Form Of Practitioner Research Research Articles

Inclusivity and sustainability in language practitioner researcher development: A sociocultural ecological framework

Transformative practitioner research enables teachers to create or contribute to their own knowledge base. Recently, this research field has flourished, with numerous studies exploring how practitioner researchers develop knowledge, agency and identities, particularly through action research (AR) and exploratory practice (EP). Despite important work on the content or outcomes of language practitioner researcher development (LPRD), there is less conceptualization of how LPRD is manifested in relation to environments where language practitioners work. In this contribution to the special issue on inclusive practitioner research, we draw on sociocultural and ecological systems theories to present a framework for understanding what enables LPRD to flourish in terms of sustainability and inclusivity. Our framework considers how sustainability through inclusion can be achieved within micro, meso and macro ecological systems, and how these systems interrelate. We exemplify our framework using illustrations of individual teachers and their interactions with a specific AR program and their institutions. While we focus on AR, this framework may apply to EP and other forms of practitioner research which strive for inclusive LPRD. We conclude with practical implications for teacher educators and professional development coordinators about fostering inclusive LPRD within institutional environments.

Long-term effects of exploratory practice on language learners

Practitioner research plays a crucial role in education because of its applied nature and its ability to address pertinent issues within learning and teaching contexts. Exploratory practice (EP) is a form of practitioner research that emphasizes puzzles while striving to understand and improve students’ and teachers’ quality of life in the language classroom. Our puzzlement as EP practitioners began to take shape as we received a variety of feedback – both positive and negative – on our EP-infused lessons from our past students. Therefore, we started to ponder the enduring repercussions of an EP experience on participants’ subsequent learning and quality of life, extending beyond the immediate effects observed during EP. In the spring semester of 2022, 43 students enrolled in two courses on English for academic purposes (EAP) at two different Japanese universities participated in a 15-week EP endeavor. Six months after the course finished, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 students in order to systematically explore and discover how the EP endeavor affected them in the long-term. Findings revealed that the EP experience had lasting effects on the students’ affordance in three areas: linguistically, intrapersonally, and interpersonally. The article concludes by addressing the practical implications for EP practitioners, specifically focusing on inclusivity and sustainability.

De-mystifying the nimbus of research: re-igniting practitioners' interest in exploring EAP

Engagement in research is recognised as a transformative force for professional development in EAP. Consequently, for many EAP practitioners research and/or scholarship have been added as contractual requirements. However, many EAP professionals desist from engaging in this, as they wonder how to fit it into their workload. In this paper I consider a form of practitioner research, Exploratory Practice, which integrates research and pedagogy in sustainable investigations into practice. I discuss ways in which different EAP practitioners, in a range of international contexts, explore puzzles relevant to their professional development, and disseminate their understandings. Drawing on published studies and vignettes from EAP practitioners enacting Exploratory Practice, I examine the ways in which these activities dispel the nimbus surrounding traditional views of research. This includes conducting robust investigations, and providing multimodal presentations in the supportive atmosphere of BALEAP PIMs and Conferences. In doing so, practitioners enhance their understandings of pedagogy and contribute to the field as equally-valued theorisers, and meaning-makers in EAP.

Evolving understandings of practitioner action research from the inside

ABSTRACT Action research has been advanced as one way that second language (L2) teachers might raise their awareness of the complexities of their work. Yet, while the publication of action research into L2 learning and teaching has gained some traction in recent years, reports naturally tend to focus on research outcomes. In the current article, I argue that in order to provide further momentum to the spread of action research in language teaching, stories of teachers proactively doing action research are necessary, not purely a focus on the results of research. This article draws on my personal experiences as a teacher of English as a foreign language (EFL) in higher education in Japan who has also been conducting action research voluntarily. In a narrative fashion, the article weaves my personal experiences, insights, and professional identity shifts with references to research theory – a perspective on action research ‘from the inside’, so to speak. The paper provides brief overviews of key projects in which I have participated, working to explore my evolving conceptualization as I have encountered both benefits and pitfalls of action research. In doing so, I also relate my understandings of action research to other forms of practitioner research.

