Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Lisbon, 11-14 September 2002
Network: 10 (Teacher Education Research)
Title: Collaborative dialogues between teachers and researchers – a case study
Authors: Maria Helena ARAÚJO E SÁ, Manuel Bernardo Q. CANHA, Isabel ALARCÃO
Abstract
The educational research tradition is nowadays confronted with the growing questioning about the social validity of the knowledge produced, particularly in what concerns the extent to which the new knowledge is adequate and useful to the renewed school we are aiming to build.
This perspective emphasizes the relevance of studies leading to a better understanding of the relations between researchers and teachers in the educational knowledge construction process.
Following a recently developed study, we interviewed three teachers who share the same awareness of the need to bring together research and educational action and who are trying to act accordingly in their school.
The commitment revealed towards the activities that are being implemented as well as the confidence expressed regarding new possible developments evidence the role that universities and schools may play for the creation of contexts of convergence for researchers’ and teachers’ knowledge and practice.
Introduction
Our study focuses on nowadays educational research concerns regarding the social validity of the constructed knowledge and particularly the nature of the relation established between contexts of production and contexts of use.
In the sequence of a preliminary study aiming at the evaluation of the impact on teachers’ practice of research conducted within the context of Masters’ courses at the University of Aveiro, Portugal, we developed a case study in order to understand three master-teachers’ motivations and expectations concerning a project designed to bring together research and educational action.
This project seems to be an example of collaborative and democratic educational dialogue between academic knowledge and professional knowledge identified with an emerging research paradigm which Alarcão (2001a) calls critical experientialism.
Theoretical background
The educational research tradition is nowadays confronted with the growing questioning about the social validity of the knowledge produced, particularly in what relates to the extent that the research-developed knowledge is shared by teachers and is adequate and useful to the renewed school that we are aiming to build. The awareness of this situation reveals the need to explore recent trends in research paradigms. Quoting Tavares & Alarcão: “The emerging society, in its passage into the new millennium, demands educational and research paradigms (…) which actively mobilise all of its actors” (2001: 97)[1].
Based on the typology of research paradigms proposed by Guba & Lincoln (1994) Alarcão (2001a) adds two dimensions of analysis[2]: teleological (relating to the use of research) and dialogical (relating to the dissemination of research). She then defines the features of an emerging paradigm, which she called “critical experientialism".
The following table characterises this emerging paradigm (idem: 141):
1. Critical experientialism
Questions
¯ / Critical Experientialism
Ontological / . re-alignment (organic conceptualisation) of reality
. recognition of immaterial dimensions
Epistemological / . transactional and subjective
. aiming at comprehension of interactions between whole and contributing parts
Methodological / . lived
. critical
. interpretative and meta-analytical
. human-mediated
Teleological / . comprehension of deep structure (perception of cohesion interactions)
. identification of meaningful connections and configurations
Dialogical
(Researcher®Teacher) / . non-standard text; use of multiple forms of human expression and multimedia
Dialogical
(Teacher ® Researcher) / . Inquiring
. Knowledge co-construction
According to the author, such paradigm is characterised by the presence of the ecology of the human element, thus assuming the experiential character of the construction of educational knowledge as a collaborative process that involves researchers and teachers.
This new research perspective, still scarcely explored, emphasizes the importance of developing studies leading to a better understanding of the relations between researchers and teachers in the educational knowledge construction process (cf. Araújo e Sá, 2002; Canha, 2001; Canha & Alarcão, 2002; Vieira, 2002).
A preliminary study
With the purpose of reaching a higher level of understanding of relations between scientific didactical knowledge and professional knowledge, we have recently developed a study, which tries to assess the impact of the latest editions (1998-2000) of Masters’ courses in Education at the University of Aveiro[3], Portugal (cf. Araújo e Sá, Costa, Canha & Alarcão, in print). We consider that masters’ courses, because of their evident research component, may be regarded as privileged meeting spaces for researchers and teaching professionals. Following a methodological decision, we focussed the empirical study on the enquired subjects’ representations. The subjects were the teachers who had completed their master’s degree.
