Developing Some Appropriate Standards of
Judgement
for our Action Research Enquiries in
China:
The Second Lecture for The Longdong
Institute, Gansu Province,
March, 2004.
Dr. Moira Laidlaw,
ChinaÕs Experimental Centre for
Educational Action Research in Foreign Languages TeachingÕ, Guyuan Teachers
College.
In this lecture, I want to bring up the subject of judgements in AR. If we are to do educational research of any high quality, then it is logical that we must have standards to judge the work. We must know what high quality is and we must endeavour to embed those values in our work in order to improve its educational quality. Standards of judgement are agreed values within particular social groupings. In AR, quite often the focus of our very research is on seeing how we can negotiate what counts as valid with our social groupings. This is an enormously complex process. All the time we are asking ourselves ÔWhose values am I/are we using here?Õ ÔWhose standards are being used to shape this research?Õ ÔWho controls the knowledge?Õ For the way in which we judge knowledge has something to do with the creation of the knowledge itself. More later.
The aim of the
lecture this evening is to look at one set of standards that are widely used in
the West and then consider them as appropriate or not for China. Of course, in
the final analysis, you will have to make up your own minds, and indeed, that
is the whole point. If AR is anything, it is a way of making up your own minds.
This is why it is so closely linked to sustainable development. This is why it
has such a rich potential to succeed here in China.
So, as we were
saying, one of the mainstays of an AR enquiry, is that the researchers develop
their own standards. LetÕs look first, then at a set of standards, which have
been widely used in the West Ð in England, America, Australia, New Zealand and
parts of Europe. You might be interested in looking at a Masters degree
dissertation by a Chinese-speaking woman, Peggy Leong from Singapore, who
undertook her degree at the University of Bath in 1991, and who concluded that
although the standards of judgement were useful references, they could not
entirely describe or explain her own educational development. Her dissertation:
The Art of an Educational Inquirer is available on the website given to you in
the last lecture[1]. The
standards we are about to study are by Professor Richard Winter, of Anglia
Polytechnic University in Cambridge, Britain.
Principles for
AR Enquiries, by Professor Richard Winter[2]
In the last lecture, I talked to you about the links between a living theory approach to AR and Teaching Methodology. I pointed out the ways in which you might conduct your own research and mentioned some examples of Living Theory AR going on at Guyuan, Haiyuan and in your own establishment under the visionary leadership of Dean Xi Xingfa.
What I would now like to do in this lecture is talk to you about why I believe it is important for you to devise your own ways of working, evaluating and promoting your work in AR. I do not wish at all to say that the previous standards we have been looking at are wrong, or anything like that. I am simply saying they might not be the most suitable or appropriate ones for you. These standards were made in a Western country, and usually served Westerners, or students/practitioners attempting to have their work validated by Western establishments.
As we all know, China has a long and wonderful history of endeavour, of events, of people, of cultures. It is a marvelously rich culture, embedded in its languages, its writing and calligraphy, its art and music, Beijing Opera being a splendid example of this distinctiveness. Furthermore many ethnic groups are living together and gaining from the diversity. For many, many centuries, China has led the world in preserving its many cultures from outside invasion. It has fought to maintain its own character and distinctiveness. This seems to me, a foreigner living in your culture, to be a very precious thing. I come from a culture, which is the result of many incursions, and which has made many of those invasions of other countries over the centuries. Older than America, but younger than China is my country and I love it!
However, I have seen the way that some of the old values have been eroded and spoilt by modernization. It is one of the paradoxes of development work, that what is developed is changed, sometimes out of all recognition and not always for the better. And in that changing, something precious, something beautiful, is lost. I want to argue this evening for a preservation of the good things in China. The preservation of those standards, which, as human beings, we care about Ð family, good work, love, prosperity. But some other values, like distinctiveness, uniqueness and immutability. Those qualities might be lost if we engage in work that copies standards in education not made by those living in China and working for China. I am arguing this evening for AR with Chinese characteristics.
When I heard that I
had a chance to come to China, I was thrilled. I had always wanted to come
here. I read books about China. I watched the television. I talked to people
who had come here. I made some Chinese friends. When I arrived, I was aware
that people took me as the Ôforeign expertÕ, a status I found and still find,
very difficult to accept. I was perceived as Ôthe expertÕ not just on
Methodology, but on the whole of the English language Ð its etymologies,
semantics, linguistics, and also the countryÕs culture, history, politics,
religions, geography, arts and sciences, sociology, indeed everything remotely
connected with England and English ways. Of course I am not able to do all
this. I come from Scotland anyway Ð and we do things differently up there!
This mantle of the
expert is an assumption I have worked hard to dispel amongst my colleagues to
differing degrees of success. I mean, in one sense, itÕs nice to be seen as an
expert. Everyone likes to be admired for their abilities. In addition, I have
never found such freedom in my professional life as I have enjoyed in China.