Co-production and multimodality: learners as co-researchers exploring practice

ABSTRACT In recent decades, three forms of practitioner research have emerged: Reflective Practice, Action Research, and Exploratory Practice. While Reflective Practice and Action Research focus on teachers-as-researchers, Exploratory Practice positions learners as co-researchers, alongside teachers, teacher educators, and others. This article adds to those which examine the notion of learners co-producing research by exploring the potential of multimodal methods for data generation and analysis; it does this by critically analysing posters produced by learners as they puzzled, explored, collaborated, and disseminated their developing understandings on a pre-sessional English for Academic Purposes course in the UK. Focusing particularly on these ‘sticky objects’, to which emotions and beliefs attach, I argue that learners, like teachers, can ask robust questions, engage in creative investigative practices, integrating research and pedagogy. I posit that learners can develop profound insights into their practice which contribute to theory-building more broadly. This ‘fully inclusive’ notion of co-produced research challenges traditional assumptions about who does what in research and pedagogy, indicating an ethical imperative for learners to be included as co-investigators contributing their understandings to developments in theory and practice.

Collaborative Practitioner Research: A Case of Lesson Study in a Small Jewish School

ABSTRACTLesson study is a form of professional development where a group of teachers identifies a problem of practice on which they would like to make progress in their teaching. Over an extended period of time, the teachers study the topic and plan a lesson together. One member then teaches the lesson while the others observe; the group reflects afterwards on student learning. The cycle repeats, building teachers’ professional knowledge and their shared views of pedagogy over time. In this article, we argue that lesson study is a collaborative form of practitioner research and we show how this is so by sharing an example of a lesson study cycle conducted in a synagogue school.

Aristotle’s gnoseology and understanding ‘understanding’ in practitioner research

ABSTRACTThis article offers a conceptual and analytical framework for understanding the ‘understandings’ generated through practitioner research, and specifically exploratory practice (EP), based on Aristotle’s philosophy of knowledge. Drawing on Olav Eikeland’s interpretation of Aristotle’s philosophy of knowledge as a gnoseology, it illustrates how a gnoseology framework adapted from Eikeland’s work was used to analyse the different types of understanding generated through the processes and products of practitioner research. Specifically, it looks at the understandings developed in an English for Academic Purposes class as the learners explored their own puzzles about language learning using the principles of EP, a form of practitioner research mainly used in language teaching. Focusing on one of the learners in the class, it traces his developing gnoseology across the 10-week course by analysing the naturalistically generated classroom artefacts produced through the EP process. It then shows how the different understandings developed reflect an interrelated and relational view of knowledge and concludes by suggesting that such a gnoseology framework might provide a valuable conceptual and analytical tool for understanding the relationship between different forms and ways of knowing in practitioner research.

Sustaining a Continuous Improvement Culture in Educator Preparation: A Higher Education Network Based on Data Wise

Educator preparation programs across the U.S. are grappling with the best way to respond to new state policies requiring they use data to demonstrate and accelerate improvement in program outcomes. Supported by a grant from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the educator preparation program at Endicott College integrated the Data Wise Improvement Process into its practice. Not only did the Data Wise work help improve student outcomes by engaging the Endicott team in a form of practitioner research, but it also led to the creation of a network of educator preparation programs that, since 2015, has used Data Wise in an annual cycle of continuous improvement. This article includes recommendations for other educator preparation programs looking to integrate a sustainable improvement process based on the tenets of practitioner research, as well as suggestions for forming networks of continuous improvement across preparation programs in a state or region. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for research and policy.

Articulating practice through Provenance

Professional practice literature acknowledges the value for practitioners inquiring into and critically reflecting on their professional practice . This approach to professional practice inquiry, initiated and undertaken by the professionals themselves, has been labelled ‘practitioner research’ in educational literature and ‘first-person action research’ in research literature. The approach can also be seen as a response to Davide Nicolini’s call for broader than ethnographic methodologies within the ‘practice-turn’.The paradigm dialogue’s people-centred inquiry approach generated multiple alternative investigative methodologies to the scientific method, an approach which until that time had dominated research practices. Several of the alternate approaches were relevant for professional practice investigation. The propositions within this paper are contextualised within one of the posited alternate methodologies, ‘practice-led inquiry’ , distinguished from other forms of practitioner research by its starting or initiating point within the inquirer’s own practice. This defining feature is problematic for some practitioners who have difficulty describing their practice, and specifically describing it in ways that open the practices to interrogation and inquiry and generate new knowledge and theory.This paper posits Provenance as a strategy/process within practice-led inquiry to enable practitioners to recognise knowledge about practice arising from their own experiences and utilise that in their theory building. The term Provenance describes the history and ownership of a given artefact, and the artisans who have informed its making. We discuss professional’s utilisation of Provenance’s within practice-led inquiry to identify origins of their practice through nominating critical incidents and literature that have informed development of their practice . Provenance thus creates a starting point and scaffold for practice-led inquiry, enabling a professional to interrogate their practice to build meaning about how a given professional practice can be understood and undertaken. This stands to contribute to the growing discourse about professional practice. Provenance can also support extended inquiry into a practice by scaffolding solicitation of other professional stories about a given professional practice.Provenance resonates with action inquiry, both in iterative cycles of action and reflection and in the use of ‘first-person action inquiry’ . It allows professionals to connect back and identify turning points in their own professional development. It affirms the practitioner/inquirer’s own understanding and knowledge of their practice. The narrative that evolves from initial consideration of critical events, and sometimes literature that have informed development of professional practice, can be repeatedly revisited to remember, reflect and change more and more detail, generating new knowledge about the practice.

