BERA Annual Conference 6 Sept 2007-07-22 Institute of Education, University of London
Teacher Voices: Researching Professional Dialogue BERA SIG: Teacher Education and Development
Title: Theorising Teacher Education and Development: Critical Pedagogies and Teacher Identities
Teacher Voices:Researching Professional Dialogue
Dr Roz Sunley
University of Winchester
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Institute of Education, University of London, 5-8 September 2007
BERA SIG: Teacher Education and Development
Theorising Teacher Education and Development: Critical Pedagogies and Teacher Identities
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BERA Annual Conference 6 Sept 2007-07-22 Institute of Education, University of London
Teacher Voices: Researching Professional Dialogue BERA SIG: Teacher Education and Development
Title: Theorising Teacher Education and Development: Critical Pedagogies and Teacher Identities
Introduction
Teachers in state secondary schools in England are required to provide students with opportunities for spiritual development. However centralised pressure to achieve measurable outcomes marginalises the more intangible aspects of the curriculum or student learning(Atkinson 2004). Given the perceived gap between external expectations and teachers’ response to spiritual growth, it raises the question about whether teachers are being asked to do something for which they have no professional preparation, or even personal commitment? Has the dominant culture of accountability placed discussion of spirituality on the margins, or has the spiritual dimension itself become marginalised in education? Little attention has been paid to teachers’ understanding or interpretation of this sphere, and their voice has been largely ignored in the continuing debate.
In an increasingly secular world, reference to “the spiritual” can no longer be considered analogous with any clearly defined religious tradition, so its meaning remains vague and ambiguous. Indeed it is often considered to be a more mystical set of thoughts and feelings unattached to any religious belief systems. The wealth of interdisciplinary journals, papers, conferences and books however testifies to the ongoing interest in the discourse of spirituality and spiritual education. (Davie 1994, Wright 2000, Gollnick 2003, West-Burnham 2004, Heelas & Woodhead 2005).
The purpose of this study was to explore whether teachers name and frame elements of this dimension from their own “professional knowing” (Schon 1987, p69). Using elements from a relational model of spirituality, combined with Kelly’s personal construct theory, my doctoral study explored how teachers construe their own lives as private and professional human beings.
The theoretical framework was derived from a synthesis of literary, theoretical, pedagogical and philosophical sources that could include the possible range of teachers’ existential meanings. This study required a framework that honoured both the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ voices and experiences of teachers as whole people, rather than attending to different aspects of teachers’ lives in fragmented ways. Starting with Freire’s contention that it is our ‘ontological vocation to become more fully human’ (Freire 1996, p55), led to a review of conceptual thinking across many different disciplines.
The findings highlight an under-researched area of contemporary teacher work and life space, and shed new light on the spirituality of teachers, and the impact and relevance of this on their professional lives and teaching. This study showed the relational model to be a robust research tool for examining the personal and professional lives of teachers, as it not only provided a stimulus for discussion, but also conceptual space for dialogue.
The key findings suggest that relationships lie at the core of teachers’ lives, not only the relationships that encompass students, colleagues, family and friends, but also the relationship between different aspects of their whole lives. Evidence shows that in the current educational climate, teachers have little time for conversation beyond the instrumental requirements of the system. Those individuals who develop the confidence and vision to synthesise unconventional, improvisatory and highly personal ingredients that reflect their own integrity and identity can move beyond the mere pedagogical skills required for teaching and become a teacher as a person-in-profession.
A particular focus of this paper is the extent to which the results obtained in this study have been used to illuminate course design in a new teacher education programme. The paper will explore the opportunities and limits of this educational study, and highlight the tension between the results of this innovative research methodology and the rigidity of the ‘system’.
Theoretical perspectives and questions behind the study
This study attempted to critically explore the social reality of teachers, echoing previous work by Hay and Nye who attempted to find a theoretical framework for understanding how young children express their spirituality (Hay and Nye 1998).
From the outset two keys issues arose:
- How to devise a theoretical framework in which to consider the breadth of teachers’ existential meanings and the contemporary educational context in which they work
- How to discuss the spiritual dimension in education when no consensus about what it means currently exists?
This study needed a framework that honoured both the contours and inscape of human experience, to enable an exploration of the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ voices and experiences of teachers as whole people, rather than attending to different aspects of teachers lives in fragmented ways in what Jaros calls our “post-mechanical age”(Jaros 2005).
The philosophical perspectives for this study were therefore diverse, and include elements of existentialism, critical theory, and social constructionism, which together create a supporting philosophy which underpins a relational model of spirituality. This study resonates with Nietzsche’s comment “every great system of philosophy is a spiritual autobiography”.
