Stories of practitioner enquiry: using narrative interviews to explore teachers’ perspectives of learning to learn

Thomas, Ulrike; Tiplady, Lucy; Wall, Kate

doi:10.1080/09518398.2013.771224

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Consistent with the studies of Timperley and Parr (2004) and Toole and Beckett (2013) the two teachers embraced practitioner inquiry as a necessary part of being an effective teacher which had contributed to their professional learning. This sentiment mirrors the findings of Lieberman (2009), Thomas, Tiplady andWall (2014), andConner (2015) who found that enquiring about one's own practice leads to insights about areas for improvement as well as allowing opportunities to participate in teaching and learning discourse exchanges. Consequently, understandings of one's profession through deliberate self-initiated inquiries is anticipated to empower teachers' practice by creating local personalised knowledge (Cochran-Smith and Lytle 1999;Groundwater-Smith et al 2015;Rinke and Stebick 2013).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

Teacher Learning Insights From Two Practice-Based Inquiries in South Africa and New Zealand

2020

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Practitioner inquiry has become part of the research tradition in many teacher professional development programmes across the world and allows teachers to conduct research into their own practices by engaging in systematic inquiry into their personal classroom practices. In this paper, we explore the inquiry reflections of two teachers that engaged in inquiries of their practice with a specific focus on their teaching of measurement. Both these teachers had completed practitioner inquiries as part of two different programmes of study, one in South Africa and the other in New Zealand. The purpose of this study was to identify factors which supported teacher learning. The findings showed that learning opportunities were created by their motivation and willingness to engage in critical reflections, while professional support from colleagues and mentors enhanced teachers' learning experiences. Furthermore, despite the different contexts, each inquiry expands our understanding of locally generated knowledge in terms of local knowledge of context as well as local knowledge of learners and content.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 77%

Teacher Learning Insights From Two Practice-Based Inquiries in South Africa and New Zealand

2020

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“…Despite these potential limitations, previous research comparing face-to-face and telephone interviews found that responses did not differ in quantitative or qualitative content (Sturgess & Hanrahan, 2004). Telephone interviews have indeed been used for similar reasons in related research projects, for example, those investigating the Learning to Learn project (Thomas et al, 2014). Thus, telephone interviews were identified as an appropriate method-particularly for allowing participants from more remote locations to participate.…”

Section: Methodological Reflectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Never mind children’s cognition, what about mine?’ Teachers’ perspectives of the enactment of policy: The case of metacognition

Branigan

2021

The Curriculum Journal

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Educational policy in the UK and beyond increasingly focuses on promoting skills that encourage learners to be independent thinkers and to self‐manage their own learning. While the educational benefits of metacognition (i.e., thinking about and managing one’s own thinking) are widely acknowledged, little attention has been paid to teachers’ perspectives about the enactment of such approaches within the educational setting. Thus, this interview study seeks to investigate Scottish primary schools teachers’ perspectives about the enactment of policy, using metacognition as an exemplar case. Analysis produced two broad themes that distinguished between ‘bottom‐up’ implementation of metacognitive approaches, and more commonly described ‘top‐down’ approaches promoted by local or national policy. The perceived ‘changing tide’ of externally set top‐down initiatives was described as particularly challenging for teachers to negotiate, resulting in a perceived crowding of the curriculum and associated ‘tick‐boxing’ practices. Results are discussed in relation to the process of enactment—arguing that the predominance of top‐down policy initiatives acts to restrict teachers’ agency by diminishing professionalism and promoting performativity.

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“…Other arguments for the narrative approach have suggested that insight on experience posits a greater self-understanding through “interactive sense-making” (Kelchtermans, 2009) and the “transactional” authority of learning experiences (Craig, 2011). Additional thematic cross-analysis of individual narratives also offers broader understanding of teachers’ perspectives of learning (Thomas et al , 2014).…”

Section: The Affordances Of Combining Methodologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing narrative and phenomenological meaning within one study

Patterson

2018

QRJ

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to argue for the articulation of the affordances of two qualitative methodologies when used within one study to address the multi-dimensional nature of the research phenomena. Design/methodology/approach This paper considers one example of combining narrative inquiry and phenomenological inquiry to construct new understandings of teacher learning from an Australian study. Findings The author draws on the individual meaning-making and shared social phenomena of professional learning explored for five secondary school teachers. Findings are accessed in two ways: narrative inquiry enables the construction of unique professional learning narratives and phenomenological inquiry proposes commonalities in the teachers’ experiences. Research limitations/implications Selected examples from the study are used to explore what may be learnt from combining two interpretative methodologies within one study with limited references to the overall research findings. Practical implications These qualitative methodological designs and their implementation within one study have positive influences on the multifaceted nature of the construction of meaning-making in teacher professional learning. Furthermore, using two qualitative methodologies together provide insights on the study phenomena, in this instance, highlighting the personal aspect of expert teachers’ professional learning needs and the disruptive dissonance of ongoing problematics as central for the teachers throughout their professional learning. Originality/value This study offers one possibility for combining methodologies to access the meaning-making in teacher learning and one avenue for creating hermeneutic understanding in using the methods within this approach.

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Stories of practitioner enquiry: using narrative interviews to explore teachers’ perspectives of learning to learn

Cited by 9 publications

References 26 publications

Teacher Learning Insights From Two Practice-Based Inquiries in South Africa and New Zealand

Teacher Learning Insights From Two Practice-Based Inquiries in South Africa and New Zealand

‘Never mind children’s cognition, what about mine?’ Teachers’ perspectives of the enactment of policy: The case of metacognition

Constructing narrative and phenomenological meaning within one study

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