Practitioner research & enquiry

1. Practitioner research & enquiry Professor Lori Beckett SFRE in Reading June, 2009

2. Outline of contribution • Practitioner research & enquiry • Areas of best practice • Improving this practice? • Particular weaknesses • Development strategies • Conclusions/challenges

3. Practitioner research & enquiry • The improvement of practice & provision to enhance the quality of learning & educational services (typically local government, schools & national agency funding) • Engaged research

4. Areas of best practice • Professional learning communities • agency-university partnerships (working with academic partners) • local solutions & klg building • encouraging ‘living theory’ • 3rd space work • case studies of action enquiry

5. An action enquiry I asked a beginning teacher to describe some of the students in this particular tough school: There are kids with academic needs, big academic needs. They are way behind in their learning in different areas, and some in lots of areas. [There are needy students] in terms of welfare, and with social needs in the classroom, just how they relate to other kids. [There are students who are very] needy in terms of their home environment, whether they have been fed for that day or wear appropriate clothes, you know, whether they have got enough money to basically buy something if they have not got food. Beckett, forthcoming

6. An action enquiry I asked the beginning teacher to describe someone who loses the plot. What is that?It might vary. We have some students that just come up and swear in your face, maybe because they react to the teachers’ request to follow directions. It is about authority or they take it personally, and say ‘get someone else to do it’. It escalates very, very quickly. It is either to do with [moods, personal situations, or bigger troubles?]. It takes a while to get it back under control, sometimes a couple of lessons. There is usually a cool down period. The kids will just go off, but you have to just let them go, let them cool down, shoot some hoops on the basketball court. They are cooling down, and they are better off for it. It can become very intense very quickly.Beckett, forthcoming

7. Improving this practice? • Conceptualising the practice? • What makes a difference? • Any new/different approaches? • Local decisions & strategies • Investigations/documentations • Distilling the learning (portfolio)

8. Particular weaknesses • Lack of funding & support • Lack of political will • Practical concerns eg. pressures • Little/no protected time allocation • Practitioners’ capacity for research • Academic partners’ research foci

9. Development strategies • Professional learning & devt • Learning organisations • Guiding principles • Focus on this school’s needs, opportunities & circumstances • Strategies based on practitioners’ readings & interpretations

10. Conclusions/challenges • Understandings & interpretations • Schools’ readings/own ideas • The way they see things? • Evolution of schools’ ideas • Circumstances change over time • Broad sets of theories?