Practitioner Research

1. Practitioner Research St Richard Reynolds Catholic College June 27th 2018

2. What works? • Projects so far: • Addressing a ‘what works’ agenda • Practical, immediate, responsive • Drawing on ideas of others (4 stimulus texts)

3. What works - and why • Additional question that allows us to think about: • Sustainability of understanding and strategies • Longer term, embedded and transferable • Authentic learning and development

4. Why – and three dimensions • Knowledge • Professionalism • Identity

5. Knowledge or I thought I knew the answer to this • Frances: Teacher knowledge, you see, I mean… to me it's a… you see to me it's a very simple thing, er… teacher knowledge, there are two parts, well there are pro-… there are more than two parts. And what you do in the classroom can be broken down to a lot of different things. I thought I knew the answer to this. • Is teacher knowledge about curriculum? Syllabuses? Policy directives? Pedagogy? • Why is it significant? Without ownership we become the Deliveroo of knowledge as determined by policy in response to drivers (no pun intended) such as the global economy needs - currently skills based and instrumental. • My research also demonstrated however that ‘Knowledge is more than training’ • Speaks to a delight in learning, in flexibility and creativity. Desirable knowledge assets. But also surely the future learning needs.

6. Why knowledge? • So why what works in knowledge moves us out of Deliveroo mode to teacher knowledge informed by research – owned, understood, developed by teachers • It becomes a platform for discussion about teaching and learning –critical engagement - and allows us to access the discourse of teaching and learning again. • In Bernstein’s terms, the why is to recapture the sacred discourse which marks out the professional.

7. Professionalism • Lee: Research has made me take stock of what I believe in, what I want to be doing, how I want to be moving forward and it’s given me power – professionally. Personally, I think that research has made me into an individual who believes themselves to be a professional ... so professionally it’s done all of those things but personally I have more confidence in being a professional. • What constitutes being a professional? Research tells us autonomy is key (see for example Kincheloe, J. L. (2003)). Policy tells us it is about compliance (see Teachers’ Standards) A teacher is expected to demonstrate consistently high standards of personal and professional conduct. The following statements define the behaviour and attitudes which set the required standard for conduct throughout a teacher’s career.

8. Professionalism (2) • Compliance is easy (if frustrating at times). I’d suggest professionalism isn’t – it demands judgements and at times breaking rules and being able to justify that action – it takes us back to research-informed teacher voice. • Professionals are trusted; expected to be up to date with their field of knowledge; expected too to be wise in their selected courses of action. This is not to my mind about observing rules (though we can do that too) – it’s about ownership of our working lives and conditions. • It also involves respect. Respect for colleagues, for students, but also self-respect. Possessing expertise, informed by research, confident in having wide and deep understanding of our field. Without that, teaching is not a profession – it’s a job. Retaining professionalism is the why of research as a platform for teacher voice

9. Teachers’ voices • Rachel: • Professionalism – it’s interesting actually because I really like the statement ‘Teachers should seek to establish coherence and stability as a professional though collaboration and shared values’. I feel that, particularly in the current climate … how we’re being squeezed, the performance management structure that we’re under, there’s, I believe, as teachers we’re challenged more about our professionalism … there has to be trust… they have to rely on the fact that we are professionals.

10. Identity (and I know the cake and Prosecco are exercising their siren calls) • Most teachers have a very fine line between the personal and the professional self. Who hasn’t been to a film, or an exhibition, or being away on holiday and seen something that made you think ‘Hmm – I can use that with year 9’? • So sorting out our teaching ‘self’ isn’t straightforward. It is, research tells us about values and beliefs (see Day and the VITAE project for example), and about articulating these – so again the discourse of teaching and learning becomes central. • But the why of identity is perhaps the most important why of all. Research may not always be directly measurable in impact, might not produce hard data, night not be directly observable.

11. Identity (2) • Research however impacts directly onto the most significant, most important, central factor that changes students’ learning lives for the better – and that is the teacher. • Research-informed intelligence shapes teacher thinking and thus teaching. It’s about being an intellectual. And here’s a quote from my research: • Tom: I like this one – the identity of people seeing themselves as intellectuals … for me, this statement is the whole point of teaching, being creators and owners of ... I think teachers don’t sort of feel strongly enough about that but they are the owners of knowledge’.

12. What works and why: • David: • Teachers’ voices should be powerful again. Collaboration and research as knowledge building has to be our platform … We know what to say to Ofsted inspectors – that’s one voice, but not ‘ours’. What we need to do is find our own voices again. Research is the way to do that.

13. Contact details • Dr Sue Brindley • sb295@cam.ac.uk