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

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1 Educational Action Research ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: How teachers become action researchers and how teacher educators become their facilitators Petra Ponte To cite this article: Petra Ponte (2002) How teachers become action researchers and how teacher educators become their facilitators, Educational Action Research, 10:3, To link to this article: Published online: 24 Feb Submit your article to this journal Article views: 1563 View related articles Citing articles: 30 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at Download by: [ ] Date: 21 December 2017, At: 14:28

2 Educational Action Research, Volume 10, Number 3, 2002 How Teachers Become Action Researchers and How Teacher Educators Become their Facilitators PETRA PONTE University of Leiden, Netherlands 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 on-going support on the spot to teachers as they carry out their action research. The study identified five aspects of successful facilitation. Introduction Teacher: Taking part in this action research project has contributed a very great deal to my personal approach to my work. It has become far more professional. I also record far more things, which 399

3 Petra Ponte makes it easier to come back to them. Action research is a method that I find really useful: it has become part of the way I work. Teacher educator: The questions teachers ask themselves (such as: How did I actually arrive at that opinion? ), I now ask myself far more than I used to. Teachers have learned to use pupils as a source of information and I have started to do that too. Only in my case it is not pupils, but participants on professional development courses for whom I am responsible. Something similar applies to the use of multiple sources as evidence. By working with teachers in this way, it has started to work that way for me too. These quotations show what teachers and teacher educators stand to gain from action research. In this case, it was teachers and teacher educators taking part in the Dutch case study as part of the ARTE-international project. This project took place in collaboration with universities in Russia, the UK and the USA.[1] In this article only the Dutch study is presented (Ponte, 2002). In the next article in this issue of Educational Action Research, the Russian researchers present their concepts of and experiences with reflective practice in the context of the ARTE-international project. The Dutch case study consisted of teachers in secondary schools who tried to gain insight into their own practice and to improve their own practice by learning to do action research. They were facilitated in small groups by four facilitators from two Teacher Education Institutes. The project was based on four key assumptions: Action research is geared to teachers own practice and the situation in which that practice takes place. In action research teachers engage in reflection based on information they have systematically gathered themselves. Action research is carried out through dialogue with colleagues within and outside the school. In action research pupils (or other target groups of practitioners) are used as an important source of information. The views quoted above are representative of about 90% of the teachers and all the facilitators who were involved in the project. These positive findings concurred with our earlier experiences of action research carried out by teachers (Ponte, 1995; Ponte & Zwaal, 1997; Ponte & Beers, 2000). However, it emerged that teachers did find it difficult to master action research and facilitators also experienced problems in trying to offer teachers the right support at the right time. Reports of similar experiences can be found in the professional literature (see, for instance, Johnston, 1994; Elliott, 1991; Zeichner & Noffke; 2001). All this gave us reason to explore how the positive findings in the ARTE-international project were established by asking two questions: 400

4 HOW TEACHERS BECOME ACTION RESEARCHERS What patterns emerged in the way the teachers in the project mastered action research? What patterns emerged in the way they were facilitated by the teacher educators in the project? The Performance and Facilitation of Action Research The essence of the concept of action research as used in this article is the simultaneous development and application of knowledge by teachers. This means that the development and application of professional knowledge are aspects of a cyclical process that teachers are themselves responsible for they apply knowledge to achieve certain goals and based on their application of knowledge they develop new knowledge, which they then apply again, and so on. The development of professional knowledge through such independent and purposeful action is often linked in the literature with the Aristotelian concept of praxis (see, for instance, Grundy, 1995; Carr & Kemmis, 1997). Grundy argues (1998, p. 40) that: professional knowledge is knowledge that is intrinsically connected with practice. This is not knowledge that informs practice, or that has practical intent, but knowledge which is embedded in praxis : reflective knowledge in and through action. Following Riedel (1977), knowledge based on praxis can be distinguished from knowledge based on theory (modelled predictions of educational reality) and techne (potential skills, techniques and strategies). This is not the insight and understanding of the practising teacher, but of knowledge itself, knowledge that the teacher could have mastered before practising at all. That is possible because knowledge based on theory and techne involves insights and understanding that can be surveyed, and therefore able to be imparted and explained to others. In that sense, they are transferable. The knowledge of a teacher who is acting with a purpose and taking responsibility for his or her own actions is not. It develops through praxis, which is through a situation limited in time and space in which teachers intervene purposefully in the reality of others, in this case the pupils. After all, they want pupils to learn something, and learning something involves normative choices about what has to be learned and how. Teachers also gain insight into the way action research can be used via praxis. They do use techne and theory (the method and underlying theory), but this only becomes praxis when teachers determine in their own practice for what purpose and in what way they can use action research. They learn that in a facilitation situation limited in time and space in which they communicate with others based on experience (see also Eraut, 1994; Day, 1999). The communication is concerned with the knowledge that teachers acquire and the tasks they perform to develop that knowledge. The question that arises here is what teachers and facilitators can do in concrete terms in praxis, acting with a purpose and taking responsibility for their own actions, 401