Having established the supporting theoretical framework for this study, the next question was how to frame the aims and objectives that would characterise this research. The design of this research was shaped to avoid some of the inherent problems in approaching the research explicitly, and prescribing another formula for the development of spiritual education, rather than engaging in dialogical action. I wanted to find a way of undertaking research that would “demonstrate a holistic view of the teacher as person rather than teacher as segmented object, to bridge the descriptive-prescriptive divide” (Day, Pope & Denicolo 1990, p2).
Aldridge (2000) contends that in a postmodern world, reality is a complex of different voices, all of which are justified, and humans have to make their own sense and act according to their individual beliefs and values. Plato remarked that when the mind is thinking, it is talking to itself. To be able to name and sustain one’s own reality implies a voice, and, on occasion, the need for an audience, to listen to such reflections, as we do not always know what we believe until we hear ourselves say it aloud. This study encouraged both ‘thinking aloud’ and ‘thinking allowed’.
Research Design and Methodology
Using elements from a relational model of spirituality, and Kelly’s (1955) repertory grid as a research instrument, sixty secondary teachers participated in a study that was designed to elicit the often latent understanding that teachers have about their personal and professional lives. Following an initial pilot study with four PGCE students that highlighted the problems of exploring the spiritual dimension of human experience via semi-structured interviews, a Kellian approach provided a framework within which to explore this domain.
Framework for discussion
Usher reminds researchers that “we all have an individual trajectory which shapes the research we do, the questions we ask, and the way we do it” (Usher 1996, p32). In offering teachers an opportunity to share their authentic thinking, it was important that these conversations were unconstrained, but that the conditions for dialogue provided shape and form to hold emerging ideas. During previous work in schools, in supporting teachers in ‘spiritual development’ for themselves and their students, it became clear that there were several themes which proved meaningful in practice for teachers as they began to conceptualise this domain.
As the research developed, this pattern of ideas became identified as a relational model of spirituality which is premised on the idea that what it means to be human incorporates five key areas of being (ontology), knowing (epistemology), doing (volition) and relating (but which also embraces mystery or not knowing), with a spiritual dynamic providing the interconnection between the different dimensions. See Appendix 1
The model is relational in several ways. None of the key areas can be fragmented from the whole, as they all merge and weave in continuous participation in human experience. The image it presents is complete in itself at the moment of reflection, but is forever in the process of becoming. It is also interpersonal in offering a way to understand the intentions and needs of other. This approach incorporates the spiritual into a rational model which provided a framework for placing what teachers said about different aspects of their lives.
The research strategy
The major tasks of this study related to exploring, understanding and changing current perceptions about the spiritual dimension of human experience which Blaikie (2000) contends are all core elements in an abductive research strategy, and that abduction is a creative, iterative process. As the spiritual dimension in secondary education is a little explored area, it was likely that anything discovered early in the research would stimulate questions that could not be foreseen at the outset, which would require further development and enquiry.
Sampling
There are inherent practical problems in finding suitable volunteers who might be considered to be broadly representative of the wider teaching population in state secondary education. It was hoped to include a diversity of age, gender, subject specialism and years of experience, but this was by no means “sampling representationally” (Mason 2002, p125).
Kelly - Personal Construct Theory and Repertory Grid Technique
In looking for a suitable methodology, repertory grid technique, devised by Kelly in 1955 seemed to offer an apposite way of exploring the implicitly held views of teachers, which are reflected in their professional practice. This approach facilitates the collection of both qualitative and quantitative data, in the form of transcripts and repertory grids.
Kelly proposed that people develop dimensions of meaning, or personal constructs, with which they anticipate how events, and other people, will behave. Grainger argues
“whether we perceive ourselves as religious or not, our personal construct systems organise themselves with reference to a specific function of being human that permits us to find ways of answering questions about fundamental values, transcendent reality; or indeed whether to concern ourselves with asking it in the first place” (Grainger 2003, p53).
As “Personal Construct Theory treats people as actors” (Fransella 1995, p54), rather than reducing them to spectators of objects of study, this approach honoured the integrity of participants, which resonated with the underlying model upon which the work is premised.
Conversation and personal constructs
Participants were asked to share their responses to twenty ideas contained on individual cards, each of which contained one of the elements from the relational model of spirituality. It was emphasised they were free to develop any aspect or point they wished to make. They were then asked to group the cards based on some connection that had meaning for them, and then discuss these connections.
Conversations were continually summarised as part of the process, until participants reached a word or phrase – the personal construct - that encapsulated the connection they made in each group. Each emerging construct and its bi-polar construct were recorded. . Participants were also asked to comment on the exercise itself, before arrangements were made for a further meeting for the completion of the repertory grid.
