March 11 12, 1999
Report on the Conference Collaborative Research for Practice
Ramona Thomas, Rebecca Barr,
Richard Halverson, Laura Synder, and Muffie Wiebe
On March 11 and 12, 1999, the Spencer Foundation, with the assistance of Judy Buchanan (Philadelphia Education Fund), Elyse Eidman-Aadahl (University of California, Berkeley), Louis Gomez (Northwestern University), and Sarah Michaels (Clark University), convened an interdisciplinary group of university and teacher researchers to consider the implications of collaborative research for practice (Attachment A includes the agenda and list of participants). The field of education can be characterized as having seemingly unbridgeable divides between theory and practice; between the knowledge, perspectives, and interests of academic researchers versus school-based practitioners; and more recently between the approaches, status, and "findings" of university-based researchers and those of a growing community of teacher researchers. For these reasons, this conference was designed to promote a more integrated research agenda that will offer clear pathways to support and improve practice based on meaningful contributions from academics and practitioners.
The primary purposes of the conference were: (1) to consider what it means to have a research agenda with practice at its center; (2) to ask how knowledge is produced in collaborations with practitioners and university-based researchers and what evidence exists to demonstrate that knowledge has indeed been produced; and (3) to discuss the implications and possibilities for a principled research agenda for and on practice-one that centrally includes the perspectives and insights of practitioners. This conference was designed to emphasize "classroom practice" in all its complexity and hence, a "case" approach was adopted. Conference participants were exposed to a set of cases of collaborative research, which created a set of shared experiences to think with and helped ground the conversation in rich particularities that could also be the source of comparison and generalization. Seven cases were selected to represent a wide range of experience, geographic location, and understandings of collaborative research. Project (or case) teams included both practitioners and academic researchers. Each case was asked to address the following in their case presentations: the history and nature of the collaboration, the main participants, the practice on which the collaboration focuses and how the work proceeds, the struggles endured to reach a particular practice, the lessons learned about what facilitates and what hinders changes in practice, the new knowledge about practice that was generated, and the forms of this new knowledge.
The format consisted of one case presentation on Thursday evening, which was followed by small group discussions and a large-group discussion with all conference participants. On Friday morning, there were three concurrent groups, each consisting of two case presentations. The afternoon discussion focused primarily on the similarities and differences between the cases, which helped draw out what was learned about successful collaborative research on practice. The seven cases that participated served as "springboards" for the discussion; thus, the task of the participants was not to evaluate or critique the projects but to think more deeply about the knowledge that emerged from each of the cases. These divergent cases served as helpful, thought-provoking examples for raising a wide range of questions concerning generalizations about or principles of sustainable collaboration and the value of collaboration on and for educational research.
Opening Case Presentation
ReNUE, Northwestern University
Louis Gomez, Greg Shrader, Judy Whitcomb, Lou-Ellen Finn, Kimberley Williams
ReNUE (Realizing New Urban Environments) is one of five projects within the Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools, which is a partnership between Northwestern University, the University of Michigan, and the Chicago and Detroit Public Schools. ReNUE is a collaboration that focuses on the design and development of project-based, middle school environmental science curriculum.
In their presentation, the team shared their view of a curriculum design process through which teachers and researchers build "common ground" from which to collaborate and promote classroom-level and systemic change. Richard Halverson, a conference participant and member of the ReNUE project, explained, "Design to us is a source of common ground. It is a place where, from a researcher's perspective, we can test theory and where there is theory behind project-based science. For teachers, we're creating curriculum that meets their standards and frameworks." The ReNUE project involved cycles of curriculum refinement within a participatory design team, which became known as "the work circle." The work circle was an environment for collaborative curriculum development where both the teachers and university researchers brought forth their concerns and contributions, discussed them, and developed a set of usable curriculum materials. The goal of the work circle was to design a curriculum that involved students and teachers in open-ended inquiry and that also made the science content and procedural knowledge explicit to both.
Some of the challenges the team faced were increasing engagement and opportunities for achievement for urban school children, creating a curriculum that was standards-based, supporting systemic educational change with the use of integrative learning technologies, and working with a participatory design model. Nevertheless, the presenters maintained that ReNUE is different from many other curriculum development projects because of its collaborative nature. Halverson noted, "this is not something designed at a university responding to a problem that a researcher found in a school. Rather working in collaboration we're building something that's useful to everybody, including the students."
Kimberley Williams, the project's ethnographer, asserted that through this collaborative effort the university researchers benefited in several ways. They increased their understanding of teachers' realities, developed their thinking about where to apply traditional teaching methods in an innovative science program, and enhanced their understanding of how to support a critical dialogue between teachers and researchers. The researchers also learned that language has tremendous power to repel or attract, as was evidenced by the teachers' negative reactions to the university researchers' jargon. Teachers gained from their participation in the project as well. For example, they developed a better understanding of project-based science, particularly the connection of thematic activities to a focus question, as opposed to basic hands-on activities. They also learned more about science content knowledge and the ways that technology can be used as a pedagogical tool to illuminate scientific information for students. Overall, Williams emphasized, the teachers felt a sense of accomplishment. Not only had they participated in the development of this curriculum from the beginning, but they were also impressed by the science and research that emanated from their use of the curriculum. The positive experience these teachers had in participating in the work circle and seeing the curriculum in use was a capacity-building experience for their process of collaborative research.
