Engaging Research: Profession, Practice, Politics

Postgraduate Research Conference University of Queensland, September 19, 2009

Jo-Anne ReidFaculty of Education CSU

AARE

Why does educational research matter?

In what ways does the research we do matter to the field of education?

Who reads it, whose thinking and practice is changed by it?

How does it make a difference in the lives of teachers, children, parents and in the history of the nation?

Engagement challenges for educational research

the range of education professions that require the advocacy and evidence of our research to build and strengthen themselves as communities;

the range of everyday teaching, leadership and academic practices that contribute to renewal and strengthening of education through research; and

the range of political circumstances, constraints and possibilities that frame the work of educational researchers at the present time.

Drawing on the evidence of six years’ reflection on the sorts of educational research Australian universities have nominated as the very best doctoral theses in the nation, I argue that educational researchers must continue to ask the difficult questions about our field and engage more fully with the challenge of ensuring that education research continues to matter.

The Problem of ‘the Problem with Educational Research’

McWilliam & Lee (2006) suggest that the different positions on the problem with educational research, and hence on the solution to the problem, fail to engage in the question of education itself as a problem of the present.

They argue that this problem is produced through twin fantasies about education: a redemptive fantasy about the possibility and the imperative for education to solve problems of social disadvantage; and a disciplinary fantasy that faculties of education can do this by themselves.

Through an examination of the ‘de-sciencing’ of education in the past decade or so, and its recent ‘re-sciencing’, they conclude that, with all the problems that might be identified as pertaining to educational research and to Faculties of Education, the most significant might well be a failure of research imagination. Overcoming this problem demands engagement with provocative ideas coming from outside traditional educational expertise.

McWilliam, E & Lee, A (2006) The Problem of ‘the Problem with Educational Research’, Australian Educational Researcher, Vol 33, No 2,

pp 43-60

What needs to be studied? Wagner (1993) reminds researchers of the difference

between what he calls ‘blank spots’ and ‘blind spots’ in our construction of knowledge.

Blank spots are the bits of the picture that we think need to be ‘filled in’ by research. To fill in blank spots we do not need to change or question the existing picture at all. Research that fills in the ‘blank spots’ in our knowledge as teachers does not challenge existing constructions or values.

Even when such research works right out at the edges of what is already ‘sketched in’ to our picture of high quality educational practice, it remains within the frame of the big picture it assumes to represent reality and truth.

But when things in our professional practice are not ‘picture perfect’ within our frame; when some of our students are failing to learn in our classrooms; when our school is not achieving the same level of outcomes as others; when we feel we could do things better but don’t quite know what to do: we are seeing our blind spots….

Teaching becomes a strategy for using research to reduce ignorance, and research a strategy for preparing to teach. While this articulates research closely with teaching, it also suggests how complicated teaching really is. … Research itself is a form of learning – and research reporting a form of teaching (Wagner 1993:19, 21).

In order to generate new knowledge about education and schooling, Wagner claims, “educational researchers must begin with ignorance, not truth” (1993:15). In this way, some of the ‘blind spots’ we have in our educational vision are more likely to appear, and demand our attention. Sometimes, indeed, we might be taken by surprise by having a look at somebody else’s picture of normality and truth.

Wagner, J. (1993) Ignorance in Educational Research, or How could you Not know that? Educational Researcher, Vol. 22, No. 5, 15-23.

