13.1 Appendix b: deciding for yourself about the research  (Page 20/20)

As Ms Ragland reflected on her work as a teacher, she realized that teaching in a correctional facility had made her more cautious about her safety even outside of teaching hours. For example, she had become more careful about locking her car door, where she walked at night, and even where she sat in restaurants (she preferred to sit with her back to the wall).

Ms Ragland found it impossible to describe her work in a fully detached or objective way, and finally decided that being detached was not even desirable. Her feelings and interpretations of students’ behavior were essential to understanding experiences with them, so she decided that it was better to include these in whatever she wrote about them.

As she wrote, talked, and reflected on her experiences, she found herself governed by two incompatible perspectives about her work, which she called the educational perspective (try to help students and turn their lives around) and the correctional perspective (remember that the students had committed serious crimes and often could not be trusted).

More importantly, she discovered, through conversations with fellow staff, that they too felt torn between these same two perspectives.

By talking with each other about the dilemmas in how to interpret students’ needs and (mis)behaviors, she and the other staff were able to develop a common perspective about their purposes, about appropriate ways of helping students, and about appropriate ways of dealing with conflicts when they arose.

In the end, a study initiated by one teacher, Ms Ragland, benefited all the teachers. What began as a self-study eventually became a group study, and teachers’ mutual isolation at work decreased.

Not many teachers, of course, find themselves teaching in a correctional facility. But many—perhaps most—do experience serious dilemmas and stresses either about students’ behavior or about their learning. Depending on circumstances, for example, a teacher may wonder how to respond to students who treat the teacher or other students disrespectfully. Or a teacher may feel lost about helping certain students who are struggling or wonder where the teacher’s responsibility ends if a student persists in not learning even after receiving special help. Such uncertainties may not lead to physical threats, as actually happened to Betty Ragland occasionally, but they can create a lot of stress nonetheless. But action research can help—systematically studying and reflecting on how to solve them, reading and listening to how others have done the same, and sharing what teachers therefore learn. Because of these activities, questions about teaching can be resolved, or at least clarified, and classroom practice can be enhanced. Most important, the benefits can be shared not only with the teacher as researcher, but with a teacher’s colleagues as well.

Questions

References

Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Zeichner, K. (2007). Accumulating knowledge across self-studies in teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education, 58 (1), 36-46.

Hayes, D. (2006). Telling stories: Sustaining improvement in schools operating under adverse conditions. Improving Schools, 9 (3), 203-213.

Samaras, A.&Freese, A. (Eds.). (2006). Self-study of teaching practices. New York: Peter Lang.

Tidwell, D.&Fitzgerald, L. (Eds.). (2006). Self-study and diversity. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

Ragland, B. (2007). Positioning the practitioner-researcher: Five ways of looking at practice. Action Research, 4 (2), 165-182.