Action Research from the Inside: a Teacher’s Experience

3 Action Research from the Inside: a Teacher’s Experience

What is the experience and possible rewards for a teacher – or any other professional – in becoming an action researcher? How does carrying out action research change the nature of relationships in the workplace, for example between teachers and their pupils? Should teachers enrolled on higher degrees carry out their work on behalf of colleagues as well as for academic accreditation – and, if so, what kind of reporting might meet the needs of both audiences? What ethical issues are raised by such studies? Between 1980 and 1985 I carried out action research while Head of the English Faculty at Parkside Community College in Cambridge. I had already been extremely fortunate in spending a year, seconded from my previous teaching post, studying for an advanced diploma in education with John Elliott at the Cambridge Institute of Education. While at Parkside I partici- pated in the Teacher–Pupil Interaction and the Quality of Learning (TIQL)

Project 1 in which participant reachers researched how to improve the quality of learning by changing classroom practices and during 1982–4 undertook a part-time masters degree also at the Cambridge Institute. The advanced diploma had given me experience of carrying out research as an outsider, working on behalf of a teacher (Somekh 1983). Becoming a researcher of my own classroom was at first daunting because of the addi- tional workload involved, but it was also enormously exciting, allowing me to develop a deeper understanding of the process of teaching and learning and to forge new kinds of collaborative relationships with pupils and, later, colleagues. Without question being an action researcher in my own work- place constituted the most powerful professional development of my teach- ing career. At Parkside, because of my middle management role and the generous support of colleagues I was able to extend my research beyond my classroom to the work of the department and the school as a whole. It was

1 The TIQL project, funded by the Schools Council between 1982 and 1984, was directed by John Elliott at the Cambridge Institute of Education.

ACTION RESEARCH FROM THE INSIDE: A TEACHER’S EXPERIENCE

an opportunity to try out a range of research methods and explore whether, and if so how, action research carried out by an ‘insider’ could instigate, support and evaluate educational change.

In this chapter I want to present this work from two points of view, those of my former self when I carried out the work and of my current self looking back upon it in the light of intervening experience. To do this without blurring these two very different voices I have kept them as far as possible separate. The major part of the chapter is made up of a substantial extract from one article and the whole of another article that I wrote at the time. These are reproduced in their original form, written in the present rather than the past tense, which I hope will give my teacher’s voice imme- diacy rather than causing confusion. I have also added brief explanatory introductions to each study to fill gaps in the original versions – about my research methods in one case and the organizational structure of the school, and differences between British and American terminology, in the other. At the end of the chapter I reflect back on these studies, exploring some of the methodological issues they raise and considering how the methods I adopted might be adapted to suit the needs of teachers carrying out similar work in a contemporary context.

A study of teaching and learning in my own classroom

A retrospective introduction

The first study that I carried out in my own classroom when I returned to full-time teaching after doing my advanced diploma was of teaching of poetry (Somekh 1984). It was carried out as a contribution to the work of the TIQL project, to which I was loosely attached although the school as a whole had decided not to take up the invitation to participate. A key ques- tion for TIQL was whether it was possible to teach ‘for understanding’ at the same time as preparing pupils for public examinations. At the time there was no national curriculum and as a secondary school teacher I could choose what to teach to pupils in the first three years (ages 11–14); but in the fourth and fifth years (ages 14–16) teaching focused on preparing pupils for public examinations – either ‘O’ (ordinary) level of the General Certificate of Education or CSE (the Certificate of Secondary Education) depending on ability – and this necessitated following a prescribed syllabus. However, teachers also had substantial choice in terms of opting to prepare their pupils for different kinds of examinations offered by different exam boards. I decided to undertake a study of my teaching of poetry to pupils entered for the Cambridge ‘Plain Text’ ‘O’ level. ‘Plain’ texts meant that books had no footnotes and pupils were allowed to take them into the examination, so the focus could be more on their responses to the literature

64 ACTION RESEARCH and less on their ability to write detailed descriptions of the plot and char-

acters. Poetry was, however, treated differently: there was no set poetry anthology to be studied in preparation for the exam; instead, candidates were invited to respond to an ‘unseen’ poem printed on the exam paper. In the previous year I had worked as a ‘Plain Text’ examiner for the Cambridge Board and this had given me insights into how pupils needed to write about

a poem in order to gain high marks. Teaching this was not easy, however. I was not satisfied with the way I was teaching poetry, and so I decided to carry out action research to find a new approach that would come nearer to my ideals.

In carrying out this research I worked very much on my own, although

I attended occasional TIQL project meetings. At these, we teachers shared our work with one another and were intellectually and emotionally chal- lenged by John Elliott and his team to discuss and investigate the nature of pupils’ learning and the kind of teaching that would be most likely to lead to ‘understanding’ (as opposed to short-term memorizing). To carry out the study I collected data by tape-recording my interactions with the pupils, both in whole class teaching and in group and one-to-one work as I moved around the classroom. I used a radio microphone clipped onto my clothes at the height most likely to pick up pupils’ voices, a transmitter slipped into my pocket and a tape-recorder running in an adjoining tiny cupboard. (Very soon this process was to become much easier as small tape-recorders, attached to a lapel microphone, can easily be slipped into a pocket.) I later transcribed these tape-recordings. I also collected documentary data such as worksheets and photocopies of pupils’ writing and drawings. On the rare occasions when visitors, such as student teachers, came into my classroom

I asked them to help me by observing and making notes for me that I could afterwards discuss with them. The pupils were very much part of the research process. I started by explaining to them that I was interested in the way I was teaching them and how they were learning and that I hoped that by researching what was happening, I might be able to make improve- ments. I asked their permission to tape-record, making sure they were aware that the radio microphone was linked to the tape-recorder in the cupboard.

I also gave them all a small notebook and asked them to make a quick note about how they had learnt when they felt they had just learnt something new. Although this last approach produced only a very small quantity of data, it provided me with some crucially important evidence in my inter- actions with Lup in the extract from the paper quoted here – Lup chose to come and tell me about his learning rather than writing it down, but he only did this because he knew I was investigating the learning process. The pupils’ consciousness of my research was clear one day when I was tape- recording a lesson in the school hall and had to stop to talk to the school caretaker who asked me a question as he was passing through. ‘Miss, he’s spoiled the tape-recording!’ one girl said indignantly after he had gone and

ACTION RESEARCH FROM THE INSIDE: A TEACHER’S EXPERIENCE

I had to explain that it was really not a problem as I was interested in every- thing that happened while I was teaching. In the extract that follows the pupils’ real names are used, as is the name of the school. This was negotiated with staff and pupils at the time of the original publication. Naming children, with their permission, had become my practice, in response to the huge disappointment that was expressed to me one day by an 11-year-old boy called Adam after he had spent the whole of break time reading a transcript of my interview with him. I wanted his permission to use the transcript in my writing and for Adam, who found reading very difficult, reading this one page of dense text took him the whole 20 minutes. When I came out of the staffroom at the end of break he beamed at me with joy at the wonderful experience of seeing his words in typescript… and then said, ‘But why have you called me Benjamin?’ in a voice of puzzlement and real hurt. This text contained his words and he was making it very clear (though he could not express it in these terms) that, from his point of view, by taking away his name I was denying him his voice.

Extracts from the paper first published in CARN Bulletin No 6 and reprinted in Elliott and Ebbutt (1986)