While the ReNUE team members argued for the power of "design" as a collaborative process, they also raised questions based on their own experiences. Primary among these, asserted Louis Gomez, are how to "scale up" this kind of collaboration and how to create artifacts that arrive with an understanding of negotiability. Moreover, what process other than design could lead to such negotiation in practice? After the presentation, Sarah Michaels, who also served as a "reflector" for this session, stated that she saw power in the design process. However, she also questioned what would happen when the curriculum is designed and passed on to other teachers as a finished product to be implemented in the classroom. How can the power of design work and collaboration be an ongoing aspect of curriculum implementation? She also commented about the discourse around the need for change, observing that while everyone talks about reform and change, it matters greatly who determines what is broken and what needs to be changed, as well as who guides the design and reform agenda. Moreover, how central are the perspectives of practitioners included in discussions of scalability, improvement in student learning, and accountability?
Group 1
The Algebra Project, Cambridge, MA
Delores Bolden-Stamps, Staffas Broussard, Jessie Cooper Gibbs, Merle Harris, and Maisha Moses
The Algebra Project initially began as a family-based project when founder and director Bob Moses began teaching math to his daughter (Maisha) and her friends from school. Moses became concerned about how students made the shift from arithmetic to algebra and who actually had access to algebra in the schools. He was concerned that teachers, not parents, were making these decisions, and that the decisions fell primarily along racial and socioeconomic lines. Moses also questioned how sixth-grade teachers would prepare students for algebra, which eventually led to the development of the Algebra Project's Transition Curriculum. By 1989-90, there was a national interest in the project and Moses began teaching training sessions for other teachers. As the demand for training expanded in the early 1990s, the Algebra Project began a collaborative effort with Jim Burris, a corporate trainer with 25 years of experience, to develop and implement wider scale teacher training.
Members of the Algebra Project stated that they needed to go back to the curriculum and ask, "where is the math?" A central aspect of the program is that they believe there is an academic and civic responsibility to teach children. The philosophy behind the Algebra Project is to create classrooms that are experientially and discourse based-classrooms where the teachers are facilitators who do not have all the answers and where the teachers are not necessarily the experts. Clearly, this requires a paradigm shift or cultural change for most teachers. However, Project team members insisted that the answers lie with the practitioners. They also stressed the importance of teacher readiness in their training of teachers. Algebra Project team members admitted that the typical reaction is to want to "fix" the teachers' way of teaching, but that they cannot and do not do this. Until a teacher is ready (i.e., until he/she sees a need to participate in the program) and is willing to work with the Algebra Project, team members maintained that all they can do is model and provide examples.
Teachers participating in the Algebra Project begin with an intensive 10-day training program where they receive coaching support. During the academic year, they also receive eight days of follow-up support/training at the school site (or city). Workshops are generally tailored by the teachers' request for help on specific topics or strategies. Once a month (or more), trainers or mathematicians visit the classroom and assist the teachers in the areas with which they need help. Teacher training and math content workshops are also held once a year. The Project has developed a Model of Excellence for Algebra Project teaching, which serves as a measure for conducting evaluation of and providing comments to teachers in order to help them improve their practice. There is also a group of assessment observers, trained in the Model of Excellence, who help support teachers and trainers.
There are three major expectations for Algebra Project teachers. First, they are expected to use a curriculum that challenges traditional practice; that is, one that starts with a problem in pieces, rather than well-known or well-formed problems. Second, teachers are expected to use a cooperative learning model based on consensus, so the students work as a team and arrive at consensus through discussion and debate. The teams then work to build consensus via teacher-guided discussion among the entire class. Working in teams helps students learn to cooperate and makes it easier for them to share their ideas. Third, teachers are expected to give up their power; that is, they should facilitate, allow student ideas to generate, and take advantage of opportunities in the classroom. The curriculum is specifically designed as a five-step process. Each activity is geared to move students through (1) a physical experience that is common and shared; (2) their interpretation of the experience as a story, model, or other form; (3) "people talk" or common ways of expressing the experience; (4) "feature talk," which focuses on specific aspects of the experience; and (5) symbolic representation of the problem.
After showing part of a videotape of a teacher group discussing the use of a math activity in class, one of the presenters noted that there had been no privileged voices among the teachers and researchers in the group. In these groups, the primary goals are that members communicate so that the rest of the group understands their perspective. This is critical for the group to reach a shared understanding.
Brookline Teacher Researcher Seminar, Brookline, MA
Ann Phillips, Cindy Ballenger, Roxanne Pappenheimer, and Jim Swaim
Ann Phillips explained that as an ethnographer, she is interested in what is not visible. She described her role in the Seminar as one who listens carefully, remembering what people have said both in the recent and distant past. This is important because she helps the group question their assumptions and she makes connections.
Cindy Ballenger described the origins of the project, which began when Steven Griffin, a speech pathologist in Brookline, noticed that a disproportionate amount of his caseload consisted of African American students, some of whom excelled in poetry. Griffin brought his concerns about this to Sarah Michaels and Jim Gee, who helped him examine something that looked "weird" and unfair. It raised questions such as, are we misunderstanding kids, are we seeing weaknesses where there are strengths, and are there things that we are missing? Through some initial funding, they developed a group that looked at these kinds of questions. Ballenger noted that the questions teachers in the Seminar tend to pursue come from confusion or from a puzzling child, which lead them to ask, "What is going on here" or "What counts as knowledge?" In general, the teachers' research questions grow out of their experiences.
Ballenger asserted that for the teachers, just having tape recorders in their classes has changed their practice. For example, after hearing themselves on tape, the teachers began to talk less in class. In addition, teachers heard, for the first time, that the students they believed were "off task" really were not. Ballenger elaborated with an example from her own experience in the Seminar. She had been teaching preschool and kindergarten children of Haitian immigrants and was frustrated that they would not do what she said, despite her training in early childhood education. When she brought these challenges to the Seminar, the other teachers commiserated with her and made suggestions of things she could try with the children. However, Sarah Michaels' response was, "that's interesting." Ballenger then understood that she had a researchable question. She began tape recording what the Haitian teachers did with the children in similar situations, as well as her own teaching. She ultimately learned that there were cultural differences in what was said (both topic and grammar) and in the values implicit underneath what was said.
Roxanne Pappenheimer shared some personal reflections about her participation in the Seminar from a memo she had written upon first joining the group. While she noted (in the memo) issues such as developing research questions, reading transcripts, and group members' willingness to be vulnerable, she also commented that the process seemed overly complex and burdensome. In a later section of the memo, entitled "Shifts in My Classroom," Pappenheimer noted the transition-she was beginning to incorporate ideas from the Seminar and to question what she used to view as successful practice. She discussed the entry of new voices into her teaching, less of her own and more of her students and of other teachers and their students. She also found herself shifting from thinking about what her students needed to know, to trying to understand their understanding. Another teacher in the Seminar raised questions about imagination, which prompted Pappenheimer, a special education teacher, to think about imagination in students with delays. She began thinking about the role of literature for these students and of the relationship between literature and imagination and between imagination and thought. She asked what happens when delayed children are not exposed to literature. She hypothesized that the lack of story in these children's lives was connected to a "less practiced imagination."
Jim Swaim, who teaches a third/fourth grade combined class, was interested in process writing. The issue of revision frustrated him because he found that although he had what seemed to be productive conferences with his students, these meetings did not lead them to productive revision. Swaim felt guilty and began revising his own process of teaching. He started recording his students and when he reviewed his tapes, he found that he had taught his students too well: the kids had a language but not a process of revision. Swaim characterized this as "procedural display." He asserted that the issue of practice is inextricably linked to listening to students. The following year, he erased terms from his own communication. He was less dogmatic about how the conferences with his students happened and he did not follow a prescribed process. Swaim's goal was to avoid making the children technicians rather than writers, so he also allowed more collaboration among students (e.g., two to four writers in a group) and worked on community building in his class. He began having "sharing sessions," so that borrowing from someone else's work was allowed and plagiarism in his classroom disappeared. In concluding, he stressed that the members in the Seminar profoundly influence each other and this reciprocity helps change their practice.
Reflectors' Comments
After the Algebra Project and Brookline presentations, reflectors Jeanne Reardon, Miriam Gamoran Sherin, and Nora Sabelli provided some initial comments and feedback. Jeanne Reardon noted that an important part of the two collaborative projects was that they began with community action and with commonly shared beliefs about students, teachers, and issues of power and access. These cases did not have the issues of hierarchy. In talking about the responsibility of being and making one's self understood, the cases did not have issues of who was setting the agenda or whose voice would count. Reardon challenged the groups to consider their goals and purposes, as well as what they mean, as she noted that everyone seemed to enter (the project) at the same place.
Miriam Gamoran Sherin focused her comments on practice-more specifically, the ways that we look at practice. For example, what do we see when we look at a classroom? She commented on the notion that teachers' practice can change when they begin to look at the classroom in different ways. She cited examples from the presentations: the Seminar teachers' taping and listening to their lessons to analyze them and the Algebra Project team members helping teachers examine their practice and viewing some of the issues they see as researchers. Sherin asked, as researchers, how does our vision of practice change, as opposed to only thinking about how teachers' views of their practice change?
Nora Sabelli observed that the presentations discussed a different kind of research-one of taking practical knowledge and instantiating it. She questioned how much knowledge across the two cases was local versus abstract. Sabelli noted that the cases were unusual in that they intersect pedagogy and content knowledge, and that this can happen only in the context of the classroom. That is, the knowledge of how practice is done has to be localized. She reflected on the teachers' experience, noting that their participation complemented their preparation as teachers. Sabelli questioned whether such experiences should not be part of teacher preparation and asked at what point is this a research agenda for teacher education.