5 Petra Ponte in a situation that is limited in time and space. This question can be broken down into three dimensions: Areas of knowledge: in what areas do facilitators want to enable teachers to develop knowledge, if professional knowledge is defined as the knowledge of a teacher who is acting with a purpose and taking responsibility for his or her own actions? Tasks: what do facilitators want teachers to do to be able to develop that knowledge for themselves? Communication: how can facilitators and teachers communicate with each other about the areas of knowledge, and the tasks if simply telling and explaining is not enough? These three dimensions are clarified below. Areas of Knowledge Schön (1983, 1987) argued that teachers develop professional knowledge through a process of defining and solving problems. He calls this a form of theorising. Teachers start to theorise when they experience a discrepancy between what they want to do and what they are actually doing (Whitehead, 1989). I call this a discrepancy between the desired manifestations and real manifestations of their teaching. Only when teachers experience this discrepancy, will they see the need for change (see also Elliott, 1991; Noffke, 1997). Following Riedel (1977), however, the gap between desired effects and real effects of their behaviour can be explicitly added. Using the distinction between aspirations and reality with regard to teachers behaviour and effects, Riedel broke down professional knowledge into three areas: The ideological area of knowledge covers the teachers understanding of norms and values, and the objectives based on those norms that they want to realise with their pupils. It is therefore concerned with the desired effects of their teaching. The empirical area of knowledge covers the teachers understanding of educational reality. It is concerned with the relationship between real manifestations and real effects in relation to their teaching. The technological area of knowledge covers the teachers understanding of methods, techniques and strategies that they want to use to realise the objectives they have formulated. This means that it is concerned with desired manifestations of their teaching. It is important to say, however, that the distinction between the three areas of knowledge can only be made in a formal sense (Riedel, 1977); they must, of course, be integrated in the day-to-day practice of teachers acting with a 402

6 HOW TEACHERS BECOME ACTION RESEARCHERS purpose and taking responsibility for their own actions (see also Eraut, 1994; Hargreaves, 1998; Sachs, 2002). Tasks In the Dutch case study teachers acquired knowledge in the three areas by actually carrying out various tasks. These tasks were made concrete based on the action research models developed by Stenhouse (1975), Elliott (1991), Carr & Kemmis (1997) and others. The action research model used in the project consists of four tasks. First, teachers in the project worked with a simple plan of steps (consisting of the formulation of a general idea, the exploration of their general idea, drawing up of a general plan, planning, implementation and evaluation of concrete actions for improvement, and writing up of a case study on the teachers own action research). Secondly, teachers wrote up logbooks in order to record and evaluate their action research and to plan how they would follow it up. Thirdly, they functioned as critical friends who helped each other to reflect on what they were doing and why, mainly by asking questions. I have added a fourth task (which is seen as the professional standard for teachers doing action research): teachers ask themselves questions with regard to a number of aspects of the action research process. The aspects are: Vision: what are my underlying assumptions and visions, and how can they be placed within the context of those of others (the school, the authorities, academia, etc.)? Evidence: how do I know whether my assumptions about a situation (or my actions in relation to pupils, colleagues or others) are correct and how do I know whether my actions in that situation have had the outcome I intended? Interpretation and explanation: what do the facts I have gathered tell me about the situation to be changed (or changes I need to make in my behaviour toward pupils, colleagues or others) and how are they connected? Dialogue: how do I involve pupils, colleagues or others in planning, implementing and evaluating my activities? Improvement: why do I think that a change is also an improvement and for whom is the change an improvement? Ethics: is what I am doing ethical and, if not, what can I do about that? Communication Praxis always involves acting in relation to another : the teacher in relation to the pupil and colleagues, the facilitator in relation to the teacher. In accounting for their actions, teachers and facilitators not only have to be concerned with technical constraints in the sense of rules or procedures to be followed, but also with moral-ethical constraints in the sense of objectives 403

