Bera Booklet 2007 - Teaching and Learning Research Programme

Conference booklet 21/8/07 10:16 am Page 32Paper 1What conditions maximise confidence in participant action research forteachers’ and policy makers’ decision making?Authors: L. Foreman-Peck and J. Murray, University of NorthamptonAbstract: This paper addresses the following philosophical questions which seek to unearthassumptions about ‘warrants’ for action: how does or ought action research inform ateacher’s teaching or practice? How could or ought a piece of action research carried outin one place inform the teaching or educational actions of another teacher? How can orought teachers’ action research projects influence national policy? How does or couldnational policy get used in action research? The aim will be to address the question ‘whatphilosophically defensible rationale(s) is (are) given (or suggested) for basing teaching andpolicy making decisions on a) the procedure (s) of action research and b) action researchcase study reports.The approach is to review a selection of action research case studies, which illuminate thequestions posed above, and to interrogate them from an epistemological and ethicallysceptical perspective. That is, the reading will be informed by the questions ‘how do youknow?’ and ‘why is the action right or good’? ‘What could another teacher or policy makerlearn from the report?No attempt will be made at a comprehensive survey of action research case studies. Theaim is rather to select action research case studies that allow the authors to reflect on themeanings the researchers have made of the idea of ‘warranted confidence’.The area of action research is ideologically saturated. The authors have no bias towardsone particular variety. The authors are ideologically neutral. A small number of actionresearch case studies will be selected for discussion on grounds of their propensity toilluminate philosophical issues, and they will be used as illustration. Relevant selectioncriteria will be their:• Clarity and comprehensiveness• methodological variety• scope: individual, community, wider networks• involvement of other stakeholders (e.g. children as researchers, parents, policy makers)• location in UK and non UK contexts.• evidence of action researchers drawing on previous action research reports and the usemade of them.• Evidence of the use by action researchers of policy• Evidence of policy makers involvement in action research or use of action researchreportsThe theoretical discussion of action research, in philosophical circles, has been framedby the Aristotelian concepts of techne, praxis, and phronesis and the practical syllogism(e.g. Carr, 1981). These positions, which rule out the use of ‘theory’ as a form ofinstrumentalism, and methods as unnecessary, have been challenged by Kristjannasson(2005) Winch and Gingell (2004) and Bridges (2002). The authors’ intention is to make anoriginal contribution to knowledge in this area by using the selected case studies as astimulus to reflection on possible meanings that the idea of ‘warranted confidence’ inprocedures, reporting and findings (if any) of teachers’ or other stakeholders’ actionresearches have as manifested in their reports. In this way it is envisaged that the moreabstract discussion of the relationship between research, action, knowledge and decisionmaking, offered by such writers as Elliott (2006) and Carr (2006) can be complemented.Paper 2Philosophical argument as a basis for policyAuthors: James Conroy, Robert Davis, Penny Enslin, University of GlasgowAbstract: Our central question is: what kind of confidence should we have in philosophicalanalysis and argument as a basis for policy and what is the nature of the inference betweensuch analysis and argument and recommendations for policy?Noting the widespread resistance to abstract theorizing, in spite of the enormous potentialfor philosophy to contribute to policy development, we defend the claim that philosophicalreasoning should be an integral part of policy development and critique. In doing so we donot suggest that philosophy can replace the political process but rather we show how itcan complement the politics of policy.The relationship between philosophy and policy has been the subject of contrastingarguments among philosophers of education. These range from the view that successfuleducation policy requires the contribution of philosophy to be viable, to a more circumspectone that philosophy can offer a more modest contribution. Our approach will favour theformer, more expansive approach, including:• Conceptual clarification as a substantive part of policy development• Development of arguments about values that underpin policies, their ideological context,and the comparative cogency of arguments about competing values• Understanding the significance and viability of particular claims about ‘evidence’ andwhat inferences can be made from them to the formulation of policiesDefending the necessity for a philosophically refracted policy process, we explore a rangeof examples of education policies to illustrate our claim that a less instrumental and morephilosophically informed approach would draw on philosophy as one of the forms ofrelevant research from which educational policy can be derived.Paper 3Romantic thinking for educational researchAuthor: Richard Smith, University of Durham, UKAbstract: This paper contributes to investigation of the ‘Epistemological bases ofeducational research findings’ under the auspices of the Teaching and Learning ResearchProgramme (TLRP) of the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council). According to theTLRP’s website (http://www.tlrp.org/themes/seminar/bridges.html) the central questions tobe addressed are to do with the warrant or level of confidence which educational research(of different kinds) can provide for decisions about what should be done in terms of generaleducational policy across a whole system or practice at classroom level. It will thereforeaddress specifically the claims made by the contemporary discourses of ‘evidence basedpractice’ and ‘what works’, but it will locate these within a wider framework of literaturewhich examines the relationship between research, policy and practice …Elements of the remit demand critique. ‘Epistemological’ directs us to the theory ofknowledge, which suggests a traditional examination in terms of, for instance, justified, truebeliefs, or the distinction between knowing how and knowing that. Knowing, understoodin these sorts of terms, is only one of many relevant ways of relating to the world andof imagining the connection between us and it. The idea of research having anepistemological basis clearly implies that epistemology is to be foundational, in a sense thatmany philosophers now identify as a decisive wrong turn in the history of philosophicalthought. The phrase ‘Research findings’ carries a strong implication of empiricism, as ifresearch essentially discovers facts and correlations (it would be odd to present, forinstance, a sociological perspective, philosophical analysis or a set of creative insights asany kind of findings). Each of these assumptions– that the world is to be scientificallyknown by agents separate and distinct from it, that epistemology will supply the basis forsound knowledge, and the assumption of empiricism – are essentially modernist.It is then perhaps the modernist framework that needs to be challenged. A first move in thisdirection can be made by responding to the remit’s invitation to subject the scientific model(‘evidence based practice’ and ‘what works’) to critique, the location of discussion withina wider literature about research (in social science, broadly conceived, as I interpret it) andthe emphasis on ‘warrant or level of confidence’. This latter, I argue, opens a particularlyhelpful and revealing perspective on the question of just what shape or shapes educationalresearch might take. For when we ask what confidence we can place in educationalresearch we are drawn to a different set of answers than if we ask what constitutes ‘sound’32 33