Group 2
The Ganado Intermediate School, Ganado, AZ
Dixie Goswami , Nancy Jennings, Verna Marshall, and Kathie Shock
Ganado Intermediate School is a public school in a rural area of the Navajo Nation in Arizona. Ganado serves 500 Navajo children and a few children of other backgrounds in grades three, four, and five. Most of the children attending the school live in poverty and nearly 75 percent are limited English proficient.
The group began with a problem: Ganado teachers felt that their teacher education had not prepared them to work with their students. While teachers at Ganado were committed to improving instruction for their students, they continued to score in the lowest quartile in the nation on norm-referenced tests. Although the test scores improved slowly each year and teachers worked to improve their teaching strategies through years of involvement in professional development programs, the teachers believed that they were not progressing quickly enough and were not reaching all children. The staff at Ganado made two important decisions that led to the formation of their research group. First, they defined themselves as a community of learners and second, they decided not to be governed by a representative site council but to involve every staff member in the governance of the school. These two decisions, along with the teachers' vision of improved instruction for their students, led them to become teacher researchers.
During the three years that they have been collaborating, the teacher research group at Ganado has included up to 15 classroom teachers, an administrator, a librarian, a counselor, special-needs educators, a reading specialist, and a storyteller. There are both Navajo and Anglo teachers and new and experienced teachers in the research group. By sharing stories of their classrooms and research projects, the teacher researchers discussed the ways in which their collaborative group provided a firm base for their research. During regular meetings, teacher researchers listened, shared, discussed, and made suggestions as each member of the group presented research issues and problems. Navajo members of the group used stories from Navajo culture to teach Anglo members how to extend their work with the students. One teacher researcher commented, "we have taken clues from each of our banks of knowledge and generated new knowledge that will then go on to inform and generate even more new knowledge."
An important part of the Ganado research collaborative is the involvement and support of the school's principal. Not only did the principal implement a schedule that supported the needs of the research group, but she too focused on improving students' achievement on standardized tests and she also listened to what teachers believed and wanted. Listening became an important goal, not just for the principal but for the entire research group, particularly as they began to address the conflicts between Navajo and Anglo communication patterns. Given the communicative conflicts, listening, reflecting, asking questions, and probing became common modes of operation for the research group in an effort to improve communication within their community of learners.
Ganado contracted with university researchers for assistance but only on an as-needed basis. While university researchers have worked with the teachers when requested to do so, they are not directing the project and they are not housed at the school. The university researchers have provided the group with support, guidance, and a source of confidence as they adapted to the process of becoming teacher researchers.
The teachers' experience in working together generated trust amidst collaboration because of the wealth of knowledge in the group. Their research caused them to change their perspectives from examining the problems of students to examining their own practices. The research group helped teachers question what they were doing and helped them see theory in action in the classroom. The cultural differences among members in the research group helped the teachers look at the students with "soft eyes" that were attentive to and respectful of their Navajo culture and their individuality. Referring to the ReNUE presentation the night before, the principal, Susan Stropko, commented, "Yesterday reminded me of how important it is for teachers to begin to know the community and the children first hand. For us, that is part of what it means to have research at the center of practice. It has to do with beginning to know first hand." A university researcher who worked with the teachers noticed that the close observation of one child caused the teachers to see all children more clearly. The knowledge that the teachers generated helped to anchor previously disconnected theory to classroom practice. The teachers became more thoughtful about their own learning. There was a shift in responsibility; teachers went from curriculum presenters to those responsible for children's learning.
M-CLASS, San Francisco, CA
Sarah Freedman, Judy Bebelar, Verda Delp, and Deborah Juarez
M-CLASS focuses on issues of literacy in urban multicultural schools. Originally organized in 1990 by faculty members at the University of California, Berkeley, the research group consisted of 24 researchers nationwide who were clustered in groups of six teachers in four cities. M-CLASS has evolved into a site-based network with three sites that are all located in the San Francisco Bay Area. Three teachers work on common research questions at each school site. The goals of the project are to (1) conduct practice-sensitive research in order to promote research-sensitive practice and (2) understand the literacy needs of multicultural secondary schools through a university/school learning collaborative. The collaboration in Phase I of the project involved university researchers facilitating and synthesizing the work of teacher researchers. Beginning with a national conference, teacher researchers in local area groups met regularly. University researchers provided workshops in research methods and mentored the teachers in their research. In Phase II of the project, teacher research team leaders, who were members of the original group, facilitated research groups at their own school sites in a school-based change effort. During this phase, the university researchers played a "behind-the-scenes" role.