Pearl Jephcott: girls’ club worker

ABSTRACTPearl Jephcott (1900–1980) between 1922 and 1946 was by turns a volunteer girls’ club worker, Organising Secretary for the Birmingham Union of Girls’ Clubs, the occupant of a similar post in County Durham and finally the Publications Officer for the National Association of Girls’ Clubs. During most of that period she combined girls’ club work with helping to pioneer new forms of practitioner research. The article examines her contribution to both these fields during this period.

Forms of Practitioner Research

The aim of this paper is to draw on evidence to identify distinctions within those forms of research which are to significant degrees practitioner engaged. The research review on which this is based took place in the fields of health, social care and social work. We suggest there are different forms of practitioner research, and that using a blanket term for all instances of such inquiry may confuse rather than enlighten. Drawing from the data we characterize these as ‘practitioner-led’ and ‘academic partnership’ research. We set out a range of distinctions with regard to the occupational roles of researchers, research relationships, writing relationships, the focus of the research questions and problems, research methodology, the extent to which benefits and utilisation are addressed, and the writing ‘voice’ in published outputs. We conclude that the policy and practice implications ought not to be cast in stone through any regulatory framework, but should be seen as implying a flexible and enabling reference point. Practitioner research should not be petrified in ways that suit the dominant identity of this or that professional community.

Good Practice in the Conduct and Reporting of Practitioner Research: Reflections from Social Work And Social Care

This paper examines two distinct forms of practitioner research and makes tentative suggestions around what may constitute good practice in their conduct and reporting, and for the genre of practitioner research as a whole. We also explore their potential benefits and limitations within the wider set of research approaches. Discussion is informed primarily by an earlier review of practitioner research in adult social care and supplemented by knowledge and experience of wider activities related to practitioner research. Discussion is organised in three parts. First, we explore what are generic good practices around all forms of practitioner research. Second, we move to identify particular forms of good practice within what we call Type 1 and Type 2 practitioner research, situating them alongside a practitioner research matrix of stakeholder benefits. Third, we consider the implications of such discussion for how we best stimulate these types of practitioner research.

‘We are the change that we seek’: developing teachers’ understanding of their classroom practice

This paper describes an innovative approach to continuous professional development using Exploratory Practice (EP), a form of practitioner research developed in second language teacher education and professional development. One of the goals of EP is to empower teachers, so that they can develop a better understanding of their classroom environment, and from this, devise strategies for enhancing learning opportunities for students. It draws on a framework of Critical Learning Episodes (CLE) as a tool to enable them to investigate their practices in classroom interaction. This approach has guided a group of university teachers to understand their classroom practice which has, as a result, led to novel insights by the teachers, improved learning opportunities for students and a better quality of life for all in the classroom.

NARRATIVE RESEARCH INTO EROTIC COUNTER‐TRANSFERENCE IN A FEMALE THERAPIST–MALE PATIENT ENCOUNTER

This paper presents an example of practitioner research, using Hollway and Jefferson's (2000) Free Association Narrative Method. It examines a trainee psychotherapist's experience of erotic counter‐transference. The methodology associated with narrative method and the possibility of using it as a form of practitioner research are explored. Then follows a literature review regarding erotic counter‐transference. Subsequently, a case history is presented as the research material and its core episode is analysed. The research outcome provides a form of ‘practice‐based evidence’. The paper concludes by reflecting on whether the narrative method has a place as a form of practitioner research in psychotherapy, in view of the experience of this particular study.

