What do teachers gain from being researchers?
Andrew Lambirth & Ana Cabral
Research Summary
Engagement of teachers in research about practice is a feature of professional learning and career development in the United Kingdom. But what are the challenges? This is a small-scale study of the experience of primary and secondary teachers conducting action research as part of a development project promoted by a school alliance with university researchers. Interviews took place about the teachers’ motivations, experience and outcomes. Though the teachers felt reluctant and constrained by management directives, the experience was ultimately beneficial, resulting in improvements to their teaching.
Researchers
Andrew Lambirth & Ana Cabral
Research Institution
University of Greenwich
What is this about?
- What do teachers stand to gain from engagement with research, in the sense of carrying out their own action research projects with the support of university researchers.
- What are the obstacles to such engagement – why might teachers feel reluctant to do it?
- What are the professional advantages to teachers of researching their own work?
What was done?
11 teachers from 6 schools in South-East London designed and implemented an action research project aimed at improving an area of teaching within their classroom and / or school. Regular meetings with university staff were held, where advice on e.g. research methodology was given and the projects’ progress reviewed.
The research draws on 9 semi-structured face-to-face interviews with the teachers conducted by the research team and field notes collected from a total of 9 meetings.
Main findings and outputs
- Teachers were compelled to take part in the project by managers, as part of accountability or ‘box-ticking’ exercises.
- These also affected project choices, e.g. ‘cognitive acceleration’ in Science or ‘data-driven improvement’ in literacy.
- But as the projects developed, the teachers began to develop a sense of their own agency, because they were having to think themselves about the changes produced by their actions and how to learn from them.
- They began to be ‘intrinsically’ motivated to think about what children think, like to do and are interested in. Adapting teaching to children’s responses was a new approach, experienced as just and democratic.
- Teachers who want to be researchers do need scholarship time, and support to publish.
- They also find high value in collaboration with colleagues from the university and other schools.
Relevance to RE
RE teachers might be encouraged by the research to undertake small-scale research studies of their own teaching, on the basis of the evidence that this promises valuable professional development. In line with the conclusions of the research, they should identify research questions arising as important in their own practice, rather than to satisfy managerial demands, press for scholarship time and seek collaborations with university staff and colleagues in other schools. The research underlines the potential of e.g. Farmington scholarships or master’s programmes to generate RE teachers’ professional development and development within RE.
Generalisability and potential limitations
The researchers acknowledge that the study is small-scale. The account of the pressures on teachers would be recognised widely, however, and the experience of the few teacher-researchers studied may illustrate possibilities for the profession in general. The findings resemble those of other studies. See e.g.
https://www.nfer.ac.uk/publications/IMUL01/IMUL01.pdf
Finding out about what motivates RE pupils and using the knowledge to build up RE pedagogy
Find out more
The full article is: Andrew Lambirth & Ana Cabral (2017) Issues of agency, discipline and criticality: an interplay of challenges involved in teachers engaging in research in a performative school context, Educational Action Research, 25:4, 650-666.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09650792.2016.1218350