How can I carry out Masters level
educational research without abandoning my own educational values?
– Ed Harker
Introduction
These 4150 words are a
reflective and evolved record of my attempt to produce an explanation of my
educational values in a way that is both of value to a wide set of potential
audiences.....
- myself
- my colleagues in education
- the parents and carers of the children that I
teach
- 'The Academy'
.....and that is true to the
values described in it.
This is a piece of
"educational research" in the sense used by Whitty (2005), as it is
"consciously geared towards improving policy and practise" and carried out by
someone directly involved in current teaching.
I am defining myself as a
"practitioner researcher" (Dadds & Hart, 2001), and hope to show that
through my engagement in "methodological inventiveness", or the exploration of
new ways to research my practise, I have been motivated to write this account.
The account is also a record
of my attempt to produce evidence for the educational values that I believe I
embody "whose validity can be tested against publicly communicable standards of
judgement" (McNiff & Whitehead, 2006). I will provide this evidence through
the close analysis of short video clips and photographs taken in the Nursery Class
in which I teach. The video clips are a record of 3 brief moments in the school
life of one boy, Daniel, capturing both his interactions with his peers, and my
interactions with him. The photographs illustrate my work with the children. The
account examines my choice of video and photograph analysis as a way to carry
out action research, the importance of collaboration and shared reflection in
making and carrying out this decision, and my personal experiences of education
that have influenced this choice.
"Academic
writing"
This is my first piece of
writing for an MA course in educational research, and as such it has to meet a
specific set of academic criteria. However, in the 13 years that I've been
teaching I have never found such academic writings to be of personal value to
myself. And so I face a dilemma:
why would I choose to spend many hours writing an account that I would not
choose to read myself? As a teacher I have been working with my school
colleagues to find ways to make the taught curriculum as relevant and
meaningful to the pupils as possible, believing that this is the key to
profound learning that has deep and strong roots. I am in agreement with Marie
Huxtable, a member of the Tuesday MA group, in that I can see no qualitative difference
between effective learning in children and effective learning in adults and I
aim to reflect this belief in this account.
I have worked closely
alongside over 40 educators during my career and have often had fascinating and
deeply reflective conversations about our reasons for teaching, and the
educational values that we hold most dear. These conversations have had a deep
personal influence in shaping my pedagogy, and the insights they offered were
all the more powerful because they arose from the living experiences of
colleagues. Until starting this MA
course I had not found academic writings that conveyed similar levels of
interest or personal conviction.
Formal and academic research
has often informed some of the very specific ways in which I teach, for example
the EPPE research findings that identify "sustained shared thinking"
(Siraj-Blatchford, Sylva, Muttock, Gilden & Ball, 2002) as a key attribute
of high quality early years education. Such research may sometimes have been
mentioned during my conversations with colleagues, and has often provided
formal support for the working methods that I have evolved with my team, but it
has never been a significant influence on my learning the 'craft' of teaching,
nor successfully influenced my development as a reflective educator.
I have found the
conventional academic style of writing too 'objective' to be personally
engaging, too heavily laden with diverse quotes and references to be readable
as a flowing narrative, and too reliant on a private language to be easily
understood. I feel that a reliable
test for clarity and readability is whether a given piece of writing can be
comfortably read aloud, and much academic writing fails this test. (As Harrison
Ford said to George Lucas when reading the Star Wars script for the first time,
'You can type this shit, George, but you can't say it.') Because the writing is
not driven by a personal story, it is not a "living theory" (McNiff &
Whitehead, 2006), and as such cannot easily be woven into my daily practise in
education. It is irrelevant within the place where I live the majority of my
life, the everyday.
In contrast, as I have
shared the evolution of this account with my MA colleagues, I have found that I
can be both fascinated and professionally influenced by the ideas that lie
buried and obscured beneath these layers of academic convention.
When discussing education
with my colleagues at school, we are tacitly and informally sharing insights,
aiming for new understandings, and creating afresh our own pedagogy. These are the same concerns and
processes that can inform master's level research, but I rarely meet colleagues
who choose to even read educational research papers, let alone engage in the
process of carrying out the research themselves into the careers that they are
devoting their working lives to.
