Dear all,
I've been ignoring emails from this list for some time now.
Every day for the past three weeks or so I have thought, 'that could be
interesting, but I've got to get on with my work.'
Today, I opened a few and thought, 'Gosh. They ARE to do with my work'.
This is because I am trying to review Action Research reports (mainly
journal articles and conference papers) in my field, which is music
education. What I have found so far is that they are not,
i) World leading
ii) Internationally excellent
iii) Internationally recognised
iv) nationally recognised
but,
i) Mildly interesting
ii) Mildly frustrating
iii) Deeply frustrating
The interesting reports tell me what the author was attempting to do,
and why they attempted to do it. They tell me what the authors actually
did, and what they learned from doing it. So, for example, Miller (2005)
reports how the author attempted to introduce composing into her
elementary school, how far she succeeded and cites evidence for success.
It says what she learned from the process, some of which is connected
with action research and some of which is about teaching composing.
(It's only mildly interesting because it didn't tell me anything new
about teaching composing.)
The reports that provoke a feeling of frustration don't come close to
telling me what the author actually did. I don't mean that they don't
provide sufficient detail or evidence; I mean that they really don't
report what happened. Instead, they discuss action research - how
enriching it was, or how it taught them to think about teaching in a
different way. So, for example, one report claims that the process of
research taught the teacher to 'see' the ethnicity of her pupils. The
problem with this assertion is that it isn't grounded in any evidence
(for example, descriptions of classroom events) so it's unclear what is
meant, and in particular, how the 'seeing' made a difference.
It's one thing to know how to put the world to rights; it's another
thing to do it. So among my 'standards of judgement' are,
it's not enough to claim that you have changed: you need to cite
evidence for how that change is worked out in events. Although this is
deeply problematic it has to be attempted!
(I myself feel that I have matured over the years; I have become more
reflective, less prone to anger, more mellow and generally less tetchy.
However, a re-reading of the above tells me that I could be wrong!)
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