CHAPTER FOUR: TEACHING AND RESEARCH
"First and foremost, we see teaching as inquiry. In other words, teaching is researching" (Cole & Knowles, 2000, p. 1, ).
In classic chicken and egg fashion I tried to decide which came first -- research or teaching. Cole and Knowles (2000) put into words what I had perhaps known already -- that research and teaching were parts of a whole, inextricably linked. Theologically, I could not accept the division of faith and works, and as a result, I felt that the division of theory/research and practice was suggesting the same duality. I had already undertaken classroom research, and indeed the completion of an action research project marked my most successful year of teaching to date. The power of that explicit venture into research opened a whole world of possibilities for me. I realized for myself what Schön (1987) termed "reflection on reflection-in-action," that intellectual activity of symbolizing and verbalizing the tacit knowledge and artistry that is teaching. I used the written presentation of that research as a palette with which to paint a picture of my concept of researching and teaching. I took the following passages from that presentation.
Embracing Subjectivity
What matters to me is creating an atmosphere of joy of learning in my class. I want students to feel that they want to come to school. I believe that students will choose to fulfil the expectations of the curriculum if they feel happy and safe. My goal is to make them happy and safe. I believe that I exert my personality on my class. I want to model an attitude of caring and friendship. It is only possible to learn in a class if you are physically and emotionally present. School is about assessment and evaluation, but people are not about this. They are not assessed unless they accept the assessment. They do not learn except that they choose to learn. They must want to be there and must accept the evaluation/assessment. They will accept when the classroom is theirs and the curriculum is theirs. When they choose to learn the curriculum, there is not enough to teach. School is not about teaching, it is about teachers, individual people who have a effect on individuals and groups. I teach because I know who I am, and I pass that on to my students. - Personal journal, February 2000
Envisioning the Ideal
I envisioned a classroom where students asked "can we do math now?" I wanted to see students creating their own assignments and creating the rubrics and assessment tools to evaluate those assignments. I wanted to see a classroom where students began to work without being told. I wanted to see a classroom where students managed their time to complete the work that they needed to do within their own schedule. I wanted to see students who were comfortable in the classroom, who felt that it was part of their "real world" because we addressed issues in ways that were relevant to them. I envisioned a class where students felt that learning was a natural activity, because it was enacted in ways that valued them for who they were, and for how they chose to live. I envisioned a class where students made choices, but nonetheless chose to make learning choices. I envisioned responsible students. -- Action research project presentation, June 2000
The impetus for my research was emotional in character. Polanyi (1964) made the argument for the intellectual passions. I paid attention to the issues in my classroom that held emotional sway. By following my emotions I could decide which were the paths of intellectual beauty (Polanyi, 1964). My research was based upon an emotional response, and it addressed emotional issues such as joy and comfort, but it also addressed issues of curriculum and assessment. The key was that I increased the relevance of the research-- both to me and to others-- because of the passion with which I could present the issues. This was not simply a passion for a subject, but a recognition that the passion enabled me to address the issues of greater importance (Polanyi, 1964). This is the first key point in the argument for practitioner research. The emotional engagement of the researcher, rather than tainting the research, makes the research more relevant to the profession.
My research was not into a curriculum area although it involved curriculum. It was driven by an emotional response to the voices in the world that would have us believe that young people are not longer responsible. I focussed on an area that I felt was a particular strength of mine -- making the responsibility for learning more explicitly the students' task. Most important, I made the assertion that "I teach because I know who I am, and I pass that on to my students." This made my teaching and my research an autobiographical project based on the belief that what went on in my classroom was an expression of who I was, my values and beliefs (Cole & Knowles, 2000). These were all personal and subjective reasons. No external researcher could have studied these issues in my teaching and arrived at the same results because they could not be me. My research gained value because it was subjective, not in spite of its subjectivity.