7 Petra Ponte to be realised (see also Elliott, 1991; Grundy, 1995; Zeichner & Noffke, 2001). What is important here is that, in following rules or procedures, they can get it wrong and be corrected, but in realising their objectives they can do badly and be called to account (Riedel, 1977). In concrete terms this means that knowledge about the action research model can be corrected by facilitators or critical friends when what is being related and explained is misunderstood. Understanding the concrete performance of the tasks with a view to developing understanding in the three areas of knowledge cannot be corrected. However, teachers can be called to account by their facilitators and critical friends, for instance, to answer questions about the motives behind their concrete actions. Teachers learn, therefore, to do action research by building up experience and by communicating with others about the meaning of that experience. Skills and Actions of Teachers Who are Learning to Do Action Research In the case study I started to explore what teachers would have to do in relation to each of the dimensions described above in order to master action research. I did this by using professional literature and adding some findings from the research material. The findings of my explorative investigations are summarised below. These findings were used in the further analysis of the research material. After presenting the summarised findings of my explorative investigations I will look at the research method of the case study and the results of the further analysis of the research material. What Teachers Do in Order to Develop Knowledge in the Three Areas As has been said, the distinction between the three areas of knowledge can only be made in a formal sense (Riedel, 1977); they must be integrated in the day-to-day practice of teachers acting with a purpose and taking responsibility for their own actions. Teachers will then develop greater insight and understanding the more they devote proportionate attention to and continuously link the three different areas of knowledge. Furthermore, they will develop greater knowledge in the three areas in proportion to the extent to which they use their freedom of choice; they do that by defining the objectives of others as problematic and linking them to their own objectives. Finally, they will develop knowledge in the three areas by raising general insights based on techne and theory for discussion with a view to formulating their own insights. The actions and skills that teachers have to master in the areas of knowledge dimension form the categories in Figure 1. These are designated proportionate, link, freedom of choice and dealing with knowledge. As Figure 1 shows, this study assumes that facilitators help teachers to master these actions and skills. 404

8 HOW TEACHERS BECOME ACTION RESEARCHERS Figure 1. Skills and actions of teachers who are learning to do action research. What Teachers Do in Order to Carry out the Tasks Five actions and skills that teachers have to master in order to learn to do action research are distinguished on the tasks dimension (see Figure 1). The carrying out category in the figure means that teachers have to learn to carry out the tasks in a practical sense. This concerns the procedural and methodological performance of the four components of the action research model described above, as followed in the project. Teachers will master the action research model the more they envisage the intended benefits of the separate activities in the light of their action research as a whole. The developing understanding category refers to the fact that teachers formulate their educational and moral insights step-by-step, and the systematic work 405

9 Petra Ponte category refers to the fact that they also formulate their goals and plans step-by-step. Finally, the theoretical background category means that teachers have to link the different activities they are carrying out to theories on action research. The tasks dimension also assumes that facilitators will help teachers to master these actions and skills. What Teachers Do in Order to Communicate about the Progress of their Action Research Four actions and skills that teachers have to master in order to learn to do action research are distinguished on the communication dimension (see Figure 1). First, teachers have to ensure continuity in the communications about their action research, so they can discuss the progress of their action research with each other and with their facilitator on a regular basis. Secondly, they have to acquire a picture of the intended benefits to be gained from the communications. Thirdly, their communication should be based on concrete work, that is on the activities that they have carried out or still plan to carry out as part of their action research. Fourthly, they have to make systematic use of the communications for their own objectives by determining the agenda of the facilitation meetings themselves (that is by taking over responsibility for this from the facilitator). Facilitators are expected to create a facilitation setting with the teachers in which these kinds of communication can take place (see also Richardson, 1997; Day, 1999). Research Method In the case study two analyses were performed with the help of the dimensions and categories in Figure 1. First, the research material was analysed with regard to each separate dimension and category (horizontal analysis). Then patterns were identified in the material as a whole based on these analyses (vertical analysis). This article only looks at the results from the vertical analysis. Before presenting these results, I shall look at the research domain, data gathering and data-analysis. The Research Domain The Dutch case study involved three secondary schools and three senior secondary vocational schools. A total of 28 teachers carried out action research at these schools (individually and in groups) into aspects of their own practice. Each school had a teacher educator who supported the teachers in seven small groups (referred to as networks A G below). Four facilitators from two Teaching Education Institutes took part. The teachers had little or no previous experience of action research and the teacher educators had little or no experience with facilitating action research. The teachers followed the project programme for 2 years, during which the 406

