Dear Moira and everyone,
I am glad that what I wrote spoke to your experience as –like me -you
are raising questions about legitimacy, validity and rigour. It is
so hard at times to do justice to our work in our theorising. I like
what Schon said when he pointed out:
"There is a high, hard ground overlooking a swamp. On the high
ground, manageable problems lend themselves to solution through the
use of research based theory and technique. In the swampy lowlands,
problems are messy and confusing and incapable of technical
solutions. The irony of this situation is that problems of the high
ground tend to be relatively unimportant to individuals or to society
at large, however great their interest may be, while in the swamps
lie the problems of greatest human concern". (Schon 1995:28)
Schon’s metaphor poignantly represents the dilemma encountered by
educational professionals in their attempt to make choices between
what he refers to as ‘rigour and relevance’. Like Schon I believe
that rigour can be achieved inside the professional’s comfort zone,
since the instruments of validity upon which it relies are
quantifiable and measurable entities, which can be broken into
manageable chunks. Rigour could entail ‘tweeking’ the symptoms of a
problem without necessarily addressing the circumstances which have
given rise to the problem in the first place. Relevance, or the
‘swampy’, ‘messy’ realms of educational practice, on the other hand
may not be so easily and readily subjected to what schon (1991)
refers to elsewhere as ‘technical rationality’. Apple 1979, quoted
in Giroux 1983: 43 suggested that ‘basic human dilemmas are
transformed into puzzles for which supposedly easy answers can be
found’. What is interesting is that rigour in common academic
parlance is arguably taken to denote coherence, breadth and depth of
systematic inquiry.
On this view, Usher argued that it is failure to examine
philosophical questions relating to epistemological and ontological
assumptions of different research traditions which reduces research
to a technology.
Thank you
Mohamed
>
>
>---- Original Message ----
>From: [log in to unmask]
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: How do you~i~we enhance the validity and rigour of our
>practitioner-research?
>Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 10:27:13 +0000
>
>><html><div style='background-color:'><P>Hi, Mohamed. I just wanted
>to respond straightaway and say how much I gained from reading your
>letter this morning. I am in the throes of trying to answer the
>question: how can I justify the claim that i-we are contributing to
>the public good? Your insights about validity are really helping me
>to be clearer about my own practice. More anon.</P>
>><P>Thanks. <BR><BR><FONT color=#9900cc face="Lucida Handwriting,
>Cursive" size=5><STRONG><EM>Moira</EM></STRONG></FONT><FONT
>color=#9900cc face="" size=5><STRONG><EM> <IMG height=12
>src="http://graphics.hotmail.com/emsmile.gif"
>width=12></EM></STRONG></FONT></P>
>><DIV>
>><P><FONT color=#ff3300><STRONG><EM>'Be the changes you want to see
>in the world!' </EM></STRONG></FONT></P>
>><P><FONT size=2><STRONG>Mahatma Gandhi.<BR></STRONG></FONT></P>
>><P> </P></DIV><BR><BR><BR>>From: Mohamed Moustakim
><[log in to unmask]><BR>>Reply-To: Mohamed Moustakim
><[log in to unmask]><BR>>To:
>[log in to unmask]<BR>>Subject: Re: How
>do you~i~we enhance the validity and rigour of our
>practitioner-research?<BR>>Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 10:16:13
>+0100<BR>><BR>>Dear Paulus, Rachel, Jack and
>everyone<BR>><BR>>Thank you for your responses to my first
>posting. It is great to<BR>>read your contributions and to get to
>hear your stories and your<BR>>perspectives on ‘ways of doing and
>knowing’. My theorising of my<BR>>praxis is for a dual purpose:
>firstly it is in preparation for the<BR>>paper I am currently
>writing for the Nicosia conference in August and<BR>>secondly it
>is forming part of work towards a doctorate I am doing at<BR>>the
>University of Exeter. So I
>>couldn’t have joined this forum at a<BR>>better
>time.<BR>><BR>>Paulus > I shall email a separate posting to
>discuss the very<BR>>important issues you raised in your
>email.<BR>><BR>>Paulus + Rachel > I have found it helpful to
>‘zoom in’ and ‘zoom out’<BR>>in order to get to grips with the
>micro, meso and macro conditions<BR>>which surround me so that I
>can locate my endeavours within the wider<BR>>social, cultural and
>political context. I think that the ‘I’ is not<BR>>sufficient, but
>it is necessary. The ‘I’ for me represents a<BR>>counter-hegemonic
>discourse levelled at institutional
>epistemologies,<BR>>particularly in academia where what I consider
>to be the fallacy of<BR>>neutrality and distance from the social
>world, including the ‘self’<BR>>is taken to equate objectivity,
>reliability, validity and rigour.<BR>><BR>>At one point in
>>my career I decided to become an educational<BR>>psychologist. I
>thought that somehow educational psychology would<BR>>equip me
>with skills to help ‘troubled’ young people. So I
>completed<BR>>the Graduate Diploma in Psychology at the University
>of Westminster,<BR>>conferring the basis for registration with the
>British Psychological<BR>>Society. The experience put me off
>psychology and quantitative<BR>>research completely. On one hand I
>was put off by the psychologising<BR>>and the pathologising of
>people and the tendency to locate social<BR>>problems in
>individuals’ abnormal dispositions and deficiencies. On<BR>>the
>other hand, I became tired and exasperated of the certainty
>with<BR>>which claims to knowledge were made. The total
>decontextualisation<BR>>of the social world, where words are
>converted to numbers and<BR>>computer generated formula
>>determine the strength of relationships<BR>>between phenomena.