The analysis of data collected from responses to a questionnaire applied to these master-teachers (N= 28) revealed a high degree of impact on these subjects’ professional development (for example, on their capacities to reflect upon practice and to conduct educational research). However, they also showed that this experience was limited to the professionals that lived it and was not shared in the schools where they work. In fact, very few subjects have planned the evaluation of the impact of their research on other professionals’ practice and they show difficulties in presenting suggestions to favour that impact. In short, the subjects’ initiatives to share the research-developed knowledge with their peers weren’t conceived within a systematic frame of dissemination/evaluation.
In spite of this, the study led us to the identification of a group of three master-teachers working at the same school who shared the same awareness of the need to bring together research and educational action. These three teachers are women, aged between 35 and 45, with a wide professional experience within languages education (mother tongue as well as foreign language), and sharing a large collaborative experience with the university due to their role as teacher training supervisors. Their responses to our questionnaire emphasised the pertinence of establishing closer institutional links between the university and their professional contexts, namely by developing specific devices to monitor and assess follow-up projects as an extension of the conducted research.
The case study
The close relation between the three master-teachers mentioned in the conclusion of the previous section and the university (determined by the mentioned collaboration as teachers training supervisors and as post-graduated students) led us to know that, at present, they are acting consistently with the revealed awareness in their professional context. Their intention is to create conditions towards a reflective school that Alarcão talks about: “A school that looks at itself and evaluates its educational project is a learning organisation that qualifies not only those that learn but also those that teach” (2001a: 15)[4]. This intention has developed into a project named “School and University: dialogues between didactic knowledges”[5] whose general purpose is the creation of interaction and exchange moments that favour collective professional and institutional improvement. The introductory text of the project reads: “We believe that these two fields (academic and professional discourses) are complementary and that their effective approximation is desirable. This approximation exists specially within the individual sphere. Actually, there are few indicators that schools, as curricular decision-makers, establish fruitful dialogues with the research discourse.” In other words, their goal is the promotion of dialogue between school and university as institutions, between scientific didactical knowledge and professional practice, between researchers and teachers, and among peers as well.
More specifically, as language teachers they intend, with this particular project, to favour the awareness of the transversal relation among knowledge areas, namely among languages, aiming to strengthen the position of those that defend that mother tongue and foreign languages teachers should work together in the same curricular department. It is important to notice, in this context, that a new school organisational model is being implemented in Portugal since 1999. Such model favours the creation of curricular departments that gather curricular subjects in an interdisciplinary logic, rather than the maintenance of an organisational structure that privileges the separation of school subjects.
The project was planned for the year 2001/2002 and is being developed at the secondary school where these three teachers work. It consists of the organisation of seven working sessions during which seven studies in Didactics addressed at the teachers of the different languages were presented and discussed. These studies have been developed within the context of the masters’ course and they refer to Portuguese as a mother tongue and foreign languages education. The reasons for the selection of these studies are as follows: the leaders of the project developed three post-graduation research studies; other three were considered pertinent for the understanding of the interdisciplinary nature of languages education. The remaining one, which was the first to be presented centred on the relations between theory and practice in Didactics and among the subjects that construct theoretical and practical knowledge, observing relations between academic and professional contexts.
Aiming at a deeper understanding of these teachers’ motivations and expectations, as well as of their specific intervention goals, we initiated a case study and conducted with them a semi-structured group interview (Seliger & Shohamy, 1987). This interview was recorded, transcribed and object of a content analysis based on the identification of eight categories emerging from the questions addressed to the subjects[6]:
1. Reasons that led to the project conception.
2. Authors’ personal motivations to become involved in this project’s design.
3. Participants and their roles.
4. Project’s aims.
5. Authors’ initial expectations
5.1. concerning the school board’s receptivity to the project;
5.2. concerning the teachers’ receptivity to the project.