10 HOW TEACHERS BECOME ACTION RESEARCHERS networks met with their facilitator on average seven times a year. In addition to the facilitation meetings at the teachers own schools, 3 1-day meetings were held for all the Dutch teachers together. The teachers also had the opportunity to discuss their action research with English participants in the ARTE-international project during a 3-day workshop in Cambridge (UK) and a visit to one of the English project schools. Like the school networks, the facilitators and the Dutch project leaders met on average seven times a year. At first their meetings focused on the development of a common framework for running the project programme. From the outset, these meetings became the forum at which facilitators discussed how they facilitated their networks. At a workshop in Minneapolis (USA), the facilitators had the opportunity to exchange experiences with facilitators who were taking part in the project in Russia, the UK and the USA. Data Gathering Data were gathered at different times in the programme using four different instruments: logbooks, fragment analyses, supplementary interviews and documents. The logbooks were used throughout the whole project to gather information about the progress of the teachers action research and the support they were given by the facilitators. Both teachers and facilitators used forms with a number of (open) questions before and after each facilitation meeting.[2] In each logbook the teachers answered questions such as: What did I contribute to this network meeting in connection with my action research? What did I hope to achieve for myself and what did I actually achieve? How did the facilitator help me and why did that help? The same kinds of questions in terms of content were formulated for teachers and facilitators as far as possible, so that the logbooks could be compared. So the facilitators answered questions such as: What did I do in this meeting and why did I do that? What do I think this achieved for the members of the network and the network as a whole? Which of my interventions were successful and what can I attribute that to? The facilitators fragment analyses were intended to supplement their logbooks. To facilitate the analyses all the meetings were recorded on tape. After each meeting the facilitators selected one or more short fragments from the recordings that they wrote out and then analysed using standardised questions (e.g. What did I do in this fragment and why did I do that? What 407

11 Petra Ponte do I think this achieved for the members of the network and the network as a whole? Which interventions were successful and what can I attribute that to?). In order to be able to identify important developments in the process, the facilitators were asked to select fragments that in their opinion illustrated: a turning point in their thinking or action, or that of the teachers; a sudden insight on their part or that of the teachers; their own or teachers interventions that had a clear impact and/or regularly recurring situations. As can be seen from the above examples, the questions for the fragment analyses of the facilitators matched the questions from the facilitators and teachers logbooks in terms of content, making comparison possible here too. The three supplementary interviews with the teachers and the two supplementary interviews with the facilitators focused for each recording on the information available from the logbooks and/or fragment analyses. They were usually asked to clarify something or to provide additional information. Finally, the documents related to the case studies that teachers wrote up as part of their action research. The data taken from the documents for the research were teachers comments on what they gained from taking part in the project. Data Processing To make the large quantity of qualitative data in the case study manageable, the data from the logbooks, fragment analyses and supplementary interviews were put into a case-study database (see Miles & Hubermans, 1994). Kwalitan, a computer program, (Peters, 1995) was used to divide up the written material into smaller pieces of text. These pieces of text are called segments in the Kwalitan program. There were 6486 segments in total, divided for pragmatic reasons into four periods: Segments from period 1 (September 1997 to January 1998) Segments from period 2 (February 1998 to July 1998) Segments from period 3 (August 1998 to April 1999) Segments from period 4 (May 1999 to July 1999) The data from the case studies that the teachers wrote as part of their action research only became available at the end of the project of course. These were processed manually. Then, following Miles & Huberman (1994), codes were assigned to the segments that were used to summarise the research material. This gave us a systematic method of retrieving the data and a simple way to relate different items of data. Several codes could be assigned to each segment. The codes were derived from: 408