>The social world is thus reduced to ‘Alpha = 0.5’<BR>>and a far
>reaching generalisation is inferred.<BR>><BR>>Jack > Was it
>Blatchford who said that value and validity have the<BR>>same
>etymological origin? Hence validity is normative and
>value<BR>>laden. So I shall state my values
>first.<BR>><BR>>My orientation to this form of inquiry is by
>virtue of the congruence<BR>>of the underlying philosophy of
>action research, and the values of<BR>>social justice and
>democracy which guide my actions as a<BR>>practitioner. I value
>the transformative potential of education for<BR>>the greater
>common good of the wider society. Not in terms of its<BR>>capacity
>to transmit knowledge and its ability to foster
>dispositions<BR>>of compliance and reverence as it has been
>traditionally used, but
>>in<BR>>view of the potential it provides for raising awareness
>and<BR>>contributing to the education of social formations
>(Whitehead, 1989).<BR>>This is particularly important in the field
>of education since it<BR>>continues to be used as a site for the
>maintenance of the status quo<BR>>and the reproduction of social
>divisions (Apple, 1984). In Britain,<BR>>the tripartite system may
>have come to an end, but there are more<BR>>sophisticated means of
>maintaining social divisions. If we look at<BR>>New Labour’s
>rhetoric of choice in education, which some of my<BR>>students
>think is a commendable social democratic initiative. Yet<BR>>many
>of their relatives would not stand much chance of getting
>into<BR>>schools of their choice. Accountability is another
>ambiguous term<BR>>which evokes thoughts associated with
>transparency, honesty and<BR>>openness,
>>hence not many teachers would resent accounting for
>their<BR>>practice to parents and to the community at large.
>However<BR>>accountability is one of a family of a growing number
>of words that<BR>>have been contaminated through their misuse by
>Neo-Liberal and New<BR>>Labour politicians in pursuit of their
>political ends. Matheson<BR>>suggested that the Education Reform
>Act 1988 ‘introduced more than<BR>>300 new powers for the
>secretary of state for education as well as a<BR>>market-derived
>terminology (accountability, choice,
>efficiency,<BR>>effectiveness, value for money, cost control,
>customer satisfaction,<BR>>service delivery, planning unit,
>quality assurance)’. (Matheson,<BR>>2000, p.67). William {1976}
>quoted in Poulson (1998) suggests that<BR>>certain words with
>condensed multiple referents are used symbolically<BR>>in
>political rhetoric. This
>>creates ambiguity in the discourse when<BR>>such terms are
>employed. I used the term contaminated to illustrate<BR>>the
>conscious omission of such words from my daily speech, when I
>had<BR>>no compunction to use such words before they implicitly
>acquired<BR>>their new meanings. I often wonder whether such
>language should be<BR>>reclaimed and used in its appropriate
>context or whether new words<BR>>should be introduced to replace
>lost ones.<BR>>The significance of language in the expression of
>power and<BR>>domination in education could not be overstated.
>However, language,<BR>>or its smaller units of utterance, textual
>or spoken words, letters<BR>>or sounds are mere symbols which
>describe thoughts, objects or<BR>>actions. But the meanings
>attached to these words, and the<BR>>historical, social, political
>and cultural contexts within which
>>they<BR>>are constructed and expressed are of huge significance
>when<BR>>attempting to ‘read’ the sub-text, in the same way that
>Freire (1982)<BR>>referred to the idea of literacy programmes
>enabling people to ‘read’<BR>>beyond words and ultimately learning
>to ‘read’ the world.<BR>><BR>>The importance of learning to
>‘read’ power in education was also<BR>>captured by Apple (1984) in
>his analysis of the role that education<BR>>serves to maintain the
>status quo through the reproduction of<BR>>structures of
>domination and existing social divisions. Such<BR>>structures are
>not merely expressed through Education Acts, policy<BR>>documents
>and teaching practice guidelines. They are an
>omnipresent,<BR>>amorphous entity. Perhaps, better described as
>‘discourse’ by<BR>>Foucault (1988) who suggested that discourses
>are not merely text<BR>>based linguistic
>>systems, but practices manifested in the production<BR>>of books,
>acts, buildings, customs and therefore practices.
