Introduction
In school-based training routes it is common for one of the assignments submitted to refer specifically to subject knowledge. Refer back to Subject knowledge section for ideas but enabling trainees to identify a subject knowledge gap, prepare to close the gap through reference to wider reading, classroom practice and evaluation.
In PGCE courses the expectation has increasingly moved towards submitting assignments with research elements, to achieve M level credits. Here assignments might still focus very strongly on subject knowledge but be hinged around key pedagogical issues and may insist on an element of action research to provide evidence.
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Action Research
This session begins with asking you to read some extracts of other people’s motivations for undertaking action research.
When Sue Dean’s department was threatened with the withdrawal of resources for media education she set about a project that would ‘prove’ the value of media education to all involved. She undertook a study that would evaluate the worth of particular resources, processes and methods of working. The ‘action’ element of it would be to show the managers that media work was a vital part of maintaining standards in the curriculum.
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Extract 1 Deans, S Defending Media Education as a School Subject: reclaiming curriculum development through action research
(www.canterbury.ac.uk/education/departments/professional-development/)
“For me, an essential part of the action research process was to define clearly my own understanding of media education.
Media education can be defined as a field of knowledge, skills and concepts relating to the mass media within society. In schools it involves teaching, through the study of media texts and through practical activities, the basic concepts needed for pupils to understand media languages, representations, institutions and audiences (see, in particular, Bowker 1991). Furthermore, media education encourages observation, analysis, evaluation, salient features of action research.
I set out to demonstrate media education practice through a case study, involving a teaching unit-in-action called ‘Wartime Experiences’ undertaken over one term with a Year 9 class. This was to be both a model illustrating the value and purpose of media education and a resource for teachers wishing to use media education in their classrooms. Furthermore, describing and evaluating the teaching unit would provide a rationale for media education in the wider curriculum.” |
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Extract 2 ( from McNiff, J, (1995) Action Research: Principles and Practice. London:Routledge
‘For years I had been dissatisfied with my own class practice; the reality did not match my hopes. I taught mainly disadvantaged, disenchanted youngsters. I wanted to adopt an empathic style of teaching, but my children were unwilling to meet me. They were rude and aggressive, to each other and to me, and I found myself forced continually into an authoritarian role of keeping order and teaching by instruction. ….. I reasoned I could find the answer if I tackled the problem as a research issue. I would go to the experts at university. Somewhere at the university, I felt sure, I would find the answers if I searched hard enough me. Nobody told me, and I was not confident enough to realize that I had the answers all the time within my own professional practice and my own tacit knowledge.” |
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McNiff’s account of her own starting points for research demonstrate some of the principles for beginning research as a teacher, an inquiry that is drawn from your own issues and concerns. McNiff’s problem shows
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she had very clear problems with reaching the pupils she taught |
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she found the methods she taught did control the pupils but they didn’t excite or enthuse them |
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she wanted to examine why she was struggling with the problem |
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she thought she could find the answer in books |
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in actuality she needed to find it through her own analysis of what happened in the classroom.Stage 1 of planning your assignment: Describe a particular issue you have experienced with respect to your own teaching of media or that you have observed in the learning of media. This might begin your own thinking on a problem you might follow through more fully later. |
Stage 1 of planning your assignment: Describe a particular issue you have experienced with respect to your own teaching of media or that you have observed in the learning of media. This might begin your own thinking on a problem you might follow through more fully later.
READ
Action Research
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Simplified Action Research Model
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Data collection and the generation of hypotheses |
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Validation of hypotheses through use of analytic techniques |
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Interpretation by reference to theory, established practice and practitioner judgement |
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Action for improvement that is also monitored by the same research techniques |
(adapted from Hopkins 1985, p114, cited in Robson C (1993) Real World research Oxford: Blackwell, pp 441 |
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You began your ITT course examining what your own subject knowledge base. This project will ask you to think about other external factors that contribute to problems in media teaching and learning.
Developing your inquiry: Investigate and comment upon the constraints you feel you are teaching under that exist outside your own expertise. This means you should provide an analysis of external issues like examination criteria, chief examiner reports, lack of training of co-teachers (or yourself). What external factors contribute to the difficulties you are having with teaching a specific area
Additionally there may be particular issues that are relevant in your school or college context that have a bearing on media teaching and learning. For example you may have a particular cohort of students, specific issues about pupils’ learning needs that are/aren’t being met; issues with staff training or expertise.
All of us teach within constraints – our own individual ones and those handed down to us by institutional or other causes.
This will form part of the data collection and generation of a hypothesis. |
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Research Methods
Action research is a method of research in its own right. Applied to classrooms, action research is an approach to improving education through real change, by encouraging teachers to know about their practice and take steps to enhance it. It is participatory. It is research WITH, rather than research ON. (McNiff, 1995:4)
The methods you will develop have to be conducive with the fact that you are present within the research, rather than behind a screen as if the classroom was some kind of laboratory.
Participatory methods:
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Observation of your own class (with someone else teaching them) |
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Reflections based on your prior knowledge of the class |
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Established observations of your own teaching (using video, or using pupil recorders or peer recorders) |
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Questionnaires to teachers/pupils |
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Interviews held with individuals |
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Focus group discussions |
In addition you are likely to deploy Secondary methods – ideas drawn from wider reading, analyses of professional literature (e.g. Ofsted reports or curriculum guidance or specifications) and pupil data, e.g. examination performance, prior achievements etc; analyses of pupil work.
The participatory methods (you aren’t going to use all of them in one project!) should work to further enlighten the ideas you have discovered in the Secondary data.
Write a brief proposal for undertaking a short action research project in your teaching:
What is the nature of the problem?
What kinds of methods do you think you could deploy to
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investigate the reasons for the problem
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to address the problem through ACTION
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