I strongly believe that
effective learning is "active, creative and personal" (QCA 2001), for both
children and adults and I would not be as enthusiastic about this writing if it
did not meet these criteria.
However, I must add further standards by which I will judge the success
of this account, and these are clarity and usefulness. If my account is not both clear and
informative for the wide range of people who I believe to be my potential
audience then it has served no purpose beyond being a private intellectual
journal.
Therefore, as well as
submitting this account for appraisal as masters level research within the
University of Bath, I will also be offering it to the colleagues who share my
staff room, and the parents of the children in my nursery class. Their personal responses to this
writing will help me to gauge my success in meeting my own criteria for this
account. The conversations that I
hope the account may start will further deepen my understanding of the
educational values that I embody.
Identifying
the "concern"
Since I started to attend
Tuesday evening sessions for the MA Educational Enquiry Unit at Bath University
in October 2005, I have often doubted my reasons for attending. Although I love to discuss the craft of
pedagogy with fellow educators, I find the writing of essays about education to
be especially difficult, and have previously failed to complete a different MA
course. My personal education has
involved many years of essay writing, and the 'thesis, antithesis, synthesis',
or dialectical model of essay writing that I was taught to follow became an
increasingly empty exercise.
This was especially true when it involved the rehearsal of
other people's research and opinions when studying for a degree in politics,
and reached its apotheosis when I was studying for a Diploma in Law. The citing of a long series of past
cases and statutes amounted to a linear and polarised record of other people's
arguments, and the dullness of this practise led me to give up my attempt to
become a barrister. Fortunately I
started temporary work on a play-scheme in Paddington shortly after abandoning
my legal studies, to usefully occupy my time, and realised that I enjoyed
working with the direct, spontaneous and vital nature of young children. This
was a pivotal moment in my life. I know that some of the most important
opportunities for learning in my life have been similarly unplanned, and I try
to create the conditions for such naturally emerging learning in my setting.
This is through ensuring that the children enjoy the "time, space and
attention" (Bancroft, Fawcett & Hay, 2005) that an "emergent curriculum"
grows out of, and this work has been strongly influenced through my involvement
in the "5x5x5=creativity" project.
My discussions with
colleagues at the Tuesday sessions have helped me realise that my choice of
Early Years teaching, and Nursery in particular, is part of my drive to avoid
abstract learning and to be more connected with the immediacy of life. I love
my job as a nursery teacher, and achieve great satisfaction from the "flow"
(Csikszentmihalyi, 2000) of a successful day's work in a school community that
is guided by a vision of education that I share.
A large part of this pleasure comes from the physically
grounded and process based nature
of Early Years work (QCA, 2001), and the rich opportunities it offers for
shared reflection, and the participation in "human flourishing" (De Botton,
2002). I believe that there is clear evidence of this in the 'grabs' from the
video of my work with Daniel. The picture that Daniel has drawn is of secondary
importance to the shared process that has enabled the picture to be produced.
I was attracted to the
Tuesday sessions by the offer of a new model for research, one carried out by
myself into my own fascinations with the art of teaching, in the company of
other reflective practitioners. I
share the principle that young children's learning should be "active, creative
and personal" (QCA, 2001), and believe that this principle should be extended
to encompass all learning, including my own. My initial pleasure in finding a group of colleagues with
whom I could share accounts of professional enthusiasms and challenges, became
gradually clouded by the realisation that at some stage I would have to start
writing my own account!
I understood that I needed to find a "concern" (McNiff &
Whitehead, 2006) within my practise as a focus for my enquiry but found it hard
to identify one that I felt a natural urge to spend many hours writing about. I
believe that high quality education must be rooted in experiences and
fascinations that have a direct value and relevance to the life of the
participants, both educators and pupils.
As I tried to find the necessary 'concern' through which I could begin
to articulate my educational values,
I found myself creating the false dichotomies and artificial arguments
that had made much of my previous education feel 'fake', or contrived.