>Although<BR>>Foucault was specifically referring to the medical
>field and not<BR>>education, his analysis can be satisfactorily
>applied to the<BR>>development of education as a ‘profession’
>since the state first<BR>>began to take an interest in
>it.<BR>><BR>>I question the validity of the assumptions upon
>which current<BR>>educational policies are predicated. I am
>particularly referring<BR>>here to instrumental approaches to
>education, drawn from<BR>>functionalist perspectives where
>education is regarded as a means to<BR>>specific ends, such as the
>preparation for the world of work.<BR>>Elliott captured this point
>succinctly when he stated that:<BR>><BR>>to regard learning as
>a process which is directed towards some<BR>>fixed-end
>>state is to distort its educative value, because what
>makes<BR>>it educative is not its instrumental effectiveness in
>producing<BR>>‘knowledge’ outcomes that can be independently
>defined, but the<BR>>quality of thinking realised in-process.”
>(1985, p.233)<BR>><BR>>Participation is key in action research
>and is achieved through the<BR>>involvement in socially and
>politically informed awareness raising<BR>>activities, aimed at
>empowering students through their inclusion.<BR>>This may start at
>the seminar room or lecture hall level and may<BR>>extend beyond
>the higher education institution and the
>neighbourhood.<BR>>Emancipation is an important underlying
>commitment of action research.<BR>><BR>>The purpose of action
>research is to emancipate people through<BR>>critique of
>ideologies that promote inequity and through change
>in<BR>>personal
>>understanding and social commitment. This is consistent<BR>>with
>the concept of ‘social formations’ Whitehead
>(1989).<BR>><BR>>When applied to teaching and learning
>dimensions, a commitment to the<BR>>education of social formations
>would lead to an inquiry into forms of<BR>>pedagogy which do not
>simply focus on the most effective modes of<BR>>transmission of
>propositional knowledge, but engage students in a<BR>>critical
>engagement with the knowledge being imparted, by submitting<BR>>it
>to interrogation and providing the historical context within
>which<BR>>the specific knowledge was created in the first place.
>By asking<BR>>simple questions such as ‘In what context was this
>said? Whose<BR>>interests does it serve? Whose interests does it
>ignore? And whose<BR>>interests does it harm? Much of the
>literature on teaching and<BR>>learning has tended to
>>focus on psychological processes and learning<BR>>theories which
>often focus on the individual’s ability to learn and<BR>>fail to
>take into account issues around structure, agency and
>rival<BR>>discursive formations.<BR>><BR>>‘The pedagogy of
>critical inquiry and ethical understanding has given<BR>>way to
>the logic of instrumental reason, with its directed focus
>on<BR>>the learning of discrete competencies and basic skills’.
>Giroux<BR>>(1983:43).<BR>><BR>>Theoretical perspectives on
>the hidden curriculum have provided<BR>>analyses of the ideologies
>which penetrate curriculum content and<BR>>shape the relationships
>between headteachers, teachers, students,<BR>>politicians, parents
>and the wider society. My study is located<BR>>within a critical
>pedagogy theoretical framework, as propounded by<BR>>Freire
>(1970). Hence, the primary concern is not
>>to explain, neither<BR>>is it merely to understand phenomena. Its
>goal is to enable students<BR>>to develop their powers of critique
>as educators who possess the<BR>>skills and knowledge to challenge
>and transform structural<BR>>inequities, a concept described by
>Giroux (1983) as ‘transformative<BR>>intellectuals’. A dialogical
>approach to teaching and learning is<BR>>being adopted in
>rejection of what Freire described as the ‘banking<BR>>system’
>where the learners are treated as ‘receptacles to be
>filled<BR>>with information’ Rousseau (1762). Like Rousseau,
>Dewey, Piaget and<BR>>others, I believe that knowledge acquired
>through construction is of<BR>>greater value than that gained
>through instruction, since in the<BR>>former, students are able to
>make sense of what they are learning.<BR>><BR>>I am concerned
>about my students’ seeming lack of
>>critical engagement<BR>>with the topics explored during the
>lectures. I am concerned that<BR>>they perceive me as the ‘fount
>of knowledge’ and at their expressed<BR>>powerlessness in the
>shadow of foundational knowledge. I want to<BR>>help them explore
>their implicit knowledge by anchoring it in daily<BR>>experience.
