WHAT HAVE I LEARNED AS A RESULT OF DOING THIS RESEARCH

Jean Rudduck wrote, in March 1985;

“.. classroom enquiry is a way of helping teachers to see beyond the encrustation of habit, to probe rather than to disregard the dilemmas of the classroom, and to anatomise rather than merely be grateful for successful practice.” (Dialogue in Education, Spring, 1985).

BEYOND THE ENCRUSTATION OF HABIT

It is very easy for teachers to be drawn into thinking that their value system or ideals are being lived out or even for them to forget about their values or ideals in the hurly-burly of classroom life. On re-reading my work about giving instructions, I think this is exactly what I was doing there: here was a sequence of lessons which had ‘gone well’ in previous years and I intended to use it again. It was not until I was confronted by Belinda’s statement about not learning anything that I realised there was more to classroom enquiry than just describing what went on and what the students through of it all. Before even arriving at that stage, it is necessary for me to explain why I was doing what I did in the classroom. This is omitted from the account of the instructions sequence. Similarly, in the incident with the racist poem, I would say that I have acted in a similar manner before in similar situations and gone away from the lesson feeling that I had done the right thing and done my bit for anti-racism. The “encrustation of habit” had suggested that this was the correct way to act. Of course, I had never had the benefit of having video cameras or participant observers in the classroom before so these gave me the chance to see beyond the habitual actions of my practice. For the purposes of making my claims in this thesis, I have used such equipment and techniques to provide evidence and to help my observation of classroom events. I feel that, after two years of such work, I can now see with different eyes what goes on in the classroom. This is not to say that audio recordings and/or video recordings will never play a part in my professional life any more, but I have learned, from bitter experience if you like, that classroom life is not all it appears to be. Thus, I count the recordings of my permanently flawed practice and being invaluable artefacts, for it is through these that I am able to imagine ways of improving my practice.

It is also important to bear in mind that sometimes I have found that seeing beyond habit has actually given me good reason for believing even more strongly is some aspects of my professional life. For example, my belief that through discussion we can probe our understanding of life, has been confirmed in this work. I am sure that it is not the only way of doing this but it is a vitally important one. As David Bridges (1979) says,

“Discussion is a necessary condition for what in some sense is held to be the ‘proper’ development of one’s knowledge or understanding. Thus, for example, Popper includes discussion as one of the procedures demanded by the search for truth.

‘Truth is not manifest and is not easy to come by. The search for truth demands at least 

a)	imagination
b)	the gradual discovery of our prejudices by way of a), of b), and of critical discussion.’ (Popper 1963)”

It seems to me that this is part of the theory/practice problem. Jean Rudduck offers an interesting idea here which I would support.

“The theory/practice debate in teacher education has tended to ignore research rather than to enlist it as a powerful and natural bridge between the two.” (Rudduck, 1985).

It seems to me that this is what she means: I can say that I believe that discussion is at the heart of learning but it is an entirely different thing to attempt to live out this belief and to monitor my professional life with regard to such ideas and values. I think, quite firmly, that the only person who can make decisions regarding action in my classroom practice is myself, although I am certain that colleagues can provide advice and insights of a very valuable kind. I think that Ms. Rudduck is also thinking along the lines that if the disciplines have anything to offer practitioners, then it is only in practice that we can find out what it is that they have to offer. We must try our ideas out and report on what happened if we are to bridge the gap between theory and practice. it is not a question of looking to one of the other for answers, but of finding ways of allowing them to communicate with each other through research.

This takes me back to the notion of generalisation. When I have read books or plays I have found myself identifying with the most unlikely people – Raskolnikov in “Crime and Punishment”, Howard Kirk in “The History Man” or Lear from Shakespeare’s powerful play. The reason I identify with them is twofold: I can sympathise with their human frailty, their emotions, their temperaments, their value systems, even though they are alien from my own. But I also identify with them because they have been portrayed in such a way as to be presented in a universal way, in which their experience becomes part of our experience as we read or watch their lives unfold before us. To identify with my practice something along similar lines has to happen.

When I shared the racist poem incident with a group of colleagues, they shared their experiences of similar occurences in their classrooms and saw the possibilities for understanding these events in the light of the analysis I provided of the incident in my own classroom. I was able to understand the incident in a deeper way after discussing the affair with them because they had provided me with different perspectives. Thus, we all took away thoughts about our own practices which had been forged in the crucible of our shared understanding and identification with incidents of racism in our classrooms or lives. From the particular we moved to the general and back to the particular but the crucial thing I took away with me was the idea that all these people were committed to improving their understanding of classroom practice. They were very helpful in helping me to understand and improve my own practice and I felt that as a result we were sharing our commitment to improving our practices in general.

I feel that this is one of the crucial areas of learning for me in this research – attempting to overcome the problems of sharing my thoughts with others. I struggled for a long time to write anything at all. My early attempts were not good. It was not until I hit upon the work of Collingwood (1939), who was actually writing about historical investigation, that I began to realise that there were questions to be analysed before I could write with any critical acumen. I had to share my ideology and thinking more rigorously with my readers. Added to this was the problem of how to integrate insights gained from watching myself in practice was a major obstacle. The idea of having a kind of play in which I would discuss events with a third party, an imaginary observer, was immensely liberating. I find it a very refreshing style to adopt and an easy one to write. I have tried to take it further by having real conversations as the body of the report but this met with doom because I could never get people to discuss when time was ripe. In future perhaps I will achieve this. One further point on the subject of sharing ideas, I thought that actually writing the reports was itself part of the thinking process, as if thoughts flowed from the point of the pen, or perhaps I should say, through the keyboard and screen. It was often in the act of writing itself that ideas emerged or clarified. For this reason, as well as any other, I would advocate that teachers should write more often about their classroom practices, concerns and problems. It is an area of Eames’ work (1986) which is particularly interesting when students think through their successive drafts.

This whole notion of enabling teachers to see beyond the “encrustation of habit” is interesting in the sense that it is what action research sets out to do all the time. To have a critical awareness of what is going on in our lives and to act in ways which will hopefully improve our lot is at the centre of the idea of critical consciousness which Freire or Carr and Kemmis write about. It is the tension between values or ideas and perceived reality which impels us to attempt change and improvement. Animals can build their homes but only humans can make decisions about design before they begin to building. It is this kind of imagination which moves us forward. In terms of this thesis it was this tension which led me to consider ways of improving my practice after considering the ways I saw my practice as being a denial of my educational values or ideas.

The way that I attempted to see “beyond the encrustation of habit” was through a process of question and answer. I had never seen the possibilities of such an approach to thinking before. My career has taken me to work with colleagues who have questioned the validity of traditional approaches to teaching and learning and I think I have believed in a dialectical approach to understanding and knowledge for a long time without really understanding what this entails.

However, I am now certain that it is through question and answer and the tension of the dialectic that I make meaning of my life.

But there is more to it than just this. I believe that if I am to share with anybody the struggles to make meaning of experience I must find a form in which to present those struggles. In writing, I have discovered that this is not really possible. The word on the page, although powerful, does not seem to be powerful enough. To share the struggle, we have to identify and share it. In this way, I see writing as a starting point in a process of understanding which would lead to networks of professional educators who struggle with their desires to improve the process of education in their classrooms. Perhaps then we will be able to tackle some of those big issues, like the social definitions of knowledge or what counts as intelligence. But, before I leap too far ahead of myself, it is an important part of this thesis that the relationship between content and form is considered. As Kemmis says (1980) there is a tension between “the imagination of the case and the invention of the study”: I take this to mean that we must be more rigorous about the ways in which we do both of these things. It is not enough to say, “I am interested in this.” We must be prepared to elucidate where our interests arise from also to present our findings in a form which is both appropriate to the case and accessible to our audience. As Kemmis says,

“ the dialectic is …… simultaneously a cognitive function and a manifestation of rationality as reasonableness”. (Kemmis, 1980)