Repertory grid
Qualitative data was collected in the form of transcripts from recorded conversations. Each transcript included phrases containing personal constructs. The exact wording of personal constructs was checked for accuracy by each participant, at follow up meetings, when they completed their repertory grids. Participants were invited to rate their personal constructs on a scale of 1-7 in order to provide repertory grid information from which the principal components underlying participants’ constructs could be elicited.
Choosing Kelly as an approach
One of the advantages of using this research tool is that that quantitative and qualitative data can be flexibly sorted and analysed in a variety of ways. Another attraction of using Kelly’s research methodology is that, unlike other psychological approaches that fragment aspects of human experience, personal construct theory focuses on people as whole persons, engaged in a continual process of change and meaning making in their world of lived experience. It was important that the research method not only respected and valued participants’ unique biographies, but that the process itself modelled a valuable opportunity to reflect on their lives, which is part of the underlying thinking behind this study.
Consideration of the intellectual, ethical, political and value principles and challenges of this research
Although participation in this research was entirely voluntary, there are intellectual and ethical implications about voluntary, informed consent in asking teachers to participate in rather vague and unspecified research, which will, nevertheless, inquire into their personal and profession lives (Mason 2002, Punch 1998, Bera 2003).The intentional whole approach, which Mason terms a “psychoanalytic approach – a Gestalt”, deliberately seeks “access to the inner and unconscious subject” (Mason 2002, p58
While there are inherent issues with this approach, conversation can equally prove to be very helpful in assisting personal decision making, rather than stimulating further anxiety. Although this method claims to be non-positivistic (Hall & Hall 1988), it is still possible for the researcher to ignore the nuances of meaning in constructs. Consistency in the pattern of interpretation is essential if any discussion of different possible interpretation is to be undertaken.
Findings from the data
Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches
A combination of approaches was used because, as Punch argues “Quantitative research readily allows the researcher to establish relationships between variables, but is often weak when it comes to exploring the reasons for those relationships. A qualitative study can be used to help explain the factors underlying the broad relationships that are established” (Punch 1998, p247).
Having collated over 700 pages of transcript, together with computer print outs of repertory grid information, it was important to find a “scholarly discipline” (Punch 1998, p200) with a transparent process, (Mason 2002) for reading the data. It required a sensitivity to the complexity of participants’ lived experience, and access to what Punch calls “the actor’s definition of the situation” (Punch 1998, p243), while at the same time doing justice to the integrity of individual stories, bearing in mind Palmer’s observation that:
“We believe that we will find shared truth by going up into big ideas, but it is only when we go down, drawing deep from the well of personal experience that we tap into the living water that supplies all our lives” (Palmer 2004, P3).
Analysing the data
The key findings from this data suggest that teachers are most concerned about relationships, not only with people, but also the relationships between different aspects of their lives. All the eight emerging themes are relational in some way. Two are about the relationship with the personal self, the other six are relationships with people and aspects of professional life. Although teachers working in different educational contexts offer slightly different perspectives on the support and constraints they feel in their professional lives, relationships with students and colleagues emerged as the most important component of all teachers’ work.
Another key concern for teachers is the relationship between their personal and professional lives, expressed in notions of congruence. Issues affecting the relationship between professional individuality and external expectations were another common feature of teacher conversations; also echoed in the disparity between educational policy and their own view of education as more than measurable outcomes. The connection between a safe learning space and good learning relationships also emerged during conversation. The preoccupation with external expectations may explain why there were few explicit references to the spiritual dimension in education, although some teachers demonstrate sensitivity to the relationship between themselves and something that transcends the material world.
Interpretation of findings
Relational model as a research tool
The relational model provided a way of investigating what matters to teachers, and a means of gaining their core constructs. It offered consistent scaffolding for conversations, without confining boundaries that might have straitjacketed teachers’ thinking about certain aspects of their lives. It allowed for a variety of interpretation and analysis, without emerging ideas becoming lost in a discord of unrelated constructs. The effectiveness of the model is best explored by reference to the quality of conversations they generated, and how encouraged teachers were to talk freely about their lives.
As a stimulus for discussion
The model had some use for everyone, but this was by no means utilised in a uniform way. For many teachers it encapsulated a way of describing and interpreting their lived experiences, eg
“I chose where the conversation went. Happy to share what I wanted” (P11)
while, for others, it proved contrary to their immediate way of thinking, and suggested an alternative way of looking at their lives, eg
“wasn’t what I expected…quite difficult…so much about me and myself and how I feel, and I don’t often talk about myself and I think I have done today” (P10)
At the end of each conversation, most teachers were asked for their views on the actual process of discussion itself generating comments such as: