The FE teacher as Researcher and Practitioner Dr Rob Smith

Undertaking small scale educational research as a teacher / practitioner Starting Points Knowledge production Why produce knowledge? Who for? Your identity. It takes planning and determination. It needs to mean something to you. Question: Why should an FE teacher be engaged in research?

Purpose Small scale educational research may be guided by: your hunches, your sense of injustice, your notion that there are key things going wrong, your ‘folk knowledge’ of the way things areBUT You need also to be open to development yourself. In other words, research will challenge your views and you need to be open to that challenge.

Context One way of looking at research is to see it as evidenced-base formalisation of (your) local knowledge. If that is our model, then your ability to conceptualise (and write about) context is important. This draws on i) your local knowledge and ii) the literature. The emphasis should be on giving the reader / audience a clear sense of your context – this may involve giving a policy overview.

ACCESSING JOURNAL ARTICLES Once you have picked an area that interests /annoys / gets to you, you need to read up around that area. Identify journals that relate to (the teaching of) your subject area Familiarise yourself with the different debates issues Use key word search on Athens to trawl through databases: be persistent and try different key words to make the search manageable

What exactly is Policy? cited in Ball, S. (2008) The Education Debate, Bristol: The Policy Press “In a sense everything in the policy world is really just process, the movement of people and programs around common problems such as education, transport and employment. None of the initiatives in these fields stays fixed for very long because the problems themselves keep moving and changing. We cannot afford, therefore, to view policy as just a study of decisions or programs. The specific decisions which often interest us are merely important punctuation marks within this flow – not the thing itself.” (Considine, 1994, p3-4) Considine, M. (1994) Public Policy: A critical approach, Melbourne, Australia: Macmillan.

One way of conceptualising practitioner research What you know about your working environment What your data might reveal about your working environment

What kind of data? Quantitative Pass rates? Qualitative People’s attitudes and opinions

ETHICS Fully Informed Consent Interviews You can’t make people say things. Get them to talk. That talk becomes the data. This suggests you need a relaxed approach and there needs to be mutual respect and trust.

Your research is likely to involve other people – they are likely to be constructing meanings with you. Make sure you build in a sense of the importance of that process. Research isn’t just about end product or you gaining prestige by attaining access to ‘higher’ knowledge….. If you have values and principles, try to ensure your approach reflects and foregrounds these. Shouldn’t it also be about empowering the people who participate, giving them ‘voice’ and facilitating their reflection about the issues that concern us all? Research as process; research as social activity