It seems to me that it is through this process and others like it that I am able to form knowledge about my own practice and to report that knowledge to others. This is another part of the learning that has gone on during this research: I have thought more carefully about the nature of knowledge. I am not sure that I can say what knowledge is but I think I am now in a position of being able to say that I value rational doubt above certainty. This is part of my belief in the value of question and answer: I think it is more useful to form doubtful answers to very good questions rather than very good answers to doubtful questions. For example, I think it is valuable for me to go through the process of writing three research reports and come up with sound pedagogical questions, which I did, than for me to go through the process and come up with a guide to good practice for teachers interested in teaching through discussion. The reason I think this is more important is that I consider it important to get away from the notion of good teachers as being those who have fewer problems in the classroom and also because I think it is important that professional educators attempt to address questions as a group rather than as individuals. This takes me back to those ideas expressed by Gadamer, Bernstein or Polanyi (see above) where they were advocating a community of like-minded people who were interested in the pursuit of truth rather than finding some spurious element that went under that name. Thus, I think it is important that we find ways of building such dialogical communities on the foundations of personal knowledge. Only then will there by any possibility of breaking the reification of knowledge and making it a commodity which has some use to its consumers, to give it life.

ASSESSING TEACHERS

After making such idealistic remarks, I am led to consider the use of this thesis. I think that the work of action-researchers must have some applicability in the field of teacher appraisal. Whenever the concept of assessing the performance of teachers is mentioned, it is in the context of improving the profession and providing students with a better opportunity of learning. My claims in this thesis are that I have done both of these things with regard to my own practice. If the process I have undertaken was to be spread throughout the whole profession, the effect would be one of liberating the whole profession, of enabling them to attempt to improve their practices and to share their attempts with their colleagues. Instead of having someone else come into classrooms and check performance against certain norms, teachers would be able to shape their own destinies, manage their own in-service education, discuss the possibilities for improvement and to monitor attempts to do just that. Instead of judging performance against the criteria of the D.E.S. or the N.U.T. of whoever, we would be able to examine our own criteria in a wider community which would include other professionals and possibly lay people.

How can I help to build a dialogical community of professional educators dedicated to the improvement of the process of educator?

This, I envisage as being one of the ways in which I hope to take the ideas generated by this research into my professional life. I am already part of the Wiltshire Learning about Learning Group which is concerned to investigate the process of education in classrooms and I take part in some aspects of the Wiltshire Oracy Project, which has a more specific focus, that of attempting to improve the process of education with a particular focus on talk. Further than this, I am interesting in the possibilities of forming a context in which an entire school community can become a community of action researchers. Through a proposed Learning Group at the school in which I will be working next year, I think it is eminently possible that this could come about in the not too distant future. It seems to me, then, that the idea of a dialogical community of professionals is not a pipe-dream. After this research, I see my role in such networs and associations as being important because I have experience of researching my own practice. Added to this is my experience of participation in L.A.L. and the Oracy Project, not to mention the South West Action Research Network which attempted to bring a group of action researchers from a large geographical area together. I am interested in this whole idea of extending the networks of like-minded professionals.

IN THE CLASSROOM

Of course, there are things I have learned which have a more direct application to my own practice. I would like to discuss this reflexive function of the research now.

One of the things I have learned from the research is that it is easy to follow the good practice of last year by merely attempting to repeat a sequence of lessons because they went well before. This is the “encrustation of habit” which Jean Rudduck refers to in her article in “Dialogue” quoted above. I think this is evident in my piece on giving instructions. When I showed this to a colleague, she said that she always felt that classroom activities ought to be useful in some way. To devote three weeks to such an enterprise was seen by this colleague as being a waste of time. In hindsight, I think I agree. It is by writing research reports or subjecting our practices to scrutiny that we begin to see beyond habit to the problems that lie at the core of our work. When these problems are investigated, it may not be that they disappear, even with the closest attention, but that we begin to see the complexities of classroom life. Thus, we may attempt to put our concerns or problems right but we may only get better at discovering what our problems are. This, as Kitwood (1976) said, is more important than finding good answers to spurious questions. Added to which, I would see this as an improvement in practice – deeper understanding can only be an improvement.

What of my own questions?