Three teacher researchers from M-CLASS discussed their experiences with the project. Judy Bebelar indicated that the connection with the university provided validation and support. The meetings at the university provided space and time for her to reflect with others who were pursuing similar research. She asserted that the opportunity to see pedagogical concepts reinforced through her own work was a validating experience. Deborah Juarez is a teacher researcher who participated in both phases of the project (she became one of the facilitators in Phase II). Juarez credited M-CLASS with providing an organizational structure that promotes discourse on practice. She maintained that participating in the project caused all of the teachers to examine practice in a more formal, systematic way. Juarez's own research functioned as an assessment tool for her; it helped her evaluate and modify her curriculum to better fit her students' needs. The connection with university researchers brought a constant source of support to the teachers and helped them develop their leadership capacity. Initially, teacher researchers who became facilitators, like Juarez, found great difficulty in juggling the new role of facilitator and the continuing role of teacher researcher. Juarez noted that collaboration does not happen immediately; it takes time to build trust and to find a comfort zone in forming a team with strangers.
Verda Delp, who has participated in the project as a teacher researcher since Phase I, stated that teacher research now defines who she is. Originally, her association with the university was to learn whether her practice would be affirmed. M-CLASS was also an attractive project for her because of its goal of publishing (Delp saw publication as a route to change). She maintained that the collaboration enabled the teacher researchers to refine their pedagogy and acquire a sense of professionalism, which provided a place for open dialogue. University researchers also changed after participating in collaborative research for practice. Sarah Freedman, a university researcher, stated that it is difficult for her to imagine doing future research without collaborating with teacher researchers. She asserted the need for research collaborations in order to effect educational change. Freedman also stressed that a network of researchers is more appropriate than individual researchers for addressing multicultural issues.
Reflectors' Comments
Reflectors Carol Lee, Luis Moll, Sue Hansen-Smith, and Marty Rutherford provided a variety of insightful comments based on the Ganado and M-CLASS presentations. Carol Lee noted that there is still a polarity between the top-down forces who want change fast (e.g., parents, students, and policymakers) and the bottom-up forces. She also noted that productive collaborations apply different lenses to learning in order to get at teacher knowledge. Luis Moll focused on some of the commonalities of the two cases, such as the power of learning from experience, the importance of developing relationships, the significance of developing a teacher researcher identity, and the intellectual challenge of the work. Sue Hansen-Smith commented that these cases illustrated both the particularity and the centrality of practice in their research. The research itself seemed to be a step between process and collaboration. Hansen-Smith highlighted the passion, energy, and enthusiasm of the research collaborations as a powerful force to effect change in the educational system. In addition, she noted that both projects shared the same purpose of improving education for all students and both recognized that we need to know more about providing education for minority students. Marty Rutherford discussed change as a key element that came out of both collaborations; all participants were changed through the process of collaborative research. A focal point for the research projects was children and Rutherford asserted that this is something that should be showcased and maintained. Moreover, philosophy, culture, and language were both sources of inspiration and barriers to communication in the two cases.
Group 3
Action Research of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
Barbara Brodhagen, Cathy Caro-Bruce, and Madge Klais
Action Research of Wisconsin (AROW) is a collaborative effort to use teacher research on practice as a vehicle for professional development. AROW follows in the tradition of action research, which posits that the best way to bridge the gap between theory and practice is to allow practitioners to engage in research on their own practice in their own classrooms. AROW consists of a group of researchers engaged in collaborative action research efforts throughout Madison, Wisconsin, including Madison Metropolitan School District personnel and teachers as well as University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers. Since its inception eight years ago, over 350 teachers and administrators have completed year-long action research projects.
Cathy Caro-Bruce, coordinator of AROW, discussed the challenges of implementing a practice-based research project in an existing school setting. They initially began in 1985 with a district initiative that provided optional seminars for teachers interested in action research. While several teachers participated in the earlier sessions, very few-only two teachers-actually engaged in action research projects. By the 1990-91 school year, project designers had identified several factors that would help more teachers participate in action research projects.
- Professional development should be grounded in a context meaningful to practitioners. Action research was just another professional development option in the district until AROW coordinated the project with current district priorities. Moreover, once it was clear that teachers would be held accountable for changes in their own practice, they began to see action research as a viable option.
- Champions must lead the way. It was really important that there was a district-level champion to advocate the program as an answer to district and teacher questions.
- Teacher ownership of practitioner research is essential. Action research, a form of practitioner research, requires teachers to own the research process because they identify and provide resolutions to their questions. Moreover, "providing the opportunity for teachers to participate voluntarily leads to strong ownership by individuals for their professional growth."
- Action research helps build communities. Researchers in AROW seldom work in isolation. There exists a multi-dimensional community of practice across the district. For example, there are district-wide communities of teachers from schools throughout the district, facilitator communities that foster community building for their peers, and researcher-practitioner communities that provide a common ground to help bridge the researcher-practitioner divide. Caro-Bruce stressed that University of Wisconsin researchers approach action research with the view that teachers are at the center, and they do what they can to support the teachers' thinking and their place in the center.
Madge Klais outlined some of the lessons learned through this collaborative effort. First, the teachers became more reflective about their practice. The teachers increasingly perceived their work from a more analytic, focused perspective. They also began to feel more confident in their abilities to influence the substance and conditions of their own work. Moreover, as the teachers began to see themselves as students of their own practices, they became more learner-centered in their own practice. In addition, the teachers began to discuss their practices with colleagues. Action research generated an interest, as well as a vocabulary that teachers can now use to discuss their practices with colleagues. Teachers also reported that they began implementing "more democratic and interactive work" in their classrooms.