People here trust me professionally and thatÕs a wonderful feeling. It makes me
try harder. However, it also makes me realise the importance of showing this
respect to the people I work with, people like you. I come here as the ÔexpertÕ
in your eyes, but to me there is so much you know that I donÕt! Chinese for
one, as you could tell from the last lecture! Being respected has taught me the
value of showing respect to others. It is a maxim which Liu Xia at Guyuan has
written so movingly about in her AR report.
Every time I
encounter the expectation of my ÔexpertiseÕ, I feel both gratified and scared.
You see, this ÔexpertÕ status has a spin-off effect, that I believe, is
damaging to the learning processes between us and IÕd like to explore that this
evening, if I may.
My work here this
term is as a full-time ARer, helping others to build capacity in their
educational development. However, this is not a one-way process. I am learning
as I am seeing. I am gaining as I am giving. I think thatÕs a fundamental truth
about deep learning. Deep learning happens in relationship over time.
As we talked about
last time, the work being done here in Qingyang is contributing to one of the
greatest educational innovations in this area: ChinaÕs Experimental Centre for
Educational Action Research in Foreign Languages Teaching. Individuals and
groups in three locations Ð a teacherÕs college, an Institute and a Middle
School are breaking new ground in education in the northwest of China. It is a
momentous undertaking. We are now gathering evidence about how teachers are
improving their methodologies[3]
and how students, including even school-students, are improving their learning
about English. Beyond this, we are beginning to find evidence of the ways in which
this new of research is changing peopleÕs minds not only about their
professional lives but about their human values as well.[4]
I spend my time
going into classrooms, watching colleagues teach, helping them turn methodology
into research and into their own living theory, organizing and facilitating
meetings, reading and writing papers, co-authoring, advising on strategic moves
for the Centre, and building international networks. It is early days for me,
but I admit to having one fear so far. The fear, is that this Chinese AR centre
will turn into a western out-reach centre for western AR thinking. I believe
this would be a limitation, not only for this centre, but for all AR across the
world. You see I believe this Centre has something unique to contribute.
I believe
contributing to the social good, to the learning processes is educational in
itself. I think, as I explained in the last lecture, AR can help us to do this.
We can gain knowledge and write about it for others, so that they might find
hope in it. If I might tell you a personal story about my own educational
development to illustrate what I am trying to explain here tonight.
When I was in
England, for the last eight years I taught, amongst other things, English
Literature with 12 year old students[5].
We studied a lot of poetry, which was difficult for them. I realised that I
wasnÕt just teaching poetry, but also helping the students relate to it and
work on it for themselves. Literature lends itself to open and student-centred
teaching methodologies. I wanted the students to have a sense of achievement in
their understanding, because I knew that this would motivate them to try
harder. And so I asked them to make some presentations related to the poetry,
entirely of their own creation. And then to perform them for their classmates.
They were highly motivated. And then I asked them to make up some unique
standards of judgement, by which their classmates and they themselves, could
judge their work. This stems from a belief that if you control some of the
evaluation of your work, then you are more likely to enjoy it, and moreover, to
understand it deeply. My Ph.D thesis is actually about this process of the
evolution of developmental standards of judgement in education[6].
It shows quite clearly that not only did the studentsÕ motivation increase, but
their knowledge and ownership of the knowledge, as well as the knowledge
itself, also increased. This led me to realise the significance of people
making their own standards of judgement about the work they are doing.
LetÕs stop a moment
and consider this. People making their own standards of judgement about the
work they are doing. How can this be? How can we do that and still produce
work, which is recognised to be of value in the wider society? This is the
great challenge of our work today, in my opinion. LetÕs look at how it might
function and indeed, that it might look like in AR.
At the moment, some
of you are conducting your own enquiries into your educational practices and
coming up with new ideas, with new knowledge. If you write this up rigorously,
with contextualisation in the appropriate literature, then you are creating
your own living educational theory. It will be living, because it is not
finished yet. It is in a process of development. It stretches beyond the
boundaries of the disciplines approaches to educational research. The
disciplines of education are usually seen as: the sociology, philosophy,
psychology and history of education. The Living Theory approach to educational
research puts your living practices at the centre of your theorizing. And what
we are talking about here, this evening, is taking that Living form to its
logical extension and giving it the means by which it can develop. Human beings
grow. They change. They develop. You started as a baby. So did I. So did we
all. Once, your hands were this big (hold up a small object) and now theyÕre, well, bigger! The greatest
human beings started as you and I started Ð as babies. As beginners, so to
speak. But we have grown and matured, changed in appearance, in our habits and
needs, in our abilities and potentials. AR is like that. We start as baby
researchers. And then we grow up. We change. We differ in some things from our
brothers and sisters, from our aunts and uncles, from our cousins, from our
parents and grandparents. And thatÕs just in one family.
