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Developmental Research

Developmental Research. Barbara Jaworski. Overview. Introduction to Development Research Developmental Research Strategies Action Research Design Research Lesson Study Learning Study Co-Learning Inquiry Drawing the strands together. Usable Knowledge.

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Developmental Research

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  1. Developmental Research Barbara Jaworski

  2. Overview • Introduction to Development Research • Developmental Research Strategies • Action Research • Design Research • Lesson Study • Learning Study • Co-Learning Inquiry • Drawing the strands together Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  3. Usable Knowledge Educational researchers, policymakers, and practitioners agree that educational research is often divorced from the problems and issues of everyday practice – a split that creates a need for new research approaches that speak directly to the problems of practice…and lead to “usable knowledge” (p. 5) The Design-Based Research Collective (2003), in the United States: In a special issue of Educational Researcher devoted to papers on design research Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  4. David Hargreaves’ 1996 Teacher Training Agency (TTA) lecture • Hargreaves suggested that educational research in the UK was having little impact on schools, classrooms, teaching and learning, and that a new agenda was required to bridge the ‘gap’ between research and practice: • In education there is simply not enough evidence of the effects and effectiveness of what teachers do in classrooms to provide an evidence-based corpus of knowledge (Hargreaves, 1996, p. 4). • It is this gap between researchers and practitioners which betrays the fatal flaw in educational research. For it is the researchers, not the practitioners who determine the agenda of educational research (p. 3). • He argued that providing a research base for teaching is essential, but that it: • ...will require a radical change both in the kind of research that is done and the way in which it is organized (p. 1). • And: • A new partnership between researchers and practitioners must be at the heart of any reform (p. 6). (Taken from Jaworski 2004) Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  5. In Mathematics Education … Research which promotes the development of mathematics teaching and learning • while simultaneously studying the practices and processes involved; or • as an integral part of studying the practices and processes involved Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  6. Implicitly Much research that studies practices and processes in mathematics learning and/or teaching is implicitly developmental in that it promotes development without this being an intended factor in the research design. Examples … (Jaworski, 2003) Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  7. Explicitly Research that is explicitly developmental sets out to promote development as part of the design of the research. Research and development are often reflexively related to each other, so that separation of aspects of research and development is difficult. This raises a number of research issues. Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  8. Research Design Research Theoretical paradigm perspectives Research Research questions Strategy Research Methods Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  9. Research Design Developmental Theoretical Research perspectives Research Research questions Strategy Research Methods Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  10. Research Strategies in Dev. R. • Action Research • Design Research • Lesson Study • Learning Study • Co-Learning Inquiry • Gravemeier, 1994 • Van den Akker, 1999 • Jaworski, 2005 • Goodchild, in press Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  11. Action Research • Action research is simply a form of self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own practices, their understanding of these practices, and the situations in which the practices are carried out. (Carr & Kemmis, 1986, p.162) Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  12. Action Research • Action research might be defined as ‘the study of a social situation with a view to improving the quality of action within it’. It aims to feed practical judgement in concrete situations, and the validity of the ‘theories’ or hypotheses it generates depends not so much on ‘scientific’ tests of truth, as on the usefulness in helping people to act more intelligently and skillfully …. In action research ‘theories’ are not validated independently and then applied to practice. They are validated through practice’ (Elliott, 1991, p.69) Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  13. Action Research • The social basis of action research is involvement; the educational basis is improvement. Its operations demand changes. Action research means ACTION, both of the system under consideration, and of the people involved in that system.(McNiff, 1988, p. 3) Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  14. Action Research Cycles Kurt Lewin (1946) • Planning • Acting • Observing • Reflecting • Stenhouse • Elliott • Carr & Kemmis • McNiff • and many others Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  15. Examples • UEA as a centre of AR based on work of Stenhouse, Elliott et al. • Whitehead at Bath + McNiff … • Journal of Educational Action Research • Atkinson, 1994 • BPRS: UK Government Best Practice Research Scholarships • Lee, 2007 Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  16. Formal Educational Research (Outsider) We want to know  Research Questions  Research Design (Methodology+Methods)  Data Collection  Data Analysis  Validation  Ethics  Results/Findings  New Knowledge (Dissemination) [New Practice?] Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  17. Practitioner Action Research (Insider) We want to know  Research Questions  Plan for action  Action (new practice?)  Observation  Reflection on action  New knowledge [Dissemination?] New Practice Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  18. Relations between researcher and researched • Data extraction agreements • Externally objective • Subjects/informants of research • Clinical partnerships • Outsider and insider participants with mutual respect • Co-learning agreements • Participants can be both insiders and outsiders • Sharing of power and responsibility Wagner, 1997 Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  19. Design Research This dialect contrasts with dialects of confirmation or description, which have, respectively, ‘grammars’ of randomized testing or ethnographic description (Kelly, 2003, p. 3). According to Kelly, design research: attempts to support arguments constructed around the results of active innovation and intervention in classrooms. The operative grammar, which draws upon models from design and engineering, is generative and transformative. It is directed primarily at understanding learning and teaching processes when the researcher is active as an educator (Kelly, 2003, p. 3). Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  20. Relating to teacher education In an editorial of the Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, Wood and Berry (2003) suggest a characterization of design research related to teacher education: • First, a physical or theoretical artifact or product is created. • For the researcher/teacher educator the product being developed and tested is the professional development model itself. • For the teacher, the product that they design and study is specific to their students and might be an assessment tool or strategy or implementation guideline for a particular mathematics lesson, and so forth. • Second, the product is tested, implemented, reflected upon and revised through cycles of iterations. The model is dynamic and emergent as the process progresses. • Third, multiple models and theories are called upon in the design and revision of the products. • Fourth, design research of this nature is situated soundly in the contextual setting of the mathematics teachers’ day-to-day environment, but results should be shareable and generalizeable across a broader scope. • Fifth, the teacher educator/researcher is an interventionist rather than a participant observer in a collaborative, reflective relationship with the teacher(s) as the professional development model evolves and is tested and revised (Adapted from Wood and Berry, 2003, p. 195.). Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  21. Complexity – a learning ecology • Design experiments ideally result in greater understanding of a learning ecology – a complex interacting system involving multiple elements of different types and levels – by designing its elements and by anticipating how these elements function together to support learning. Design experiments therefore, constitute a means of addressing the complexity that is the hallmark of educational settings. • Elements of a learning ecology typically include the tasks or problems that students are asked to solve, the kinds of discourse that are encouraged, the norms of participation that are established, the tools and related material means provided, and the practical means by which classroom teachers can orchestrate relations among these elements. We use the metaphor of an ecology to emphasize that designed contexts are conceptualized as interacting systems rather than as either a collection of activities or a list of separate factors influencing learning (Cobb et al., 2003, p. 9). Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  22. The roles of teachers: 1 • Cobb et al. (2003) have suggested the following as examples of design research: • One-on-one (teacher-experimenter and student) design experiments in which a research team conducts a series of teaching sessions with a small number of students…to create a small-scale version of a learning ecology so that it can be studied in depth and detail… • Pre-service development experiments in which a research team helps organise and study the education of prospective teachers… (Cobb et al., 2003, p. 9). • In such examples, design seems to be firmly in the hands of outsider researchers who focus on the learning of students and on designs which facilitate learning. Teachers seem at best implementers of such designs, the insider role being a responsive one. Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  23. The roles of teachers: 2 • Further examples suggest that collaboration is more inclusive of teachers and other stakeholders: • Classroom experiments in which a research team collaborates with a teacher (who might be a research team member) to assume responsibility for instruction… • In-service teacher development studies in which researchers collaborate with teachers to support the development of a professional community… • School and school district restructuring experiments in which a research team collaborates with teachers, school administrators and other stakeholders to support organizational change…(Cobb et al., 2003, p. 9). • These examples mention researchers “collaborating” with teachers where a teacher “might be a research team member”. We should need to look in greater depth at the examples offered to gauge the nature and extent of collaboration where teachers are concerned. Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  24. Lesson Study • Stigler & Hiebert, 1999, write: • The premise behind lesson study is simple: If you want to improve teaching, the most effective place to do so is in the context of a classroom lesson. If you start with lessons, the problem of how to apply research findings in the classroom disappears. The improvements are devised within the classroom in the first place. The challenge now becomes that of identifying the kinds of changes that will improve student learning in the classroom, and, once the changes are identified, of sharing this knowledge with other teachers who face similar problems or share similar goals in the classroom. (P. 111) Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  25. Steps in lesson study • Defining the problem • Planning the lesson • Teaching the lesson • Evaluating the lesson and reflecting on its effect • Revising the lesson • Teaching the revised lesson • Evaluating and Reflecting again • Sharing the results (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999, p. 112-116) (Example – see Lin, 2002: e.g., Table 1, p. 324) (Fernandez & Yoshida 2004) Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  26. Learning Study • Learning study, according to Marton & Tsui, (2004) is based on the idea of Japanese ‘lesson study’ and incorporates elements of design research. It involves: • a systematic attempt to achieve an educational objective and learn from that attempt. [Design] • It aims at: • bringing about learning – at making learning possible -- i.e. students will learn. [Desired outcome] • Teachers involved try to learn from the literature, from each other, from the students, and not least, from the study itself. [Teaching development] (Adapted from Marton et al, 2004, p. 336) Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  27. Roles of teachers in Learning Study • Marton and colleagues indicate also that “Students’ learning should not be accidental…” (p. 331). They emphasise that: • Teachers’ opportunities to learn are a key factor affecting classroom practice... (p. 332). • Intervention studies must change what teachers do…in order to affect student learning (p. 333). • These statements imply the teachers will have goals for their students’ learning, that intervention will involve trying out new activities to achieve these goals, and that design of these activities is a focus of study. • Thus, teachers engage in and learn from design and intervention, and research charts their learning as well as that of their students. Research is conducted overtly by outsider researchers. Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  28. Learning study cycle Learning study follows a developmental cycle as follows: • Choice of objectives; • Discerning students’ understanding of key concepts; • Designing a lesson or series of lessons…The planning work must take into account the existing knowledge of the students, the teachers’ prior experiences in dealing with the objects of learning, and the research literature; • Teaching lessons according to plan; • Evaluating lessons according to students’ learning; • Documenting and disseminating all (Adapted from Marton & Tsui 2004, p. 337). Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  29. Relations between teachers and outsider researchers • The project aims at helping teachers to find ways to enable all students – in a typical mixed-ability classroom setting – to learn what is intended, by taking into account the students’ diverse existing knowledge and understanding (p. 338) [Item 2]. • Workshops on the theoretical framework of the project were conducted with the teachers of each school before the learning study (p. 341) [Item 3]. • By creating conditions for teachers to work together as a team using an action research approach, we enable teachers to learn and develop together…The…learning studies show that the process of designing, conducting and evaluating research lessons benefited all three parties: the students, the teachers and the researchers (Marton & Tsui, 2004, p. 356). Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  30. Co-learning agreement In a co-learning agreement, researchers and practitioners are both participants in processes of education and systems of schooling. Both are engaged in action and reflection. By working together, each might learn something about the world of the other. Of equal importance, however, each may learn something more about his or her own world and its connections to institutions and schooling (Wagner, 1997, p. 16). Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  31. Inquiry A key concept for all practitioners, has been that of inquiry (Jaworski, 2003). Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary suggests that to inquire means: to ask a question; to make an investigation; to acquire information; to search for knowledge. Wells (1999) sees dialogic inquiry as: • a willingness to wonder, to ask questions, and to seek to understand by collaborating with others in the attempt to make answers to them (p. 122). This search for knowledge and its relation to learning, ‘coming to know’, forms the essence of the inquiry process. In co-learning inquiry, I see inquiry in three mutually embedded layers: • inquiry in mathematics as an approach to pupils’ learning in classrooms; • inquiry in mathematics teaching as teachers investigate aspects of their own teaching and develop teaching; • inquiry in the research process as insiders and outsiders collaborate to study teaching development. Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  32. Examples of Co-Learning Inquiry • The Mathematics Teacher Enquiry Project – a study of teaching development resulting from teachers’ own classroom research as insiders Here teachers were invited (by outsider researchers) to ask and explore their own questions relating to issues in learning and teaching mathematics. Outsider research showed that teachers’ enquiry, in collaboration with other researchers, led to enhanced thinking and developments in teaching. Outsider researchers themselves learned significantly from their study of teachers’ activity. (Jaworski, 1998). See also, Hall, 199x; Edwards, 199x • Collaboration between teachers and (outsider) researchers to study the use of the teaching triad as a developmental tool, while using the triad to analyse teaching, led to deeper understandings of the teaching triad as a tool for teaching development as well as for analyzing and understanding teaching complexity. (Potari and Jaworski, 2002). Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  33. Learning Communities in Mathematics A developmental research project aiming to improve the learning and teaching of mathematics through a design involving teachers and didacticians working together for mutual learning. (e.g., Jaworski, 2005, 2006) Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  34. Who owns the research? If the research is ‘owned’ by outsider researchers who design experiments or innovations according to their own questions and issues, how do teachers develop their own commitments and involvements and with what implications for future practice? • Cobb et al. (2003) write: • Design studies are typically test-beds for innovation. The intent is to investigate the possibilities for educational improvement by bringing about new forms of learning in order to study them (p. 10). • Cobb et al. seem to be saying that research is designed to study the results of innovation, to study the possibility for improvement through research into the new forms of learning created. This aim is subtly different from studying the bringing about itself. Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  35. Who is bringing about … ? • Who is doing the bringing about is significant. • Outsiders engaged in bringing about new forms of learning are likely to be more interested in studying the learning outcomes than their own activity of bringing about. • However, if those bringing about are teachers, their activity can be a focus of study for outsider researchers. • Since, in the end, it has to be the teachers who effect and sustain a process of bringing about, perhaps it is more fruitful that they be engaged from the beginning in the design process. Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  36. Responsibility and Decision Making • Learning study can also be seen to fit the description of Cobb et al., above, but it goes further. • In learning study, teachers take responsibility for the design of lessons, drawing on the theoretical perspectives introduced by the research team. There seems to be more obvious partnership here. Decision-making is shared between teacher group and research team, each having certain areas of responsibility related to their own roles and goals in the project. • In co-learning inquiry, both partners are interested in the bringing about, recognizing that both contribute to its design and study Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  37. The developmental research cycle • Fundamentally there is a cyclical process between development and research. Theory and evidence from prior research leads to an envisaging of development, this leads to actions which are evaluated and fed back into a new cycle of envisaging and action. I will refer to this as the ‘developmental research cycle.’ The developmental process is presented as a cycle between thought experiment and practical experiment; that is thinking through the consequences of some action, guided by theory, then implementing the action which leads to the adjustment of the theory that led the action, and so on. I will refer to this as the ‘development cycle.’ The research process, too, is presented as a cycle between global theories that are ‘concretized in local theories,’ which are tried out in practice, analysed and lead to reconstruction of the global theory. This I will refer to as the ‘research cycle’. The research cycle guides the development cycle, which in turn nurtures the research cycle. • (Goodchild, in press) Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  38. The developmental research cycle nurtures thought experiment global theories The development cycle The research cycle research development practical experiment local theories guides Goodchild, in press Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  39. Theory • Action research and lesson study do not emphasise theory although they contribute to building theory. • Design research and learning study are theoretically based. • WHO is drawing on theory and with what implications? • WHAT counts as theory … Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  40. an intermediate theoretical scope … • Cobb et al. write as follows about theory in design research: • …like other methodologies, design experiments are crucibles for the generation and testing of theory (Cobb et al., 2003, p. 9). • …the research team frames certain aspects of the envisioned learning and of the means of supporting it as paradigm cases of a broader class of phenomena (p. 10). • Rather than grand theories of learning [such as constructivism] that may be difficult to project onto particular circumstances, design experiments tend to emphasize an intermediate theoretical scope…that is located between a narrow account of a specific system (e.g. a particular school district, a particular classroom) and a broad account that does not orient design to particular contingencies (p. 11). Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  41. Warrants • A critique of the design study paradigm, from the special issue of Educational Researcher, argues that: • …design studies, like all scientific work, must comport with guiding scientific principles and provide adequate warrants for their knowledge claims. The issue is whether their knowledge claims can be warranted. By their very nature, design studies are complex, multivariate, multilevel and interventionist, making warrants particularly difficult to establish. Moreover, many of these studies, intended or not, rely on narrative accounts to communicate and justify their findings. Although narratives often purport to be true, there is nothing in narrative form that guarantees veracity (Shavelson, Phillips, Towne and Feuer, 2003). Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  42. References • Atkinson, S. (1994). Rethinking the principles and practice of action research: the tensions for the teacher-researcher. Educational Action Research, 2, 3, 383-402. • Fernandez, C., & Yoshida, M. (2004). Lesson study: A Japanese approach to improving mathematics teaching and learning. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. • Gravemeijer, K. (1994). Educational development and developmental research in mathematics education. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 25, 443-471.Hargreaves, D. (1996). Teaching as a research-based profession. Teacher Training Agency Annual Lecture. London. • Lin, P-J, 92002). On enhancing teachers’ knowledge by constructing cases in classrooms. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 5, 4, 317-349. • Marton, F. & Tsui, A. B. M. (Eds.), Classroom discourse and the space of learning (pp. 189-225). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. • Van den Akker, J. (1999). Principles and methods of development research. In J. v. d. Akker, R. M. Branch, K. Gustafson, N. Nieveen, & T. Plomp (Eds.), Design approaches and tools in education and training (pp. 1-14). Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer. • Wagner, J. (1997). The unavoidable intervention of educational research: A framework for reconsidering researcher-practitioner cooperation. Educational Researcher 26(7), 13-22. • Wells, G. (1999). Dialogic inquiry. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Stigler, J. W., & Hiebert, J. (1999). The teaching gap: Best ideas from the world’s teachers for improving education in the classroom. New York: The Free Press. MORE  Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  43. Jaworski, B. (2003). Research practice into/influencing mathematics teaching and learning development: Towards a theoretical framework based on co-learning partnerships. Educational Studies in Mathematics54, 249-282. • Jaworski, B. (2004). Insiders and outsiders in mathematics teaching development: The design and study of classroom activity. In O. Macnamara & R. Barwell (Eds.), Research in Mathematics Education: Papers of the British Society for Research into Learning Mathematics, 6, 3-22. • Jaworski, B. (2006). Developmental research in mathematics teaching and learning: Developing learning communities based on inquiry and design. In P. Liljedahl (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2006 annual meeting of the Canadian Mathematics Education Study Group. Calgary, Canada: University of Calgary. • Jaworski B. (2006). Theory and practice in mathematics teaching development: Critical inquiry as a mode of learning in teaching. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 9(2). 187-211 • Jaworski, B. (2007). Theory in developmental research in mathematics teaching and learning: Social practice theory and community of inquiry as analytical tools. Paper presented at CERME5 Working Group 11, European Society for Research in Mathematics Education, Larnaca, Cyprus. • Jaworski, B., & Goodchild, S. (2006). Inquiry community in an activity theory frame. In J. Navotná, H. Moraová, M. Krátká & N. Stehliková (Eds.), Proceedings of the 30th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education: Vol. 3 (pp. 353-360). Prague Czech Republic: Charles University in Prague. Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  44. Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  45. Knowledge, reflection, action … • Schön extends tacit knowledge • to consider knowledge-in-practice, which through reflection-on-practice can become more overt, leading to reflection-in-practice which brings with it greater power over classroom decision making. (e.g., 1987) • Dewey (1933) wrote about reflection as • ‘demand for the solution of a perplexity is the steadying and guiding factor in the entire process of reflection’ (p. 14). • Kemmis (1985) sees the reflective process as demanding action. • We are inclined to think of reflection as something quiet and personal. My argument here is that reflection is action-oriented, social and political. Its product is praxis (informed, committed action) the most eloquent and socially significant form of human action. (P. 141). • Mason’s discipline of noticing, • awareness of what we notice in the moment of noticing is empowering in its potential for changing action. (e.g., 2002) Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

  46. Research in/as Practice ‘Meta-knowing’, ‘reflecting on what we know’, implies reflecting on action in the process of engagement in action: • or reflecting-in-action(Schön, 1987) • noticing in the moment (Mason, 2002) Social science research has the potential to illuminate and clarify the practices we are studying as well as the possibility to be incorporated into the very practices being investigated. (Chaiklin, 1996, p. 394. Emphasis added.) Barbara Jaworski MEC 2008 5

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