>I want them to challenge and interrogate text. I am<BR>>aware that
>being a lecturer I am in a position of power vis-à-vis
>my<BR>>students and that actions commensurate with my role may
>constrain and<BR>>silence them. Through critical pedagogy I hope
>to reduce dissonance<BR>>between my values and my actions
>(Aronson, 1968; Festinger, 1957). A<BR>>concept not too dissimilar
>to Whitehead’s ‘living contradiction’. By<BR>>virtue of my
>commitment to social justice and my acute awareness of<BR>>where
>discursive power/ knowledge configurations
>>situate learners and<BR>>educators, Foucault (1978), within an
>institutional epistemology<BR>>Schon
>(1995).<BR>><BR>>Students are being encouraged to disrupt the
>reproduction of social<BR>>inequality, Giroux (1983) which uses
>education as the site for its<BR>>perpetuation, (Apple 1988;
>Bourdieu 1994), through a hidden<BR>>curriculum Bowles and Gintis
>(1976). This is being done through<BR>>close analysis of texts
>using different lenses, Brookfield (1995) and<BR>>a critique of
>ideologies or as Habermas (1974) puts it a critique of<BR>>‘the
>illegitimate operation of power and hegemony’.<BR>><BR>>Back to
>rigour ><BR>><BR>>To the practising teacher, what could be
>more innocent, more<BR>>transparent, more familiar than the notion
>of ‘practice’? It is what<BR>>we do. It is our work. It speaks for
>itself – or so we may think.<BR>>But there is
>>another point of view that educational practice does not<BR>>just
>‘speak for itself’. On this alternative view,
>educational<BR>>practice is something made by people. Education
>practice is a form<BR>>of power – a dynamic force both for social
>continuity and for social<BR>>change, which though shared with and
>constrained by others, rests<BR>>largely in the hands of teachers.
>Through the power of educational<BR>>practice, teachers play a
>vital role in changing the world we live<BR>>in. (Kemmis,
>1995:15)<BR>>Kemmis suggests that beneath the apparent simplicity
>of the notion of<BR>>educational practice lies contestability on
>one hand and on the other<BR>>driving and restraining forces in
>the struggle for social continuity<BR>>and change. For as with
>education, educational practice is a<BR>>contested concept which
>has been subject to contrasting
>>theoretical<BR>>constructions. This is in part engendered by the
>notion that<BR>>educational practice embodies the values held by
>the practitioner in<BR>>a world where teachers, parents and policy
>makers hold different<BR>>views about what constitutes good
>educational practice. Carr<BR>>(1995) posits that the ambiguity
>occurs when attempting to analyse<BR>>the concept of educational
>practice on the basis of its relationship<BR>>to theory. He
>identified three approaches to the analysis of the<BR>>theory
>practice relationship. Firstly, the oppositional view
>which<BR>>conceives theory and practice as being mutually
>exclusive. On this<BR>>view, practice and theory are seen as two
>separate and<BR>>compartmentalised activities which are conducted
>by different groups<BR>>of people who have incommensurable
>knowledge, skills and abilities.<BR>>This is not a
>>new conception of the ostensible theory practice<BR>>dichotomy.
>The ‘two world view’ of theory and practice has its roots<BR>>in
>ancient Greek philosophy (Gomm et al, 2002), where theoria
>and<BR>>praxis referred to activities which were pursued by two
>different<BR>>kinds of people. Theoria was the preserve of
>philosophers and<BR>>referred to intellectual abstraction or what
>was described as the<BR>>‘contemplation of what is eternal and
>unchanging’ (Gomm et al, 2002:<BR>>61). Theoria had a higher
>status than praxis in the sense that it<BR>>dealt with what was
>perceived to be sacred and divine. Praxis on the<BR>>other hand
>was understood to deal with the dynamic daily human action<BR>>and
>‘its orientation to the good’ (ibid). Although praxis
>was<BR>>assigned a lower status, it was higher than techne.
>Aristotle made<BR>>a distinction between two
>>constructions of practice: practice as a<BR>>craft or poiesis,
>which Coulter and Weins describe as ‘a means-ends<BR>>activity in
>which knowledge and skill (techne) are used to accomplish<BR>>ends
>decided by the exercise of theoretical wisdom ‘sophia’.’