LetÕs take it
outside the family. Look at your neighbour. Look at him/her closely. Look at
their eyes, their hair length, texture, colour. Look at the shape of their
face. Look at their clothes, their shoes, their bags, papers, pens and mobile
phones! Listen to the accent in their voices. Are their voices low or high,
sweet or strict? And then we could find out about their likes and dislikes. Are
they wrong to like something different from you? Of course not! But they do.
AR is a little like
that. Each researcher finds out something new not only because it is a big
world out there, but because the question s/he is asking is his or her unique
question, therefore it has different values underpinning it, and therefore, it
comes to different conclusions.
ItÕs not all
separate, though. Our enquiries are based in this society, and this society has
a right to judge some of what we do. What I am arguing for this evening,
however, is that we, as groups and individuals also have to decide what it is
that is of unique value to our own enquiries, and use that as one of the standards of judgement for
the research.
This means, that
the Longdong Institute may come up with some different validating standards for
its work than Guyuan Teachers College, or indeed the Hui Middle School in
Haiyuan where similar work is being done.
But hang on, you
might say! This isnÕt scientific! You canÕt have loads of different kinds of
standards operating. Who will know what is right? A good question. This takes
us into the areas of generalisability and validity, and although I cannot do
justice to those huge concepts in a single lecture, let me say just a few
things about them.
Generalisability:
this is the quality, usually highly prized in the hard sciences, by which
research is tested to see whether its results can be true under all conditions
and at all times. This is a quality which the educational world in the West has
given up trying to aspire to, because it believes it to be inappropriate for
research into and with people. People are not generalisable. As we saw earlier
in the lecture, your neighbours are different from you in so many ways. Your
family-members are also different from you. Of course, we have huge things in
common Ð our genes, our early context, some of our hopes and dreams, but
essentially, we are different people. AR in particularly no longer tries to
meet this criterion, because it is not suitable. It doesnÕt work in education
sufficiently to make the effort of trying to get it worthwhile. It might work
in huge number-sampling, and this information might feed into an AR enquiry,
but in such an AR enquiry, we make conclusions from our context, not from the
context of others. So, in a Living Theory Approach to AR, we try instead to
think about how we might communicate the values informing our enquiries, so
that others might learn something from them Ð about methods, about human
values, about theorizing, about sharing. Generalisability doesnÕt work in
educational research when dealing with people.
Validity: this is
the quality, which decides if what you are researching is of value. This is a
very important standard in AR. Validity in AR can reply on many different
factors. We talked about some of them at the beginning of this lecture.
However, what is valid to you, might not be valid to me.
LetÕs consider this
situation. Carl Jung, an influential and brilliant psychologist and student of
Freud, once said that: Ôthe maturation process is characterized by becoming
independent of oneÕs parents.Õ[7]
Well, clearly, he wasnÕt speaking about Chinese people. One of the strengths as
I see it, of Chinese society, is the familyÕs sense of itself as a single unit.
And yet here is this scientist saying that maturity is a matter of becoming
independent of oneÕs parents. Is he wrong? Are you wrong? Is he right for some
people and not for others? This idea of what constitutes maturity seems to me a
very western one, and one which fits well with individualism.
What I am saying is
that different cultures evolve different standards of judgement. Just as I
cannot say that I think Jung is wrong, I donÕt think Chinese attitudes to
family are wrong either! ItÕs difficult being a relativist! What I am trying to
say, is that I hope that in doing your AR to help your students learn better,
to help this country become even greater, that you will look to yourselves and
your own, abilities, to your own cultures, hopes and dreams, norms and
exceptions, to help you develop the kind of standards you want your educational
work to be judged by.
ThatÕs my hope.
Why? Because one of my
deepest standards of judgement is concerned with promoting the freedom for
people to explore their lives in the name of education, society and humanity.
Thank you and good
night!
[1] Kok, P., (1991), ÔThe Art of an Educational InquirerÕ, Masters dissertation, University of Bath, at: http://www.actionresearch.net
[2] This is a prŽcis of an article by Richard Winter, from Some Principles and Procedures for the Conduct of Action Research, in ed. Zuber-Skerritt, ÔNew Directions in Action Research,Õ Falmer Press, London.
[4] Please see Liu XiaÕs first draft AR report, in which she writes movingly about her work not only with college students, but also young relatives whom she is trying to motivate to improve their English. Her conclusions reveal that her research is seeping through into her whole life and not being restricted to the workplace.
[5] See previous website addresses for further details of this work.
[6] Laidlaw, M., (1996), ÔHow can I create my own living educational theory as I account for my educational development?Õ thesis at: http://www.actionresearch.net
[7] Carl Jung, 1926, ÔMemories, Dreams, ReflectionsÕ, Falmer Press, New York.