I initially considered
focussing on the experience of teaching my daughter, a pupil in my class this
year, but was wisely advised by a Tuesday evening colleague, Robyn Pound, that
this was potentially too large and emotionally charged to be the subject of my
first account. Following a further conversation with Robyn I identified the
challenge of working with a specific group of nursery children as a present
concern within my practise. This year's nursery cohort has a higher than
average number of children with language delay, and the contrast between their
personal language abilities and my self-image as an overly 'verbal', or spoken
language fixated practitioner, seemed to be a clear challenge, or evidence of
myself as a 'living contradiction'.
The identification of this
area of my practise as a 'concern' led me to take a short video clip of one
pupil who was finding it hard to relate to his peers, and it was the close
analysis of this clip that started to offer a new way of carrying out my
enquiry. The shared reflections of my Tuesday evening colleagues enabled me to
see myself as a very physically demonstrative teacher, enacting my 'embodied'
values most clearly through the things that I was not saying. This was a direct challenge to the
self-image that I had developed over 12 years of teaching, and provided me with
a dynamic paradox that I would enjoy exploring.
A subsequent Tuesday session (April 2006) helped me to
refine my approach to this research, and enabled me to realise that it might be
possible to elicit clear evidence of my educational values from a detailed
examination of the body language, spoken words and underlying context recorded
in selected video clips. This allowed me to start writing this account with the
energy and enthusiasm that naturally flows from the 'active, creative and
personal' nature of the research, and is therefore in full accord with the
values that I have described above, and that I believe are evidenced below.
This sharing of the
account's development also ensured the validity of the evidence that I was
producing to validate my claims.
Analysis
of Video 'Grabs'
My initial attempt at
analysing the video clips was highly detailed, and reflected my excitement at
being able to study 6 minutes of education moment by moment. Each frame of the
video represented 1/10th of a second, and once I started to examine
them I was able to discover many aspects of my interactions with pupils that
are normally hidden. I identified 48 frames within the first video clip that I
believe illustrate significant moments or instances of my particular style of
pedagogy. These include sequences of hand and facial movements 'echoing'
between myself and Daniel,
moments of direct connection
and understanding,
and small gestures that
reassure or invite a response.
I created a grid format that
allowed me to analyse each of the 48 frames in turn, using each individual
image to evidence my educational values.
For example, I see this next
frame as evidence of my belief that one of my roles as an educator is to be the
children's advocate. Here I am annotating Daniel's drawing. I have already
asked his permission to write on his picture, and am now acting as his scribe,
adding his comments to the drawing, adding meaning to the image, and enabling
it to be appreciated by a wider audience. I am demonstrating a respect for his
ideas and interests, and he is witnessing the translation of his chosen
languages (oral linguistic and graphic), into another (written).
The next frame demonstrates
the fact that I am able to turn my back on my class for minutes at a time and
while giving Daniel this quality of attention. Daniel has turned round as he
has heard a loud bang behind us. I am relying on my colleague Ruth to deal with
the situation if necessary, while I can maintain my focus on Daniel. This is
evidence of the working environment that I work to create in with my nursery
team, an environment in which the children are empowered through specific
skills training (how to access and tidy resources, how to resolve conflicts),
are trusted to be "rich in potential, strong, powerful and competent" (Edwards,
Gandini & Forman, 1998), and in which the adults can rely on a high degree
of mutual support and trust. We invest large amounts of time at the start of
the academic year to enable the children to be independent and intra-dependent
learners, and this investment pays large dividends later in the year when we
are able to spend our time as real educators, not just as the resources police!
When I presented my 48 frame
analysis of the clip to my colleagues in the Tuesday evening MA group, it was
generally perceived to have missed a key element of the video when seen as a
whole, that is the poetic and aesthetic response. In focussing on the
micro-gestures and details I had lost the heart, or spirit, of the moment that
was documented in the clip. (Further discussion then centred on whether this
type of analysis was typically "male", and whether this was a problem.) This
was another example of my work being submitted to the critical scrutiny of my
peers. It shows that my "claims to know my educational influences in learning
have been subjected to the mutual rational controls of critical discussion
(Popper 1963)", (extract from an email from Jack Whitehead 2006).