AARE Doctoral Thesis Award 2004

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A People Learning: Colonial Victorians and their Public Institutions for Adult Learning, 1860-1880

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Parental Involvement in their Children's Education in Taiwan

Decisions by 'Science Proficient' Year 10 Students About Post-Compulsory High School Science Enrolment: A Sociocultural Exploration

The Influence of Students' Conceptual Perceptions on Motivational Goal Pursuit in the First Year of Middle School

Exploring Flexibility and Lifelong Learning: the rhetorical work of policy discourse

Students' Engagement and Disengagement Behaviours When Learning with IMM Integrated Mass Lectures

School Leadership and Cognitive Interests: The development of a leadership framework based on Habermas' theory of knowledge-constitutive interest

The role of affective distress in final years school student achievement motivation

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becomings Competition, competence and conversation: a case study of

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on Indian women entrepreneurs Action Research as a Professional Development Model for the

Teaching of Writing in Early Stage One/Stage One Classrooms Why bother to be a student leader? An exploration of the

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The Development of Sport in Singapore: An Eliasian Analysis What is the nature of transformative learning and pedagogy?

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The Design and Evaluation of a Cooperative Reading Instructional Strategy for Children Experiencing Reading Difficulties

Complicit Institutions: Representation, Consumption and the Production of School Violence

A Study into Support Provision for Primary School LOTE (Languages Other than English) Teachers in the Context of the Inclusion of Students with Special Needs

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2005 Acting in the middle: the dialogic struggle for professional identity in

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Becoming leaders: An investigation into women’s leadership in male dominated professions

Measuring and Modelling Student Engagement in Online and Campus-based Higher Education

The Hungarian in Australia: A portfolio of belongings

Online Learning as Curricular Justice? A Critical Framework for Higher Education

Peers helping peers: The effectiveness of a peer support program in enhancing self-concept and other desirable outcomes

An evaluation of the dominant assumptions and practices of training packages in Australian Vocational Education and Training and the extent to which they coincide with the emergence of mode-2 society and its imputed education and training needs

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Teaching about teaching, learning about teaching: A self-study of my practice as a teacher educator

Education for a just democracy: the role of ethical enquiry

Mentoring, Women and the Construction of Academic Identities

Glonacal' Contexts: Internationalisation Policy in the Australian Higher Education Sector and the Development of Pathway Programs

The Social and Discursive Construction of Itinerant Farm Workers' Children as Literacy Learners

Parent conceptions of their role in early childhood education and care: A phenomenographic study from Queensland Australia

The structural and cultural dynamics of a multi-campus college: A case study inquiry of four multi-campus colleges in New South Wales

2005 Effect of Dual-Modality Instruction on Comprehending English as a

Foreign Language: A Cognitive Load Approach

Phonological processing and early reading acquisition: a longitudinal study

Relations of Power and Competing Knowledges Within the Academy: Creative Writing as Research

Silent Voices: A study of English teachers' responses to curriculum change

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2006A Study of Successful Implementation and Management of

Educational Technology in Three New South Wales Primary Schools

 

Classical Instrumental Musicians: Educating for Sustainable Practice

 

Teaching about teaching, learning about teaching: A self-study of my practice as a teacher educator

 

Education for a just democracy: the role of ethical enquiry

 

The Hungarian in Australia: A portfolio of belongings

 

Mentoring, Women and the Construction of Academic Identities

 

 

2006 Glonacal' Contexts: Internationalisation Policy in the Australian Higher

Education Sector and the Development of Pathway Programs

  The Social and Discursive Construction of Itinerant Farm Workers' Children as

Literacy Learners

Parent conceptions of their role in early childhood education and care: A phenomenographic study from Queensland Australia

  The structural and cultural dynamics of a multi-campus college: A case

study inquiry of four multi-campus colleges in New South Wales

  Effect of Dual-Modality Instruction on Comprehending English as a Foreign

Language: A Cognitive Load Approach

  Phonological processing and early reading acquisition: a longitudinal study

Relations of Power and Competing Knowledges Within the Academy: Creative Writing as Research

2006  Silent Voices: A study of English teachers' responses to

curriculum change

Sense of Humour and teacher-student relationships in school-age children

  Emagining change: English teachers and technology

  Improving Intellectual and Affective Quality in Mathematics

Lessons: How Autonomy and Spontaneity Enable Creative and Insightful Thinking

  The contexts and purposes of school literacy pedagogy:

