For the 2005-06 Tuesday group in the final phase of the write up for the Research Methods in Education Unit.

As we support each other in the final phase of this writing I'd like us to enhance our understandings of two of the four criteria we have been using to judge the quality of our writings:

Made critical use of literature, professional experience and, where appropriate, knowledge from other sources, to inform the focus and methodology of the study or enquiry.

Made appropriate critical use of the literature and, where appropriate, knowledge from other sources, in the development of the study or enquiry and its conclusions.

I've put the other two criteria at the end of this note. Here is something that you might find helpful in clearly meeting the first of these criteria about making critical use of literature to inform the methodology of the study or enquiry.

Here are the ideas that have influenced my own approach to research methods in education.

First, I make a distinction between education research and educational research that influences my understanding of the appropriateness of the methods to use in my educational enquiry. In his Presidential Address to the British Educational Research Association in 2005 Geoff Whitty, the Director of the Institute of Education of the University of London explained the distinction:

One way of handling the distinction might be to use the terms 'education research' and 'educational research' more carefully. In this paper, I have so far used the broad term education research to characterise the whole field, but it may be that within that field we should reserve the term educational research for work that is consciously geared towards improving policy and practice..... One problem with this distinction between 'education research' as the broad term and 'educational research' as the narrower field of work specifically geared to the improvement of policy and practice is that it would mean that BERA, as the British Educational Research Association would have to change its name or be seen as only involved with the latter. So trying to make the distinction clearer would also involve BERA in a re-branding exercise, which may not necessarily bet the best way of spending our time and resources. But it is at least worth considering.

(Whitty, 2005)

Whitty, G. (2005) Education(al) research and education policy making: is conflict inevitable? Presidential Address to the British Educational Research Association, University of Glamorgan, 17 September 2005.

One of the reasons I think that many of us have experienced a lack of connection, in the past, between theory and methods in education and our educational practices, is because the theories and methods we have been presented with have been drawn from education research rather than educational research. I think that this is a vital distinction in explaining why the methods we are seeking to develop and understanding are those that are 'consciously geared towards improving practice'.

Elliott Eisner has an international reputation as an educational researcher who understands this distinction between education and educational research and has been advocating that practitioner-researchers like us extend the methods from education research into educational research. Here is what he says in his 1988 paper on the primacy of experience and the politics of method. Our choice of method influences greatly the kind of answers we can give to the questions we ask:

I have no illusions about how difficult it will be for these developments to succeed as a customary form of educational research practice. University offices and classrooms are comfortable places. Even in California where we don't have to face the cold winter, we find it difficult to leave our pleasant surroundings for our schools. Yet some researchers are making the trip and others are developing working partnerships with teachers. Our views of how we go about our work are beginning to change. My hope is that those of us in the university will be smart enough to learn from what good teachers have to teach us. I hope we will even learn how to see what we are not able to describe in words, much less measure. And, through the consciousness borne of such an attitude, I hope we will be creative enough to invent methods and languages that do justice to what we have seen. Finally, I hope that through such work, through the primacy of experience and the expansion of method, our politics will become a liberating force for both understanding and enhancing the educational process. (Eisner, 1988, p. 20)

Eisner, E. (1988) The Primacy of Experience and the Politics of Method, Educational Researcher, Vol. 17, No. 5, 15-20.

If you would like to see why I think your research is so significant in helping to express and communicate living standards of judgment for educational research do go into the details of the 2006-7 BERA Practitioner Researcher e-seminar I'm starting this week. The details are at the top of the What's New section of http://www.actionresearch.net.

Here is an e-mail from Peter Reason in relation to the seminar about standards of judgment that he has said I can share. The e-mail related to a conversation in which we are both convinced of the importance of each individual generating their own judgments and standards and of resisting any tendency to impose one's own standards on others.

What we can do is to articulate a range of perspectives on quality, articulate the different kinds of qualities these represent and the kinds of ways such quality might be judged, and invite those engaged in research to draw on these and on their own creative imaginations, in collaboration with co-researchers, to articulate standards they wish to reach in their own

inquiries.

The most we can ask for is that researchers exercise choice and are transparent about that choice and how well they think they have lived up to their own judgments. Although this is the most we can ask for, it is a lot! (Reason, e-mail correspondence, 16/09/06)

Jean McNiff is an action researcher who has done more than anyone to share her ideas on the educational significance of generating one's own living educational theory in the narratives of one's life and learning. Here is what she says in a publication in press and due to be published in December, 2006 – you can't get more up to date than this!

"I position myself as an educational action researcher, part of whose work is to tell stories of educational action research. The stories I tell are those of myself in company with others who are also telling their stories. My main theme is about how I offer explanations for my educational practices, my personal theories of practice. I show how and why I do what I do and justify my practice as good practice, including the form and content of my research report as an integral part of that practice. I maintain that an account of practice should demonstrate its own validity and the validity of the practice, in terms of whether they both show explicitly how and why they should be considered valuable or good. I link the ideas of validity and goodness. I also explain that the validity claim needs to be tested against specific personal and social criteria. I ask what, therefore, counts as a good story? If practitioners claim that their practice is good, how do they ensure that their stories demonstrate the kind of validity that will appropriately communicate the validity of their work? This is especially important in contexts of national assessment, when, for example, the U.K. Research Assessment Exercise states that work claiming to be top quality should be judged as internationally relevant in terms of its originality, rigor, and significance.

To explore these issues, I tell my own research story. The form my narrative takes mirrors the form of my inquiry, as I address these questions to understand and explain what I am doing:

• What is my concern?

• Why am I concerned? (end of page 309)

• What kind of experiences can I describe to show the reasons for my concerns?

• What can I do about it? What will I do about it?

• How do I evaluate the educational influence of my actions?

• How do I demonstrate the validity of the account of my educational influence in learning?

• How do I modify my concerns, ideas, and actions in the light of my evaluation? (see McNiff & Whitehead, 2005,2006).

My story is, however, a story of stories. My own story is about how I have exercised my educational influence so that people can exercise their originality and critical engagement and have their stories about the generation of their living educational theories accepted in the public domain. These stories tend not to abide by the conventions of the mainstream canon. I explain how my inquiry itself becomes part of a politics of narratives, of narrativized differences. Ultimately, it becomes a politics of ethics, because making decisions about which stories are permissible and who is permitted to tell them becomes a domain of political ethics within a wider framework of what counts as good and how it should be judged. For me, whether my story should be accepted is not a case of whether it abides by the conventions of the orthodox canon but whether the validity I am claiming for it can be justified in terms of rational inquiry.

I now set out to do this. Using the questions above as a guide to my narrative, I ask whether by asking these kinds of critical questions, I can show how I have worked systematically toward realizing my educational values and have offered sufficient evidential grounds for my story to be validated and legitimized in the public domain. (McNiff, 2006, p. 310)

McNiff, J. (2006) My Story Is My Living Educational Theory, in Clandinin, J. (Ed.) (2006), New York & London; Sage. (in press).

Here are the other two criteria we'll need to meet in our writings:

Demonstrated an ability to identify and categorise issues, and to undertake an educational study or enquiry in an appropriately critical, original, and balanced fashion.

Demonstrated an ability to analyse, interpret and critique findings and arguments and, where appropriate, to apply these in a reflective manner to the improvement of educational practices.

Love Jack 18/09/06