I think that if you look at the papers in this thesis, you will see a move from asking questions like, “What went on in this practice?” to a more fundamental, “How do I improve this process of education here?” The difference between the Giving Instructions report and the first research report show the difference obtained in asking the different questions. I would say that during the period covered by reports one to three, there is a marked development in the kind of questions I asked myself about my own practice. This is evident in the way I moved from asking questions located almost totally in my practice in report number one, through an attempt to integrate findings from a wider area of interest and study, to an ability to focus on one specific issue which concerned me and integrating insights from other areas of interest and study.

I think that the research has shown me that relationships are of fundamental importance in education. My relationship with the girls in report three, for instance, was much warmers and, as a result, I think they did a log more of the kind of work I that I valued. I would not claim that this was the only reason for their behaviour but I would say that it is one of them. Similarly, I think that my hard work with “the lads” also paid off, considering Chris’ comments in the same paper. I have always been aware of the importance of relationships through the work of Carl Rogers, but it took this research to remind me that such relationships have to be worked at and monitored. To develop meaningful relationships with an entire class of 30 or so individual students is no mean feat – we get the wrong picture of each other so often through neglect for another. Rogers (1983) does not claim this to be a easy task but a fundamental one. I would agree and it is one area of my work which I intend to monitor through students’ journals, sharing my ideas and concerns with them and so on.
 As for talk in the classroom, I would say that I have learned a great deal which can be summed up in advice to myself along the lines of “plan ahead but be flexible”. I think I have neglected to show myself to the students because I thought I was showing myself. In the racist poem incident, I felt at the time that was merely allowing the boys to see that I had strong opinions on that subject but I forgot all the authority that goes along with being a teacher. I failed to show them where my views come from and I did not allow them to show where their views came from. In this way, we showed a reified view of ourselves.

But is it a very delicate thing to balance one value against another. When I think about the whole group discussion of “Blackberry-Picking” I think about the decision about whether or not to pursue the line of thought brought about by Belinda or whether to follow my lesson plan. I made my decision to follow Belinda’s train of thought because I think that issues raised by students are more valid than my own simply because they are raised by them. They are the issues that concern them so they are the issues we ought to follow.

In organising for discussion then, I think I have learned that it is important to allow the students some room to raise their own concerns but always to manage the situation so that there is a demand being placed on their language. I think, after many others, some of whom are quoted in this thesis, that this is a vital way of learning. So I will continue to experiment with my idea of interplay between various kinds (e.g. friendship) and sizes of small groups and the whole class. I will continue to search for new and invigorating ways of “turning on the learning power”, as Garth Boomer calls it.

Finally,let me show you my intentions as I express them for the 1986 Annual Conference of the British Educational Research Association. I took part in a symposium on teacher research. Part of my brief was to set out what my interests would be from September 1986 onwards. I wrote;

Can I find ways of taking less dominant roles in discussions?

How can I integrate and coordinate the learning going on in whole class discussions with the learning going on in individual students’ heads or in small groups and vice versa?

How can I place demands on language without encouraging students to merely step into my frame of reference?

How can I encourage students to see that that the meanings available in literature are complex and open to negotiation?

My interest over the past year has been in my own role in classroom discussion. I worked with a fourth year group who became a fifth year during the course of the study, I became interested in the logic of question and answer in making a claim to educational knowledge and in making sense of things in general. I envisage that I will continue to investigate my practice along the same lines, although the situation of my work will change radically from September 1986. From that date I will be working at Greendown School in Swindon. Here, the thrust of thinking about the curriculum is that it should be integrated as far as possible. To this end, I will be part of a team who will be building a new course of integrated Humanities and Languages. The potential for an influential approach to schooling is fantastic, given our brand new purpose-built school; the first year intake of six, first year forms and a growth to being a six form entry 11-16 school; a commitment to descriptive student profiles; and the generous resourcing, particularly in computing facilities. Thus I think I can add to the above questions:

How do we/I Build a course which integrates the whole curriculum?

How can we/I build an emancipatory role for the assessment of our performances as teachers?

I think that there will be a greater possibility for reflection at the school, not least because of the time guaranteed each week on the timetable to staff development. This is why I have worded my last two questions in the plural and singular.