My overall impression after
examining the clip was that I had discovered a hidden gestural dance that had
been improvised by teacher and pupil, in which neither took the lead, and which
neither were conscious of having 'performed'. In fact it is this very lack of
self-consciousness which seems to ensure the natural and unforced quality of
the interaction. As a teacher I had a specific educational goal in mind when I
initiated the conversation with Daniel. He had recently returned from a 3 month
trip to Peru, and I was keen to help him share the experiences he had had,
helping him develop his language skills within a context that was "active,
creative and personal" to him. But once the exchange had begun, I was totally
absorbed in the process of maintaining a meaningful and personal connection
with another person.
My role became that of Daniel's enabler, his fixer, his
translator and his re-presenter. I offered him materials to draw his
experiences, echoed his body language to show that I understood him, and
fetched a large model aeroplane to help him add detail to his account.
FLOW
All of these behaviours are
central to my vision of the role of the teacher, and when asked to describe my
feelings during and immediately after the exchange with Daniel I used the word
'satisfaction', that is the pleasure derived from a job done well. There is
clear video evidence of the delight and engagement that was shared during the
conversation, but the experience was so absorbing that I was unaware of any
particular emotions at the time. I believe that this is an example of a "flow"
state (Csikszentmihalyi, 2002). I will now explain the role I believe that
"flow" states have to play in Early Years education.
I
first heard about the concept of "Flow" from a colleague describing the high
level of involvement she had witnessed in a girl painting in her setting. She
was fascinated by the sustained intensity of the child's focus, and how
emotionally drained the child was when she finally completed the work after 2
hours. When observing children deeply engaged in play, I am often struck by
their straight faces and intensely serious expressions. Here is a photo that
shows Daniel exploring the marble run:
|
|
He is alert and highly
involved in his work, but does not show overt signs of "enjoyment" or having
"fun".
Although I aim for the children to enjoy their time in my
nursery, they naturally gravitate to activities that contain more challenge
than "fun". Csikszentmihalyi has dubbed such experiences "Flow States". He sees
them as vital element in achieving "happiness" in life, and as a common factor
in the lives of highly creative people in all areas of life, from the arts, to
sports and the sciences. His research has involved the analysis of over 100,000
reports of "flow", and he describes 4 key features of the experience, each of
which seems to echo my understanding of good early years practise....
1- Undivided
attention on the activity (the uninterrupted time and space children need for
rich play and deep learning),
2- Having the
skills necessary for the activity (the curriculum that should be "challenging
but not overwhelming" (QCA 2001)),
3 - Clear
goals, set by the person themselves (the importance of child-initiated
learning),
4 – Immediate feedback on progress (the
sensitive attention and documentation of the interested educator).
Csikszentmihalyi emphasizes
the necessity for a clear balance between skills and challenges, enabling
people to avoid boredom on the one hand, and anxiety on the other. This tension
is lived out daily in all good early years settings.....
He shows that the
distinction between work and play is ambiguous and misleading, and sees life as
a series of opportunities for learning and growth.
(Although his book is
subtitled "How to achieve happiness", it would be better described as an
examination of how to live a satisfying and creative life. It has helped me to
understand and appreciate the serious business of play. I have enjoyed such
states of mind when engaged in writing this account, and when discussing our accounts
with my MA colleagues.)
Collaboration
My final picture to
illustrate this account was going to be this one of Daniel with his afternoon
nursery group on a walk up Charlcombe valley, near to the school. When I
initially showed it to my MA colleagues I suggested that it showed a confident
and happy child, clearly comfortable with both peers and adults, and who is
happy to lead the way into unknown areas, trusting that his educators have
"framed" an experience that is appropriate to his personal needs. I felt that I
had learned to see in this picture the educational values that I hold dear. (I
have obscured the faces of people whose ethical permission for the use of their
image has not been gained).
My colleagues response made
me question this view. One suggested that the photograph needed a lot of
explanation as to the particular circumstances of the valley walk before the
photo could be seen as "validated evidence" for anything! Without such
contextual information it merely stood as a 'nice picture'....