Emergent Design
A spiral began to emerge in the interactions between me and my students. As they took more responsibility for their behaviour, I could become more creative in my lesson planning. Armed with the knowledge that they would choose to work, I began to structure lessons based on activities that would increase learning, not those that would maximize control. When I could see that they were choosing to work I became less concerned about social talk in the classroom. Following from my belief that the classroom is the real world, I do not often discourage talk. Times of silence in a classroom, as in the "real world" will emerge when silence is necessary and appropriate. If they can accomplish the task while talking about your pet dog, why not talk about your pet dog? By allowing talk, I feel that I have made the classroom more comfortable and welcoming. The question then became: How can I refocus the talk within the classroom? At this point, my quest for responsibility became the quest for a social constructivist classroom. -- Action research project presentation, June 2000
By accepting the autobiographical nature of action research, I accepted its narrative nature and thus the end became indistinct (Conle, 2000). When I began, I did not know where I would end. I embodied the belief that "the act of knowing involves a dialectical movement which goes from action to reflection and from reflection upon action to a new action" (Friere, 1970, p.13). This cyclical process was echoed in Segundo's (1976) appropriation of German theologian Rudolf Bultmann's hermeneutic circle and again in the action research process suggested by Whitehead and McNiff. For Whitehead (1993) and McNiff (2000), the research process was articulated as follows:
I reach a critical point in my practice;
I feel the need to act;
I act in a chosen direction;
I monitor and evaluate my actions;
I change the direction of my actions in the light of my evaluations.
What drove the research was not a goal or a known hypothesis to prove or disprove, but the tacit end-in-view, (Conle, 2000) the belief that answers existed, however indistinct. Schön used the example of the character Meno in dialogue with Socrates to illustrate that learning "a new artistry" requires that I "cannot in principle know what it is I'm supposed to be learning, and yet I must learn it" (1987). If I had defined even a hypothetical answer before commencing the research, I would have tainted the research by introducing the assumption that the question would remain the same. What answers there were would emerge through the process of the inquiry. Just as students could not know what it was they would learn before they learned it, neither could I know what I would find out before researching. The key to the research was to trust the cyclical process to illuminate the answers.
Values-Based
The second action I initiated was to check all homework. However, I did not make comment on the rightness or wrongness of doing homework, I simply noted if it was complete. I wanted to create an atmosphere where it seemed that the responsibility for ensuring homework completion was theirs and not mine. I was simply checking to see if they were responsible. I did not accept reasons for incomplete work because many students seemed to feel that giving an excuse absolved them of responsibility. I was not going to make incomplete work my problem. This strategy followed from my belief that learning involved choice. Coercing a child to complete work would not, in my view, foster learning. Students must choose to do homework because they want to increase their learning. -- Action research project presentation, June 2000
Two issues were at play in this illustration. First, getting students to complete homework was the critical point that created the necessity for action (Whitehead, 1993). I could have chosen myriad methods to achieve the goal of getting students to complete homework. I could have enlisted the support of parents, started homework journals, or taken away recess privileges. Previously, I had used these methods and more. However, I had made a claim to hold the value of choice, and this was the second issue at play. I could not implement a method that would negate the value of choice in my practice. I did not want to create another living contradiction (Whitehead, 1993). The question was not "How does one get students to do homework," but "How do I do it?" The key point was that I wanted them to know that they must have chosen to do their homework, not simply that it was done. I wanted evidence that my values of choice were becoming evident in my practice (McNiff, 2000).
Evidence-Based
"We didn't do as much work, but we learned at lot."
"I like building stuff."
"He makes it so you can have fun and learn at the same time."
"He is kind . . . he's not just a teacher, he is -- like -- a friend."
"It's not just talking, it's actually experiencing."
"He makes us not want to miss school."
"We're not just kind of measuring and knowing that it works, but we're actually making them for ourselves so that we know that it works -- which is fun."