>(2002:<BR>>p.16). Aristotle described the second form of practice
>as praxis,<BR>>characterised as a committed political form of
>human action.<BR>>According to the oppositional view of
>educational practice and<BR>>theory, theory and practice inhabit
>different worlds. In their ‘two<BR>>world theory’ argument,
>Hammersley and Gromm (2002) posit that due to<BR>>the
>fragmentation of educational research and the unbridgeable
>gap<BR>>between theory and practice, the separation is inevitable.
>However,<BR>>implicit in the Aristotlean analysis of the
>dialectical relationship<BR>>between theory and practice is a
>>predilection to theory as<BR>>possessing superior qualities,
>since it calls upon a higher order of<BR>>knowledge and
>intellectual ability or at least this is how the early<BR>>Greek
>philosophers construed it. A question I can not resist
>here<BR>>is: whose interests does such a position serve? How can
>theoretical<BR>>abstraction be privileged over commitment to human
>actions which<BR>>pursue the greater common good of the wider
>society?<BR>>It is clear that such position privileges the elite.
>Hammersley was<BR>>probably right in asserting that ‘all ideas are
>said to be footnotes<BR>>to ancient philosophy, and two worlds
>theory is no exception’<BR>>(2002:61). Indeed, ideas which have
>historically preoccupied<BR>>humanity are perpetuated and are
>manifested in social practices in<BR>>different guises. For
>example, the value accorded to different
>>types<BR>>of research in academic circles is manifested in the
>nature of the<BR>>selection criteria, which privileges theory
>driven research over<BR>>practitioner inquiry. This chimes with
>what Chomsky refers to as the<BR>>strategy employed by the elite
>‘to persuade people of their own<BR>>inadequacy in the shadow of
>more intelligent others’. Quoted in<BR>>McNiff
>(2005:p.?).<BR>>Now how do I demonstrate how I have influenced the
>learning of my<BR>>students?<BR>><BR>>The audio recorded
>conversations with students speak for themselves<BR>>(soon to be
>uploaded on another jiscmail File Area). Students’<BR>>accounts
>demonstrate the ‘distance travelled’ in their thinking
>in<BR>>relation to the extent to which they engage with the
>literature.<BR>><BR>>Other documentary evidence includes
>records of the changes to the<BR>>module structure. For
>>example, one of the modules titled ‘Nature,<BR>>Purposes and
>Politics of Education’ was initially validated with
>an<BR>>assessment structure entailing examination. I have modified
>this<BR>>form of assessment to the completion of a portfolio, with
>greater<BR>>choice of topics for students to
>pursue.<BR>><BR>>The content and structure of the lectures has
>changed considerably.<BR>>We now have ‘lecturettes’ (of between 10
>to 20 minutes) with ‘open<BR>>windows’ at the end, where students
>are encouraged to interrogate<BR>>what has been said, submitting
>it to scrutiny using different<BR>>categories of thought or
>Brookfield’s lenses (1995).<BR>><BR>>During the seminars, we
>set up reading groups of 3 or 4 students and<BR>>students were
>given text relating to 2 or 3 education thinkers /<BR>>theorists.
>They were encouraged to read critically, analyse
>>and<BR>>synthesise their thoughts as they engaged with the
>literature. They<BR>>were then invited to share their ideas with
>the larger group.<BR>><BR>>My evidence of the extent to which I
>have influenced their thinking<BR>>in relation to the ‘education
>of social formation’ (Whitehead) can<BR>>be found in the content
>of the material relating to the lectures.<BR>>Issues of democracy
>and social justice permeate our dialogue.<BR>><BR>>I agree with
>Habermas (1979) in the sense that the expression used<BR>>must be
>sufficiently clear to be understood by others and that
>the<BR>>content of the proposition must be true, making clear the
>value<BR>>stance of the person making claims to
>knowledge.<BR>><BR>>I know that I have to do more to
>demonstrate rigour and validity of<BR>>the claims that I have
>made. But the claims that I am making
>>are<BR>>‘tentative’. I can not claim with certainty that I have
>transformed<BR>>my students’ thinking. But I can say that I have
>influenced their<BR>>learning, not through the transmission of
>propositional knowledge,<BR>>but through encouraging them to
>develop their own lenses through<BR>>which to see the social
>world.<BR>><BR>><BR>>Mohamed Moustakim<BR>>School of
>Education<BR>>Education & Employment<BR>>Room
>E218<BR>>Tel. 020 8240 4380<BR></div></html>
>>
Mohamed Moustakim
School of Education
Education & Employment
Room E218
Tel. 020 8240 4380
|