12 HOW TEACHERS BECOME ACTION RESEARCHERS theory (for example, segments in which teachers said something about the empirical area of knowledge could be identified with the code evidence ). the questions in the logbooks and fragment analyses (for example, segments in which teachers answered the question about what they had contributed about their action research during the meetings could be identified with the code contribution ). The codes were adapted and supplemented several times, based on the research material, to produce 26 codes in the end. The inter-rater agreement was calculated over much of the final coding. There were 3500 codes for 1512 segments from networks A and B, periods 1 and 2 (codes created by two independent raters). The inter-rater correlation was calculated using the Kupper measure (Kupper & Hafner, 1989). The correlation was very high being 0.96 for all codes together. These codes were used to establish whether the teachers were carrying out action research as intended, but it was only possible to establish how they mastered action research in a very general sense. It was also only possible to establish in broad terms how they were facilitated in this. That is why as explained in the last section I decided to explore what teachers had to be able to do for each of the three dimensions (areas of knowledge, tasks and communication) in order to master action research (see Figure 1). To do that, I went back to the literature on the development of professional knowledge. The actions and skills of teachers learning to do action research that I identified in this way were validated through confrontation with empirical evidence, that is the research material. In other words, by investigating whether the research material provided grounds for maintaining, extending or adapting the theory-based actions and skills. The categories finally included in Figure 1 are based on several segments. These segments had to occur for several teachers, and/or facilitators and/or networks, and in more than one source (logbooks, fragment analyses and/or supplementary interviews; see also Miles & Huberman, 1994). The horizontal analysis of the data (analyses of each separate dimension and category from Figure 1) were carried out in several rounds (compare with Yin, 1989, pp ). Each round started with an initial exploratory analysis of data from network A, period 1, followed by analysis of data from networks A and B, periods 1 and 2. These analyses were checked against data from the other networks, periods 1-4, to find out whether there were grounds for additions or modifications. The process was repeated until saturation point was reached. New insights only emerged from the analyses of networks C and D, in periods 3 and 4 (no new insights emerged from networks E, F and G). That is why only the data from networks A, B, C and D, periods 1-4 were used for the detailed description of the agreements and differences between the networks. 409

13 Petra Ponte The vertical analysis involved more detailed interpretation of the horizontal analysis by searching for patterns in the results for the dimensions and categories together. Patterns occurred where matching phenomena were found on more than one dimension and in several categories on the same dimension. The researchers analyses and interpretations were always given to the research assistant for checking (peer debriefing; Denzin & Lincoln, 1994). The conclusions were also given to the network facilitators (limited member checks; Denzin & Lincoln, 1994). The facilitators were asked whether they found the results recognisable. The peer debriefing resulted in some modification of the results, the member checks did not. Results: what patterns emerged in the way teachers in the project mastered action research? The data show that teachers learned to do action research by mastering the actions and skills from Figure 1, which were new to almost all of them. It was noticeable that most of the teachers did gradually master them simultaneously and in equal measure, although they varied in the extent to which they did this. The patterns that emerged from the vertical analysis turned out to relate mainly to the process of development that teachers went through with respect to a number of attitudes to their professional practice. These concerned their attitudes to practice, understanding, initiative demarcation and functionality. These patterns are explained below and illustrated with statements of a teacher (teacher T). Attitudes to Practice The data show that many teachers ignored their own practice as it were, because they did not really interpret the concept of practice as: what you yourself are doing in concrete terms at a given moment.[3] In other words, they did not really focus on their own current practice at first. Two phenomena manifested themselves in this connection. First, the majority of teachers initially tended to define practice as the actions of others. Practice in their view was the context in which they practice and they assumed that, within this context, it is mainly the actions of others (colleagues, pupils) that must change. Secondly, many teachers tended at first only to define practice as future action rather than present action. They focused mainly on what they plan to do (technological area of knowledge) and not on what is actually happening at a given moment (empirical area of knowledge). Practice for them was, in the first instance, the situation that they want to achieve in the near future. Teachers gradually came to see practice as their own concrete action at a specific time, from which they can learn something for future practice. Example: At first T wanted to set up a pupil monitoring system (future practice), that would then have to be used by his colleagues throughout the 410