Lisa then pointed out the
fact that as the photograph was clearly taken by somebody ahead of Daniel, it
does not show him "leading the way" as I had originally suggested. I had taken
the photograph, and we then realised that Daniel's expression was actually a
reaction to my photographing of
him. He is reacting directly to the attention that I am giving him with the
camera. As a result of this discussion I now believe that this picture stands
as evidence of my educational influence on Daniel through the trusting and
enjoyable relationship that emerged during his year in my nursery class, the
kind of relationship that underpins deep learning. Through the year that Daniel
was in the nursery the educational values that I enact in my daily practise
enabled him to learn the skills and dispositions that he needed to learn at
that time
When I returned to the
photos taken on the valley walk I then decided to choose a different photo to
end this account with:
Here I am clearly alongside
Daniel, and as we walk we are both aware of the other. It is a stronger image
of the educator as collaborator, giving "time, space and attention" (Bancroft,
Fawcett & Hay, 2005) to the pupil.
I showed this picture to
Daniel and talked to him about it:
Ed: "What can you see in
this picture?"
Daniel: "I
can't see....the sun..." (he is squinting because the sun is in his eyes).
Ed: "What is happening in
the picture?"
Daniel:
"That's your arm! I'm holding your hand."
Ed: "Why?"
Daniel: "We go
in road..."
Daniel connects our holding
hands with safety on a shared journey, and this seems to be a fine metaphor for
the relationship between myself as an educator and Daniel as a pupil.
Conclusion:
In writing this account I
have learned that I can carry out academic research that is consistent with my
educational values, and that the "framing" for the writing of this account,
provided by the Tuesday evening MA group, has enabled me to produce a clear
narrative that both explains and evidences these values.
The process of writing my
account has been an excellent example of the key role that reflection and
communication play in effective learning, and has illuminated another clear
parallel between my learning and the children's. The infant school that I teach
in has been using a simplified form of Belle Wallace's TASC wheel for several
years (Wallace, 2000). TASC is a framework for the process of learning, and we
reduced her 8 stage model down to 4 stages to enable 3 year olds to use it
independently. In simplifying it we removed the stage where learners consider
how they can communicate their learning towards the end of the process. We have
only just reinstated it after realising that it is the process of translating
our experiences and feelings into a shared language that consolidates and
secures our learning. (It is also the stage in the process where a new enquiry
can emerge, and the area of enquiry for my next account has naturally arisen
from the writing of this one.)
Writing this account has made me consider both my educational
values and the ways in which they can be clearly and effectively explained and
evidenced. I have had to document my own practise using the methods I
habitually use to document my pupils learning (video clips, photographs,
transcripts, observations and annotations).The reactions of my colleagues and
the generosity of their responses to the documentation that I have produced
have provided the energy necessary for producing this account, and the
motivation to attempt the next one!
Note: Ethical permission has been given by Daniel and his
parents for sharing the images in this account. I take care not to share the
digital images of children who might be damaged by the exposure. I abide by the
guidelines about the sharing of digital images of children from my Local
Authority employer, Bath and North East Somerset. My account also abides by the
ethical guidelines of the British Educational Research Association (BERA,
2004).
References
Bancroft, S., Fawcett, M.
& Hay, P. (2005) '5x5x5=creativity in the early years'. Bath. Arts
Development B&NES Council.
BERA (2004) Revised Ethical
Guidelines for Educational Research (retrieved 6/9/2006).
Csikszentmihalyi,
M.(2002) Flow. London. Rider
Press.
Dadds, M. & Hart, S.
(2001) Doing Practitioner Research Differently. London. Routledge-Falmer.
De Botton, A. (2002) The Art
of Travel. London. Hamish Hamilton.
Edwards., Gandini, L.
&Forman, G. (1998) The Hundred Languages of Children – Advanced
Reflections. Greenwich, Connecticut. Ablex Publishing.
Qualification and Curriculum
Authority (2001) Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage. London. QCA
Publications.
Siraj-Blatchford,I., Sylva,
K., Muttock, S., Gilden, R., & Ball,D. (2002) Researching Effective
Pedagogy in the Early Years. London. DFES.
Wallace, B.(2000) Teaching
the Very Able Child. London. David Fulton Publishers.
Whitehead,J & McNiff, J
(2006) Action Research Living Theory. London. Sage Publications.
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.