Barbara Brodhagen stressed the importance of determining which teaching behaviors account for improvement in student attitudes, involvement, behavior, and achievement. She also discussed several problems with AROW as it is currently constructed. First, she highlighted the irony of the district telling teachers to become more empowered and democratic. She further observed that while there is little hard data on how action research improves student learning, "they recommend these teaching practices as desirable." Lastly, while AROW focuses mostly on the process of action research, little attention was given to the content of the research-that is, to the kinds of projects that motivated teachers and those that did not.
Teachers and Parents and Students (TAPAS), Philadelphia, PA
Jacqueline Simmons, Terri Tyler, Diane Waff, and Susan Lytle
Teachers and Parents and Students (TAPAS) is a participatory research group that examines the effects of the "Children Achieving" system-wide writing standards reform effort in Philadelphia Public Schools. Funded through the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE), TAPAS convened a "participatory evaluation" group of insiders, including students, teachers, and parents, to document and understand what it means to experience systemic reform in one's daily life. The primary goals of the group are to understand and change the conditions of practice.
TAPAS is designed to understand and inform the nature of practice, which extends beyond what teachers do in the classroom. For TAPAS, practice also includes how teachers co-construct curriculum over time and how this co-construction reciprocally informs their positions as activists and school leaders. Practice also encompasses the reciprocal relations between community and parent values and the instructional mission of the school. TAPAS participants take a critical look at the generation of knowledge and the interests it serves, including how relationships of knowledge and power structure their work.
Susan Lytle, a university researcher, noted that their goal is "to understand, articulate, and ultimately alter practice and social relations in order to find out about the change process." Questions that guide the work of TAPAS include: How does inquiry into practice or the generation of local knowledge inform their understanding of the intellectual, social, and political process of teaching and learning in urban schools? How does inquiry into practice contribute to or constitute school change? How does this work provide a critical context for conversations about race/ethnicity, class, and gender as dimensions of urban teaching and learning? How does teacher inquiry relate to student inquiry and to changing the culture of teaching in schools? How has teacher research for practice contributed to the constructive disruption of university culture? These questions form the framework for the specific investigations conducted by TAPAS team members.
Jacqueline Simmons explained her intentions of investigating how to "engage parents in a critical examination of school and classroom practice." Her perspective was informed by the realization that some community parents "feel like outsiders in the school community." She asserted that, as a result, changes proposed by reform legislation often pass unnoticed or misunderstood by parents. Simmons initially found that parents were often confused and frustrated by their interactions with school staff. The parents' reports of "these interactions as jargon-filled, non-productive experiences" led her to organize a series of informational meetings regarding the systemic change initiatives. Simmons also discussed her project on students' homework practices, which could be seen as the primary ways in which literacy standards were brought into the home.
Terri Tyler spoke of her experiences in the school where she has taught since 1986. The school is located in what used to be a thriving Black, middle-class community that now suffers from high poverty. As a teacher researcher, she explained that her research focused on assessing her role as a classroom teacher and questioning whether her traditional teaching practices were meeting her students' needs. This process led her to take a more student-centered focus-one that helped her integrate the lives of her students into her teaching. Given her examination and integration of literacy and writing standards, Tyler focused on how her students developed as literacy learners in a classroom that was informed by reading and writing standards. Overall, she maintained that her project is still a work in progress. However, this experience has helped her look at what all students can do, as well as what they know and are trying to communicate, rather than focusing on their deficits.
Diane Waff illustrated how the research of the TAPAS group has had district-wide implications. She used parents' concerns about the large proportion of African American boys being sent to the accommodation (discipline) room as an example. While initially raised by parents in a particular school, a council member who was also a member of TAPAS took the issue seriously and proposed that it become the subject of inquiry for the council. The major question was whether these students were disproportionately assigned to the accommodation room compared to other students. What then would be the implications of implementing standards in the classroom if certain groups of students are not in them? The council member's examination of the data revealed that African American boys were disproportionately sent to the accommodation room, but more importantly, the official records were often incomplete so it was impossible to understand why they had been sent there. This inquiry ultimately led to the development of an alternate referral process and served as an impetus for diversity training across the district, which helps illustrate the significance of the TAPAS community and the role of research in the district.
TAPAS is a project in progress and the concerns of the group continue to emerge out of their work. The group's concerns can be organized around several themes.
- Recognizing the barriers to change. TAPAS research investigates practice as a complex phenomenon and brings to light many barriers to policies (curriculum, standards, etc.) that seek to change practice. Team members stated that they are learning about the barriers that limit participation in schools, which raise questions about whose knowledge counts. They maintained that they are also uncovering the alienation that parents feel when confronted by school structures that are not clearly explained or implemented. Moreover, Terri Tyler noted, they "have seen the problem of teachers generalizing about what can or cannot happen in classrooms."
- Reflective questioning of assumptions. The system and the assumptions of the researchers change with TAPAS research. "More and more we are questioning our own assumptions. For example, what is a good learning environment at home and who decides?" Team members stressed that they had to remind themselves that the "students were equal partners, not kids."