14 HOW TEACHERS BECOME ACTION RESEARCHERS school (practice of others). He wanted to study whether that happened after the event. He said to his facilitator: You are always talking about your own practice, it is always I : how I know, how I involve and so on. But the problem is that my practice isn t there yet. The teacher in the example you gave us had her own practice and she could change it, she had her own way of teaching and her own relationship with the pupils. But when I want to talk about introducing a pupil monitoring system, we haven t got one yet. I am starting from point zero and so it is difficult for me to research that. I don t have a practice yet. The facilitator explained that activities undertaken with others to introduce a pupil monitoring system is also practice (current practice) and that T could, for instance, focus on what his role is in this process (own practice). Attitudes to Research The initial picture that many teachers turned out to have of action research was mainly along the lines First you clearly define a change desired by others that you want to introduce in the school (for example, by writing a memo on pupil guidance in the second stage of secondary school) and then you propose that this change be applied by others. Most teachers made a sharp distinction between research and practice at first. They saw research mainly as objective gathering of information. You do that to measure how others function (description of the starting situation) or functioned (evaluation afterwards). It may turn out to be possible to make recommendations based on this for how others could do things differently. Systematic testing and evaluation of their own actions and what they discovered from those actions was not seen as part of this. There were also teachers who gathered data to find out a lot about the subject without having any practice-based goal at all. Teachers gradually developed a process-orientated approach, meaning that they started to systematically gather data on their own practice with a view to planning improvements step by step and evaluating their effects. T said: This method of examining yourself and your work is new to me. It is not so difficult, I can often do it. And what I ve learned from this is that if you want to change something, you have to do it yourself and that you then have to systematically map out what is going on. At the same time as they were developing a process-orientated approach to research, teachers started to use the data they had systematically gathered in their communications more often. 411

15 Petra Ponte Attitudes to Understanding The data show that at first many teachers focused in a one-sided way on what they have to do (the technological area of knowledge). They usually formulated knowing what to do in terms of insight into directly applicable solutions. So the main thing they expected to gain from the facilitation meetings was handy tips. They seemed to assume that practice is an immutable fact and that they simply ought to know how to act. They had very little understanding in the beginning of their own choices in what, how and why they did things. The data show that the majority of teachers did gradually start to focus on understanding the what, how and why of their own actions. They developed this understanding by doing two things more often: defining issues as problematic (that is raising for discussion things that were taken for granted, and devoting proportionate attention to the technological, empirical and ideological areas of knowledge); conceptualising (that is by analysing concrete experiences and linking the technological, empirical and ideological areas of knowledge). T spoke about this development: I expected action research to be a very clear and simple way of working. Rather like that technique for meetings that we learned on the meetings course. You simply say: that is a technique that everyone can understand and that is quick to use. So folks, let s just solve this problem. Now I can see that it doesn t work like that: step by step is often better than going too fast. Knowledge does not exist, knowledge grows! Some teachers also gradually started to raise the objectives and insights of others for discussion with a view to formulating their own objectives and insights. On this basis, it is possible to conclude that most teachers started to see practice as variable and insight and understanding as forms of knowledge that can be continually developed. There was a development from understanding as a priori something you must know (knowledge as a fact that can be applied), to understanding as a priori not knowing for sure (knowledge that arises and changes through action and dialogue). Attitudes to Initiative The results show that teachers initially expected the facilitator to be the initiator in carrying out their action research: the facilitator sets the agenda of the meeting and determines the tempo of our action research; the facilitator offers us a programme and gives us assignments; we follow the programme and we do the assignments. It could be argued that teachers were handing over the control of their own professional development with this wait and see attitude, but slowly but surely most teachers started to 412

16 HOW TEACHERS BECOME ACTION RESEARCHERS take a more active role. They started to determine for themselves how they wished to design their action research, what their objectives were, what they wanted to discuss at the meetings and when. For example, T wrote in the beginning: In the next period I m going to do the homework set by the facilitator, so that I m able to put my questions into words when we get to that stage. Later he wrote: I have formulated my general idea and planned my explorative phase. I have a number of questions about them that I want to discuss in the facilitation meeting. So teachers gradually took control more, and this was coupled with a growing sense of control over their own practice and the situation in which it was taking place. Evidence for this can be seen, for instance, in the fact that they slowly took over part of the facilitator s supporting role in determining the concrete content of their action research. The facilitator provided them with a common structure as it were (in the action research model), and they used that to research and develop their professional practice. The data also reveal that this gave them a sense of empowerment: not only did they notice that you can influence your practice or the situation in which that practice takes place yourself, they also noticed that you have more control over the process and so you have more influence. Attitudes to Demarcation As time went by almost all the teachers progressed from wanting to work on everything at the same time in an ad hoc way to wanting to take an aspect of their practice which they could influence as a project to work on. T, for instance, asked himself: What is so special about action research? This kind of discussion with colleagues is part of the way I normally work. However, the facilitator explained to him that, as T himself put it: With action research it is about doing things methodically and it is about the small steps. Not starting with how you think you are doing, but examining how you are really doing. It is a gradual process, don t make such a drama of it if it goes a bit less quickly than your other work. Project-based work required demarcation: teachers had to choose a specific aspect of reality on which to work over quite a long period of time. Demarcation was more difficult the more teachers geared their efforts to collective objectives of the school (wanting to work on something that immediately affected the whole school). They soon got to feel that everything was connected with everything else and that they had to do everything at 413

