ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme Conference 2001, Birmingham
Workshop on Working with practitioners to develop inclusive practice
The workshop was led by Mel Ainscow, Alan Dyson and Andy Howes of the Phase I Network on Understanding and Developing Inclusive Practices in Schools.
Contact: Mel Ainscow ()
Introduction
This report back is the distillation of two sessions and subsequent reflection with the presenting team. It was notable that the thinking moved on quite significantly as a result of the interactivity of the two sessions.
The two sessions were organised to comprise some initial discussion followed by three/two case studies that illustrated working with individuals, groups and larger networks within and across schools and LEAs. In essence we were looking at different forms of social learning for practitioners.
The four distilled issues were as follows
Progressing from living with messiness to working with diversity
Several planes of diversity emerged, several of which could not have been foreseen, and all of which had to be incorporated and framed by the research team. These plans of diversity included
- The range of disciplines, dispositions, skills and styles of the research teams
- The three levels of networking: the individual, the group, the larger network
- The nature and/or situation of the school The nature and/or situation of the LEA or EAZ
- The focus chosen by the school
- The different routes into school development
It was felt that, in order to be accepted and of use to practitioners, a research network genuinely needed to accommodate the messiness of the practitioner's world, at the outset, rather more than might occur with other kinds of research projects. It was then essential to apply research effort to conceptualising and theorising that world.
The research team's individual and collective capability
It was noted that for a research network the researchers needed to understand and to make use of the many different areas of knowledge and skills that best practice on the practitioner side of the network might require. This clearly broadens the meaning of multi-disciplinary beyond the normal boundaries and dichotomies. It implies that research teams may need to be more broadly based, collectively, and/or to be continuously alert to the need to add new skills.
Significant requirements identified for a research team leading a network included
- Support and mentoring skills
- Access to theories of management and change
- Boundary setting and maintenance skills
- Listening skills and mental agility
- Self-reflectiveness
Boundaries and limits
Within the research network, researchers come under pressure as a result of what they are trying to do, the context in which they are doing it, and the network design and approaches. Within the network discussed the pressure increased with proximity to schools and those within the schools. There appeared to be a need to theorise and generalise the researcher's role from an early stage in order to keep a network on track and depersonalise more difficult issues. Questions being confronted include
- When, where and how to stop trying
- How close to get to the detail of the school curriculum
- Where to position oneself in relation to pupils, teachers, managers and LEAs
- How to ensure that the pupil is not lost behind the practitioner
Scaling up and/or generalising
Two kinds of results were considered. The first was a set of results that enable others to consider setting up networks because they are found to have beneficial and cost-effective results. The second is a set of reports or artefacts: maps, stories, and the like, that help to understand and theorise social learning for teachers, schools and those that support them.
In considering this, the initial distinctions drawn between:
- research into school practices in relation to the agenda of practitioners;
- research into school practices and researchers' practice in relation to the agenda of both practitioners and reseachers; and
- research into school practices in relation to the agenda of researchers
came to have a new resonance, for it became clear that the research teams had themselves become very active reflective learners.
Jenny Shackleton