- Diane Waff indicated that the evaluative nature of the TAPAS project challenged the group to re-think the nature of evaluation. The challenge of responding to variation in the context of evaluation posed a significant problem. For example, Simmons asked, "How can we account for disparities across schools? In some, parents are really contributing to school councils and in others, there is only a facade and the decisions have already been made." In addition, reporting evaluation results is also problematic for TAPAS investigators, as they struggle in dealing with the fact that differently positioned participants view the same events in very different ways.
- The teams developed by TAPAS provide an interesting window on the complexities of practice. There is a fundamental ambiguity between "findings" and "doings." As the effort to change practice is deeply embedded in TAPAS' study of practice, team members question how can they understand the complex relationships of research and action/change. This is especially important for "research on practice when the focus of the reform agenda has been constructed and articulated by those outside the immediate setting." TAPAS' multi-dimensional research presents a challenge for researchers as it proposes to simultaneously examine how well the reform is progressing, whose reform it is, and how the structures of power and control influence its reception.
Reflectors' Comments
After the AROW and TAPAS case presentations, reflectors Seymour Sarason, Katherine Schultz, and Dennie Wolf, along with closing panelists Hugh Mehan and Warren Simmons, highlighted some of the similarities and differences between the cases. Their comments included the importance of trust building as a key to inquiry-based research. They also noted the differences between the espoused (the formal, and often official, story of the participants) and the enacted practices (what people actually do). These stories often differ, primarily because the enacted stories are seldom told by participants. Helping them tell their stories seems to require an atmosphere of trust established around the inquiry. The reluctance of teachers to participate in the AROW presentations and of parents and teachers to tell their stories of the barriers that keep them from the core instructional practices of schools in Philadelphia can be transformed into a positive force for change. The reflectors also addressed the seemingly intrinsic link between research on practice and calls for reform. They seemed to agree that the best way to understand the practice of a complex system was to try to change it.
Closing Panel
Following a reporting session where participants summarized the morning's presentations and discussion, a panel of six scholars, teachers, and researchers shared their ideas of what a research agenda with practice at the center would look like. Some of the themes that emerged focused on multiple aspects of collaboration such as building partnerships, knowledge making, and the challenges involved. Other comments and questions centered on issues of sustainability and generalizability, as well as how knowledge is represented and used.
James Minstrell asserted that the case teams at the conference were "vehicles" for doing and understanding collaborative research, which have important implications for understanding and improving practice. His remarks focused on three major questions about inquiry into understanding and improving practice: How do you get it started, what does it mean to be doing it, and how do you take it elsewhere? Minstrell noted that the seven projects suggest that a prepared mind, or a prepared background, and the interest in looking for something new after 20 years might be some of the prerequisites to initiating such collaborative inquiries. Minstrell asked, how do you know when you are doing inquiry into understanding and improving practice? When do you have a culture for fostering inquiry into understanding and improving practice? Moreover, in terms of sustainability, how do you keep it around? How do you keep doing it? On taking it elsewhere, what aspects, if any, are transferable? What of the inquiry into understanding and improving practice is transferable; that is, what can be applied elsewhere, with other people, or with other participants? What are the mechanisms by which that transformation can take place?
Jacqueline Royster began by saying that it was difficult for her not to notice the "social and political consequences of what we do," so most of her comments related specifically to these kinds of issues. She admitted that her way of looking at knowledge is that it is produced in the community of others. We constantly hear that knowledge is socially defined-it exists as knowledge in the world to the extent that it does work in the world. Given that, Royster asked, "Where does it do work in the world and where could or should it do that?" She sensed that one underlying problem has been "the need to resist the hierarchies and binaries of the way that we talk about knowledge," specifically university-produced knowledge versus teacher-produced knowledge. She proposed that one way of looking at it more energetically is to question all of our knowledge-making communities in more direct ways because "we haven't given credit to the fact that we all don't come as empty slates to this process." What do teachers, teachers who are researchers, university researchers, researchers who are teachers, and students who are researchers know, and how can we take advantage of this collective knowledge making?
Royster then asked, "For whom does the knowledge have consequence and how are these consequences made known to various audiences, especially those audiences that are broader than the one in which the knowledge has been grounded? In addition, how do we see not just the readiness for change, but the appropriate context for change and the appropriate processes for change, and how do we make them become usable to us in sustaining what we want to sustain?" She said that led her to think about knowledge as action. "As a language person, what I'm brought back to is the issues that are connected not with presentation as we've all been talking about, but representation. How do we represent what we do?" She declared that terms like research, collaboration, and practice are operating metaphorically given what we could know and the way that we could say them. "My concern is that we have some kind of systematic way of interrogating those terms, not necessarily to define them, but to at least specify how it is that we are coming to those terms. When we raise issues about specifying the way in which we are using terms and operating based on those terms, are there abstractions that we can pull out that might be useful to us all in a more powerful way? When you start moving in that direction, that is called knowledge building."