17 Petra Ponte once. They found it difficult to say to themselves: I want to work on this aspect a bit longer and I hope to achieve X and Y by doing that; the rest of my practice will just continue as normal and for the time being I will be satisfied with the way I deal with that. Project work, in fact, also required a broadening from a short-term perspective with a view to immediate results for everything to a long-term perspective with a view to developing insight and understanding and improving an aspect of practice. Attitudes to Functionality Teachers are expected to place the separate activities in the context of the whole of their action research, to deliberately use one activity to plan the next and to deliberately and systematically use the communication in the network for their own purposes. Many teachers found that difficult at first, losing sight of the purpose of the separate activities. They treated carrying out the steps of their action research, keeping a logbook, the rules for critical friends and use of the professional standard as separate exercises with no strings attached. They saw them as isolated activities that they could learn to do without assigning them a function in the light of the next step in their project. Teachers had to get used to the fact that action research and communication about action research are not isolated non-committal activities. The findings show that they gradually came to understand the functional connections between the various activities: the non-committal exercises became necessary exercises for the progress of their own action research. For example, to help them to formulate their general ideas, the teachers mapped out their actual practice using a diary and their desired practice using a card game. On the question of how the results from the diary compared with the results from the card game, T replied: There was no connection at all between the card game and the diary! When I started to keep the diary I did it because the facilitator said I had to. It was nothing more than an interesting method of self-examination. I found the card game fascinating but didn t attach any importance to it. Only weeks later did I see in my diary that I had a problem in my lower school classes and that I would have to work on that first. Results: what patterns emerged in the way teachers were facilitated by the teacher educators in the project? The data show that the facilitators determined the gains for the teachers to a large extent. They did not only help teachers by focusing on the proceduralmethodological performance of the action research. Within the facilitation situation as praxis limited in time and space they gave substance to their facilitation by paying explicit attention to the skills and actions from Figure 1. A trend was observed among the facilitators from giving instructions beforehand to repeated support on the spot and on the job. At first 414

18 HOW TEACHERS BECOME ACTION RESEARCHERS facilitators associated this new form of support with the idea that their role was identical to that of critical friends, a role that in their experience was fulfilled mainly after the event. However, this kind of role turned out to be not enough for the facilitators. Their facilitation was more effective when they did not confine themselves to responding after the event, but also took a pro-active role in assisting teachers as they actually carried out their action research. The patterns that emerged from the vertical analysis turned out to concern five aspects of their support. Their support became more successful the more cyclic, explicit, negotiated, forceful and critical it was. These patterns are explained below and illustrated by statements of a facilitator. Cyclic The facilitators at first assumed that they could break down the action research to be carried out by the teachers into separate components and activities, and then offer these components and activities separately in succession. In the beginning, therefore, they adopted a linear approach. They tended to give instructions in advance and then to assume that the teachers would carry them out themselves as intended, but it did not turn out like that. The more the facilitators kept returning to different aspects of the action research in different situations the more effectively the teachers carried out their action research. They did that by continually getting teachers to look back ( What have I done? ) and forward ( How can I progress from here? ). Facilitators got used to the idea of the need to gradually make clear the meaning of action research by returning to certain aspects at the same time, linking them and clarifying them: they discovered that telling them once is not enough. For example, the facilitator wrote in the logbook: At this meeting I explained the card with the steps of action research again and tried to make links, both back to the general idea and forward to the action for improvement. Explicit Many teachers did not understand what they were doing in the beginning and they often failed to recognise their own achievements. Formulating the general idea about the nature of a problem was initially seen as doing nothing and gaining insight into the cause of the problem to be resolved was seen as a by-product hardly worth mentioning. Facilitators tended to under-estimate the complexity of action research at first: they often thought that teachers understood their explanation when they did not. Slowly but surely they learned to make their implicit expectations more explicit. Making them explicit involved revealing and putting into words what teachers were doing and why, and what they were achieving. Teachers experienced these explicit forms of facilitation as supportive. For example, teacher G wrote in her logbook before the network meeting: 415