-- Students' quotes from my Action research project presentation, June 2000
At the end of the year, I solicited responses from my students about their experience in my class. They wrote reports cards for me and gave videotaped responses. I was not present during the taping of the responses, and the only instruction I gave was that I wanted them to talk about the year. I obtained written permission to use the videotape in the presentation of my project. Although the cited quotations were very gratifying to me and showed -- as evidenced by their words -- that I had indeed implemented social constructivist ideals in my classroom, the actual video footage was infinitely more powerful. The video was a living testimony to the impact that my practice had on their lives (McNiff, 2000). As personal evidence attached to identifiable individuals -- rather than abstracted upon a page -- the evidence gained the power of personal expression. When I attached my personal knowledge of the students to the visual evidence, the power increased again. I knew that the person who did not want to miss school had missed 75 days in the previous year. I knew that some students who claimed to "have fun" in my class had not always felt that way about school. The subjectivity of the students coupled with my subjectivity as the researcher increased both the relevance and the power of the evidence.
Narrative-Based
J literally danced a jig in the classroom today. He jumped up and down saying, "wow, I'm doing work here!" He did not want to do anything except his geography project. I have insisted that he do it himself since few students want to work with him, and the ones who do, work far less than even he. I think the combination of a focussed project with a tactile component (model) along with the realization that everything that is on his paper is his work has given him a new perspective on his abilities. As my principal said, "sometimes they pay us too much." J took his project home tonight of his own accord." - Personal journal December 1999
The theories developed from my research were personal and subjective, and they arose out of the stories I chose to tell about my practice. This story does not adequately portray the depth of emotion felt both by me -- at seeing him work -- and by him. Through the story, however, I made a claim. I claimed that I had done something that had changed the situation enough to allow this student to work. This was a story about how I improved the quality of life of one student at a particular time. From this story I developed a personal theory related to how I worked with this specific student. The theory developed within me because the story was part of me. The value of the theory was less in the opportunity for others to generalize it and more in the fact that by calling it a theory, I made the claim that I can know something about my own educational development (Whitehead, 1993).
For Teachers and Students
I tried to reinvent my classroom in a social constructivist vein. The result was a dramatic increase in enthusiasm in the class. Granted, some students, when given the choice to learn, chose to do nothing. However, if, in fact, those students learned nothing - a doubtful premise - then how could I be sure that learning would occur if I enforced "product." By allowing choice, I often came into my class to find them working before I got there. Choice also allowed students to engage in activities that favoured their particular learning styles. When I gave choice in some areas, I found that they more readily accepted activities that did not include choice. Thus, I could expand the learning repertoire of my students by introducing them to multiple learning styles. By allowing talk, I could walk away from situations where strong students explained concepts to weak students. Direct teaching, I found, was far more acceptable from peers than from the teacher; but it was my job to ensure that their teaching was accurate. Because I used concrete materials, I saw students manipulate integer tiles when they "should have been" reading, simply because they "didn't get it." By using role-play and simulations and valuing the subjective side of learning, I saw students become passionately engaged in learning situations. I did not simply create a classroom where we value some learners, and others feel left out. If students chose to learn by reading textbooks and taking notes, I did not prevent them from doing so. I simply asked that those students share their knowledge and understandings with the class. The voices in my mind were not all silenced. I still wonder whether I should have made my students sit more, talk less, and work on the same thing at the same time. Then I remembered what S., a girl who missed 75 days of school in the previous year, wrote on her report card to me. "You make us not want to miss school." Then I believe that I did something right. S. wanted to learn what I thought she should learn. She wanted to learn what she needed to know. -- Action research project presentation, June 2000
Cole and Knowles (2000) asserted that research into practice was for teachers and students. Thus, my research was predicated on specific social goals. I wanted to improve my practice in order improve the educational experience of my students (Whitehead, 1993). The benefits of the research accrued most directly to my students and to me. I gained confidence in my own teaching, and my students got a better education. The comparative term "better" relates to the education they would have received from me had I not done research, not to any previous educational experience. If it was my ethical duty to teach my students to the best of my ability -- and I believed it was -- then it would have been unethical of me not to do research. I researched my practice with my students not out of a need to test a hypothesis or prove or disprove the effectiveness of a particular method, but out of a need to improve their experience. The research emerged as I remained responsive to the demands put upon it by the students. The research concept was one of researching with my students, not on my students (Cole & Knowles, 2000). The primary benefit to society that they could derive from my research was that others might find affirmation in my account, and thus they, too, might make a claim to know their educational development (Whitehead, 1993).