Theoretical Resource

This paper makes a contribution to the theory and practice of educational action research by introducing two theoretical and methodological resources as part of a personal review of sustained professional experience: ‘appreciative inquiry’ and the ‘enneagram’. It is more than a theoretical exercise, however, because it also constitutes an action‐oriented reflection on the transitional nature of the author’s professional situation, moving from work as a school‐based primary school teacher and head teacher to work as a consultant. It is thus a distillation of past experience and a vision of how professional learning might be supported in the future. In the first part, appreciative inquiry is introduced as an associated form of action research methodology that follows four successive stages of discovery, dream, design and destiny around an affirmative topic choice. The author then explains his choice of the enneagram as a useful life‐affirming tool for self‐understanding in personal and professional development and how it might be used to stimulate reflexive awareness of the inner work of teaching. Thirdly, in the discovery stage, the author uses the enneagram to engage in a sequence of nine short mediations that seek to appreciate the positive core of teaching from the inside and celebrate the intimate experience of teaching according to nine distinct modes of consciousness. Fourthly, the author builds on the range of teaching strengths revealed by the enneagram by engaging in the dream stage of appreciative inquiry that evokes an imaginative envisioning of the kind of reflective practice the world is calling for from teachers. Finally, the author concludes by looking ahead to the design and destiny stages, reflecting on the need to explore the implications of the inquiry for systematic forms of practitioner research and appropriate kinds of tutorial support for professional learning.

Adult Learning and the Generation of New Knowledge and Meaning: Creating Liberating Spaces for Fostering Adult Learning through Practitioner-Based Collaborative Action Inquiry

Practitioner research is a topic of growing interest and scholarly writing in the field of education in general and adult education in particular. This article describes a particular form of practitioner research that rests on a participatory worldview and draws heavily from theory and practice in adult learning and action research. Practitioner-based collaborative action inquiry strives to create social space in organizations and other social institutions for generative learning. It is argued that this form of adult education practice is critical in the implementation of emergent forms of knowledge creation and meaning making that have been described as Mode 2 knowledge creation. A robust example of this form of inquiry and the role of adult-learning theory and practice in facilitating it is described in detail as a practice-based example.

Adult Learning and the Generation of New Knowledge and Meaning: Creating Liberating Spaces for Fostering Adult Learning through Practitioner-Based Collaborative Action Inquiry

Practitioner research is a topic of growing interest and scholarly writing in the field of education in general and adult education in particular. This article describes a particular form of practitioner research that rests on a participatory worldview and draws heavily from theory and practice in adult learning and action research. Practitioner-based collaborative action inquiry strives to create social space in organizations and other social institutions for generative learning. It is argued that this form of adult education practice is critical in the implementation of emergent forms of knowledge creation and meaning making that have been described as Mode 2 knowledge creation. A robust example of this form of inquiry and the role of adult-learning theory and practice in facilitating it is described in detail as a practice-based example.

Exploratory Practice: rethinking practitioner research in language teaching

This paper is an introduction to the rest of this Special Issue of Language Teaching Research devoted entirely to Exploratory Practice (EP), a form of practitioner research. It is also an introduction to EP itself, telling the story of the development of its practices and its principles over the last ten or so years. Readers already familiar with EP may wish to go directly to the other seven papers in this issue, for illustrations of EP in practice, for research about EP, and for a more thorough review of the relevant research literature (see especially the papers by Miller and by Perpignan). The case for EP presented below is based on a perceived need for practitioner research to be rethought: to be refocused on understanding, and ultimately on a concern for the quality of life in the language classroom, for both teachers and learners. The paper includes, in Section VII, a brief introduction to the other papers in this volume.

The Pragmatics of Practitioner Research: Linking New Knowledge with Power in an Urban Elementary School

Various forms of practitioner research have received increased attention for their potential to improve schools, but few empirical studies have focused on the social circumstances of projects and schools that make this potential easier or harder to realize. As one step in this direction, I report here on a multiyear field study of Taking Stock, a practitioner research project that combined elements of teacher research and collaborative action research at an urban elementary school. Evidence generated through this field study supports 3 related propositions: First, practitioner research can provide a relatively straightforward way for school members to develop new knowledge. Second, opportunities for school members to use new knowledge to improve school practice are shaped profoundly by the distribution of power and influence within schools themselves. And third, projects of disciplined inquiry can create discontinuities in how knowledge is organized and distributed among practitioners, even for inquiries undertaken by practitioners themselves. To acknowledge these propositions, conceptions of the research-practice relationship within individual schools need to attend more closely to mediating relationships between research and knoweldge, knowledge and power, and power and practice.