'Failing' in the early years

2007 The spatiality of English language teaching, gender and context  Thirnda Ngurkarnda Ityrnda: Ontologies in Indigenous Tertiary Education  Constructing Visual Literacy: An investigation into Upper Primary Teachers'

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Design  Organisational Learning in a Food Value Chain  Learning to be Kunwinjku: An Australian Indigenous Pedagogy  Multiliteracies for academic purposes: A metafunctional exploration of

intersemiosis and multimodality in university textbook and computer-based learning resources in science

 

2007

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A Grounded Theory: Realising Family Potential through Choice of Schooling

Multiliteracies: A Critical Ethnography. Pedagogy, power, discourse and access to multiliteracies

The construction and practice of creativity policy in Singaporean education (1985-2004): A holistic discourse-oriented policy analysis

 

2007

Participation in School Leadership and Management (PSALM): Its Impact on the Creation of Better Philippine Public Secondary Schools

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international students

  The Principalship: A Study of Prescriptions, Practices and

Perceptions within a Christian School Context

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between teacher-researchers and children

 

2007 Demystification and Reconceptualisation of the

Intricate Web of Metacognition

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Circus Acts: Performative subjectivities of women who teach drama

The Experience of River Places in Outdoor Education: A Phenomenological Study

The disabled culture of schooling: Becoming and being autistic

2008 Mothers and school choice: Effects on the home front The impact of a leadership training program on

school-based management and school community action in Praya Barat Daya, Indonesia

Teacher identities: professional experience as discursive practice

A sociocultural perspective as a curriculum change in Health and Physical Education

Psychopathic-like traits and aggression in suspended mainstream school children and adolescents

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developing professionally. Inquiry-based professional learning of English

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Biology topic Jumping through spinning hoops, chance or a

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students: Literature circles in an Education MOO Linguistics training in indigenous adult education and its

effects on endangered languages Australian schools: social purposes, social justice and social

cohesion Race matters in talk in inter-racial interaction Reading in the margins: EAP reading pedagogies and their

critical, post critical potential Picturing currere towards cura: Rhizo-imaginary for

curriculum Teachers’ literacy programming and context The Big-Fish-Little Pond Effect under the grill: tests of its

universality, a search for moderators and the role of social comparison

2009 Global routes/rural roots: Identity, rural women and higher

education Adolescent literacies for critical social and community

engagement Finding social relevance: young people, wellbeing and regulated

support Lost in translations: A socio-technical study of interactive

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the Great War 1914-18

AARE Thesis Award nominations by topic – 2004-2009Topic 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Total

Literacy/English/Reading 111111 1111111 1111111 1111 11 1111 30

Sociology of Ed 1111 111 1 11 1111 111 17

Psychology of Ed 1111 111 1 111 11 11 15

Higher Education 11 11111 11 11 11 1 14

School subjects 1111 1 11 11 1 10

Leadership 11111 1 11 1 1 10

Teachers & teaching 11 111 11 7

Indigenous education 1 111 11 6

ICT 1 1 11 1 5

History of Ed 1 1 1 3

Curriculum theory 11 1 3

Adult Education 1 1 2

International Ed 1 1 2

Inclusive/Special Ed 1 1 2

Philosophy and ethics 1 1 2

Education Policy 1 1 1 2

Early Childhood Ed 1 1

Other (research/ Hungarians) 1 1

TOTAL 33 23 18 23 19 19

33

4

10

22

1

5

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

2004

2005

2006

Total

2 Examiners 3 Examiners

References McWilliam, E. & Lee, A (2006 forthcoming) The Problem of

‘The Problem with Educational Research”, Australian Educational Researcher.

Wagner, J. 1993, ‘Ignorance in Educational Research, or How can you not know that?’, Educational Researcher, Vol. 22, No. 5, pp. 15-23.

Yates, L. (2004) What Does Good Education Research Look Like? Berkshire, Open University Press.