6. Perception of the school’s receptivity at the moment.
7. Possibility of changes regarding authors’ initial expectations.
8. Predicted extensions of the project.
As far as the reasons that motivated the conception of the project are concerned, the master teachers emphasised the personal and professional development experienced during the masters’ course. They referred specifically to the development of a new vision regarding school and the change that occurred in their understanding of the teacher’s role: “I now see the teacher as a much more intervening agent within the school context.” They also pointed out the urgent need to promote collaborative work among teachers of related knowledge areas, particularly languages teachers, thus emphasising the pertinence of a Languages and Literature Curricular Department (LLCD). Another relevant motivation arose from the enthusiasm revealed by their peers who attended the public presentations of the master theses, which gave way to the authors’ will to share the knowledge constructed during the course with other teachers at school. Finally, the fact that the three work at the same school gave them a sense of power and capacity to act.
Two motivations to become involved in the project were clearly identified by these master teachers: to contribute to the questioning of their peers’ vision of languages and languages education that tend to see them as separate subjects; to contribute to their peers’ motivation to become involved in educational research.
Together with the three master teachers that designed the project, the participants are the members of the LLCD and the researchers that presented their projects and outcomes during working sessions. One of the latter, the author of the session on the relations between theory and practice in Didactics, is also the researcher and observer of the project and his aim is understanding how a project of this nature may contribute to narrow the relations between academic and professional discourses. His role is to research and observe the construction of professional didactic knowledge and its relation with academic didactic knowledge. But in the authors’ own words, this researcher is seen as a catalyser and his presence, because of his proximity with the academic context, gives them a sense of higher methodological rigour.
The leaders point out three aims for their project as follows: to encourage the dialogue between the knowledge constructed during the master’s course and school practice; to increase cohesion among the members of LLCD; to stimulate the languages teachers’ awareness of the interdisciplinary nature of knowledge leading to the promotion of the pupils’ plurilingual competence. In the subjects’ words “If the department is a multiple bowed boat [reference to the different languages represented at school] and if each bow tries to sail different seas we will arrive to no port.”
When enquired about their initial expectations, the authors told us that, at first, they had no definite expectations towards the school board’s receptivity regarding the project because they had not considered the possibility of their interference. As far as their peers are concerned, the subjects expected resistance from the group of teachers of Portuguese and French and openness from the teachers of English and German. These different expectations seem to be related to the traditional images of these professional groups that tend to regard the teachers of Portuguese and French as conservative and resistant to change whereas the teachers of English and German are considered more dynamic and innovative.
At the time the interview was conducted (see footnote 6), the subjects expressed surprise concerning the very positive reaction from the school board that created the necessary conditions for the teachers to attend the sessions without service constraints. Moreover, they were very pleased to acknowledge the will to participate in the first session expressed by teachers of subjects other than languages, and that therefore, had not been initially considered as potential participants. This interest may be explained by the nature of the problematic in focus during this session.
The three subjects do not share identical views about the public’s acceptance of the project. In fact, one of them has a more pessimistic perspective while the other two reveal satisfaction towards their peers’ reactions: “Personally, what I expected to happen is happening. The teachers are responding positively.”
The first subject explains her more pessimistic perception by the decrease in the number of participants observed between the two first sessions and by the lack of the participants’ suggestions for further activities based on the attended sessions: “I don’t see a sparkle. We expected voluntary initiative from the teachers, things they’d like to do. I don’t see anyone who’s willing. I see that everyone is very receptive to the presentations but afterwards…” The two more optimistic subjects disagree with the former. They justify the facts pointed out with the pressure felt by the teachers when the the term is coming ti its close, the topic of each session and the fact that the project was still at the beginning. Therefore, it was too early for any initiatives from the participants to arise.