How teachers become action researchers and how teacher educators become their facilitators

Abstract

This article describes the design and findings of a case study involving seven groups of teachers at six schools for secondary education. The teachers tried to gain insight into their own practice and to improve their own practice by learning to do action research. They were facilitated by teacher educators over a period of 2 years. The research questions of this article are: (1) What patterns emerge in the way the teachers master action research? and (2) What patterns emerge in the way they are facilitated by the teacher educators? The theoretical framework of the study elaborates on the performance and facilitation of action research using the concept of 'praxis'. The basic assumption is that teachers learn to do action research by communicating with others about the knowledge they have acquired through experience of action research and the tasks they have performed to develop that knowledge. The results show that what is difficult about learning to do action research is not so much the complexity of procedural and methodological aspects of action research itself, but the fact that teachers have to gradually master several skills and actions at the same time; skills and actions that they are not familiar with. Besides, the study found five developments in professional attitudes that teachers go through as they master action research. Facilitators are increasingly successful the more they offer ongoing support on the spot to teachers as they carry out their action research. The study identified five aspects of successful facilitation.

Why Shouldn't Teachers and Teacher Educators Conduct Research on Their Own Practices? An Epistemological Exploration

“…Research into the results of the RDD approach has shown that it hardly ever leads to the implementation of the proposed programmes in practice (see Fullan, 1991). This is why attention has shifted from questions about implementing reforms proposed from outside to questions about implementing change in collaboration with teachers (Ponte, 2002).…”

Aksjonsforskning i Norge: Teoretisk og empirisk mangfold

“…Flere studier om laererutdanneres laering (Lunenberg, Loughran, Schildkamp, Beishuizen, Meirink & Zwart, 2007;Ponte, 2002) viser at en akademisk identitet utvikles lettere ved å gjennomføre forskning i et forskerfellesskap, slik som når vi deltok i forskningsprosjekter og skrev bøker og artikler sammen. Et slikt fellesskap forutsetter samarbeid og involvering i en sosial struktur som legger til rette for utvikling og deling av kunnskap (Wenger, 2004).…”

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“…With this in mind, teachers as professionals are assumed to be able to construct their own knowledge about the causes and consequences of their actions to give answers to specific practical problems and questions, and to provide evidence of what works in practice and why (Ponte, 2005).…”