in the western academy when shifting final decision-making authority over research processes away from the academic institution to the indigenous community. A model situating the principles of PAR alongside perspectives and values congruent with the indigenous concept of relationality is presented as a means of mitigating these challenges. This approach aligns PAR principles within culturally-congruent definitions of relationship and encourages researchers to re-imagine participation as a form of relationship, allowing them to engage more deeply and genuinely with indigenous participants.     

Enhancing the undergraduate student experience via fund-raising partnerships: an action research project

This project was developed from practitioner action research and considers the impact of integrating fund-raising activities into the formal curriculum with a target group of undergraduate students. The main aim of this project was to evaluate the impact of developing fund-raising activities as an integral aspect at both module and programme levels, grounded within practitioner action research. A core component of this aim was to develop value-added structures into established modules to support the student experience and student identity. Furthermore, the project sought to broaden, develop and strengthen links with the local wider community, recognising the value such interactions can bring. Finally, the project set out to develop integration opportunities between the students and organisations in order to develop the students’ awareness of workforce options as future professionals. This study is based within one post-1992 higher education institution and consisted of three inter-related but distinct phases. The project involved 60 students during Phase 1, building to some 200 students by Phase 3. The findings suggest that fund-raising activities built into the formal curriculum can be a useful medium for promoting student identity whilst providing a ‘value-added’ component to existing programmes of study.     

Towards a reflection repertoire: using a thinking tool to understand tensions in an action research project

Most action researchers agree that action research consists of cycles of planning, acting, reflecting, and taking further action. However, in action research literature, there is something missing. The nature of reflection in the action research process, including its relationship with the tensions that arise while discussing purposes, processes, and outcomes, has not been well explored. As a contribution to an expanded reflection repertoire, this article presents a thinking tool: the expansive learning circle. This model, or thinking tool, draws on the theoretical framework of cultural–historical activity theory and the idea that contradictions and tensions are driving forces for development. The central thesis of the article is that there is a need for a reflection repertoire that can highlight tension in an action research project and help people cope with this type of complex reflective work.