For the past fourteen years I would consider myself a teacher researcher. And although I have rarely researched and collected findings for publication, and much of my research has been informal, I believe that I have conducted research as valid as any research organization. I believe that change will not come from the administration to the teacher, but that change will occur from “the inside out.” Ray makes a strong, and for many, uncomfortable point when she states…
Teacher-researchers challenge a number of assumptions underlying the traditional (positivist) paradigm in education: that research should be objective, controlled, and decontextualized; that the researcher should be distanced and uninvolved; that research is always theory-driven and must be generalizable in order to perpetuate theory building; and that knowledge and truth exist in the world and are found through research (175).
Teachers are looking for information to help them understand or better a specific learning environment. As such is the case, they will not be uninvolved or distant. They are not necessary concerned with the Bell curve, and it will often be entirely appropriate if their results do not generalize out to the entire student population. Unlike the medical profession which might test new cures on rats and monkeys, educational research is conducted with students. It can not be controlled and decontextualized. For all of these reasons teacher research is valid.
Although I previously stated that teachers are researchers even if they do not know it, this “quiet revolution” can move no further until teachers realize that they must move “into a system in which they themselves are responsible for the production of knowledge (174). During this high stakes testing era in education, teachers often ask me why their expertise is ignored. I must admit that my usual reply is that it is now time to prove our knowledge. It is, after all, what we ask of our students. It is time to move from the “I just know” stage into the “I will offer proof/knowledge” stage. But as we make this transition, we need to be prepared for obtaining results which do not match what we expected. It is then that the collaborative process Ray discusses becomes so important. The need to see results or a process from varying points of view and the need to include others whose expertise differs from one’s own is essential. The power of one teacher to change education is incredible. The power of several working together is a true revolution.
Commentary #2
“Compositions from the Teacher-Research Point of View” by Ruth Ray
Tina, I admire your zeal for this movement. How true that teachers are the in-the-trenches, front-line of defense in our children’s educational survival. The Administrators are not in the classrooms five days a week with the kids-the teachers are. While it is true that the curriculum comes from the top down, the teachers are the one who “consume and disseminate it [knowledge]” (174). Ray’s article is fascinating because it sheds light on the teacher research movement that is happening in Australia, Great Britain, and the United States. I had no idea that this was happening-perhaps other Graduate students are familiar with this movement, however.
Kari, like you, I found that Ray’s article suggests that teacher research is looked down upon by the currently accepted field of university researchers. You ask, Why? I offer a different reason: the ruling ideology has to perpetuate the notion that the in-the-trenches teachers should just do their job, like good “laborers” and leave the research, “important stuff” to the Administration, the elite of society.
You are absolutely right. I found that Ruth Ray’s example when she collaborated with two other teachers proved that while each was able to identify information specific to their own students, some of the information was similar in all instances. It is these similarities that should be examined on the national scale, and everything else, that information specific to certain communities and classrooms should be dealt with by the teachers that are in those communities and classrooms, not national testing companies with their standards and generalizations. Projects like No Child Left Behind have to be replaced by high-context, qualitative research and teaching and it is the teachers in the classrooms that have to make that change happen.