Warren Simmons rephrased one of the central questions for the conference and instead asked, "What does it mean to have a research agenda with practice at the center in the context of systemic reform?" He asserted that "the goal of systemic reform in fact says that you need a research agenda that tells us how to improve practice in all schools for all students and how to improve practice at an acceptable rate and quality. It introduces a requirement that the research does not have great isolated pockets of excellence or success, but systems characterized by success and rates of change that the larger public deems acceptable. These demands on the question of a research agenda with practice at the center raise some questions that need further study."
Simmons noted that while many of the projects presented during the conference were long lasting endeavors, what was hidden in the presentations were the steps that were taken to build people's capacities to do collaborative research. "People don't come together with their different perspectives, values, and beliefs about students and schools and automatically collaborate well to do research. It wasn't clear to me in the presentations how the prior knowledge and experience of the researcher, whether they are teachers, university-based, or parents, were put on the table for examination and disclosure and were used to create a shared perspective that would allow collaboration to take place." How do researchers deal with the values and principles they hold in common and those that conflict? How do they overcome differences so that they can get to a set of questions that have a broader perspective and credibility to them? Simmons maintained, "We have to have research that helps us make the case about the value of this work beyond the immediate group of people who do it and do it well, to some larger group of people who potentially may do it well and, as a result, improve practice."
Renee Moore asked why is it that so much of the theoretical knowledge generated by educational research remains either unusable at the practitioner level or is simply not utilized at the practitioner level? Is it a question of access, availability, resistance, or something else? Are there factors inherent in the educational delivery system itself that prevent knowledge from being used? Moore asserted that there are several factors that should be examined in answering these questions, such as in-service education, the ways in which administrative structure influences the transition of theory to practice, and the constraints of school and curricular structures on teachers.
Courtney Cazden also focused many of her remarks on the use of knowledge generated from research. "The knowledge that has been produced in conventional ways in university-based structures has been criticized for not doing enough work in the world, for not having enough impact, for not leading to enough change in students' lives and students' educational biographies and their learning." She emphasized that now there is this terrific array of new participant structures available to us through collaborative research on practice. However, she said there is "no reason to believe that the change in participant structures is going to, by itself, change the amount of work that the knowledge that is produced does out in the world." She added, "Some of the participants may believe that what will have the greatest impact out in the world is not what we keep asking about-that is, what are your findings-but the processes of inquiry themselves." Cazden stated that there must be something in the culture of schools and school systems as organizations that contributes to barriers against knowledge diffusion and utilization. She urged the Foundation to encourage research on knowledge use and the barriers that exist to such utilization and diffusion. Otherwise, these wonderful new participant structures and collaborations, and whatever is learned through them, are going to be ineffective in changing lives for kids, which is what we all want to happen.
Hugh Mehan focused his comments around three areas: partnerships and collaboration, generalizability, and vulnerability. He stated that the idea of collaboration, as the basic and fundamental organizing concept of the conference participant structure, implies that there are at least two partners and, in most cases, many partners who come together to form that collaboration. In addition, those partners come from different spheres of life. "It seems to me that much of this collaborative research has been strongly influenced by partnerships and especially in relationships with partners that are outside of the day-to-day working life of teachers and educators within classrooms." Mehan identified several questions for future research agendas. For example, what are the roles of partners in collaborations of this sort? What is a productive partnering relationship? Are there unhealthy partnering relationships that could inhibit or prohibit the sustainability of a project? Fundamental to answering these questions is addressing how the work conditions of teachers enable or prohibit the institutionalization of collaborative research.
With regard to generalizability and general use, in previous research traditions, there is a tradition of reporting your work as findings that are useful to practice. However, what is exportable and usable, and what form it will take beyond the end of the project, is not clear with these collaborative research projects. "There seems to be a lot of resistance to that static packaged notion because it isn't helpful beyond immediate circumstances. Yet, there is an element of process that is essential to this collaborative enterprise and it cannot be divorced from the product. This is one of those situations where it cannot be an either/or choice; it cannot be product or process. There have to be some linkages between the two." The issue of vulnerability was Mehan's final point. Everyone who participates in a collaborative enterprise is vulnerable in one way or another. Teachers are vulnerable if the things that they find could become uncomfortable to other parts of the system. "University researchers are vulnerable because the research tradition of the university has not accepted collaborative work as legitimate. I think we need to explore, as a community, ways of legitimating collaborative styles of research so that it doesn't remain off to the side" of the university or teaching practice. "If we do that, we can have the sustained kind of influence on both practice both practice and students' achievement that we're all striving for."
A Note from The Spencer Foundation
The Spencer Foundation sponsors occasional conferences to stimulate research on important issues in education. We thank Judy Buchanan, Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, Louis Gomez, and Sarah Michaels who helped organize this conference; Richard Halverson, Laura Snyder, and Muffie Wiebe for their role in writing this report; and the individuals who participated (see attached listing) for their good work and contributions. We hope that interested researchers will find the theoretical, methodological, and topical issues raised at the conference thought provoking. The Spencer Foundation welcomes well-designed research proposals on the issues and ideas discussed in this report.