19 Petra Ponte What concrete aspects have I been working on over the past period? Changing the way I get pupils to practise skills. What concrete things have I done during the past period? Discussed the way I go about interviewing pupils and which pupils I will interview with my critical friends. This with a view to evaluating the above. At the meeting itself, the facilitator looked at the plan of activities G was working on for her action research. Then, after the meeting, G wrote: I said that I had hardly been able to do anything at all. But when the facilitator questioned me it turned out that I had already done some things with regard to changing my pupil guidance role. I realised that I was already working on my actions for improvement. By asking questions the facilitator made me realise that this was also part of my action research. The more facilitators expressed things in explicit and consistent terms using the language of action research the more successful they became, for instance, by designating general idea an idea about the ins and outs of a problem, and not a broad idea for a topic. They assigned common words to the concrete actions of the teachers. However, they could not always take for granted that the teachers and facilitators would assign the same meanings to those words: the words had to acquire a shared meaning by both parties continually explaining them to each other. Negotiated As the project went on, facilitators increasingly hitched on to and used the teachers own contributions about their own action research. The facilitators saw this hitching on to and using as a form of negotiation. They were motivated by their desire to give teachers more responsibility for their own action research and their desire to be less dominant in the network. As the project went on they increasingly asked teachers to define for themselves the form they wanted their action research to take. Teachers did that based on their expertise, wishes or expectations. The facilitators then regularly took the teachers expertise, wishes or expectations as a starting point to search for opportunities to design action research in the given circumstances. In doing so, the facilitators became aware that they could not direct the teachers. In other words, they could not stick rigidly to what the model prescribes. A consensus was usually sought when there was a discrepancy between what the teacher wanted to do and what facilitators considered sensible based on the principles and method of action research. For example, E wanted to develop policy at departmental level. However, her facilitator thought that network members should also link school policy to their own practice. The following conversation took place between them on this issue: 416

20 HOW TEACHERS BECOME ACTION RESEARCHERS E: I think we need to sit down with teachers and put down a clear vision about what we expect in the area of cooperation. Facilitator: What would your contribution to this be? E: I can galvanise it. First I will talk to my colleagues. Facilitator: Would it also be possible to try something out yourself and get the discussion going at the same time? E: Yes, but I would like the school to get more benefit from ARTE. Facilitator: What needs to change in your opinion, if the school is to get more benefit from it? E: I think we need to agree to give ARTE more priority. Facilitator: Yes, and if you look at the content, are there requirements you would like to lay down there? You are all looking at individual questions. Do you want to make that more general? E: Next year I would like to work on the same theme with the network. Of course, it would be nice, for instance, to have a clearer idea myself about co-operative learning, but next year I lose my group and it wouldn t be finished. Facilitator: So you want the network to focus on one theme? E: Not only that, also on one target group, the Social Care Department for instance. In the end, they reached this compromise: the network would work on a common theme, namely independent work in the Social Care Department. Within this theme, teachers would work on their own issues individually or in pairs. Facilitators tried to convince teachers by force of argument of the most effective way of proceeding within the given circumstances (and vice versa). The facilitators reported that this negotiation based on arguments required them to develop from a model-based view of action research ( This is how it has to be done ), to a concept in which they and the teachers together used the action research model as a heuristic method ( This is how it could be done in this specific situation ). Forceful Many teachers said that they had difficulty actually carrying out what they had planned and discussing planned or executed activities in the network in concrete terms. They also said that they needed the encouragement of the facilitator to keep up their action research. For example, At the last meeting the facilitator encouraged me to carry on. I promised to do that and he will ask me what I have done at the next meeting. Reticent facilitators were not perceived to be supportive. Facilitators must, as it were, push teachers to perform concrete activities, and to discuss these activities in the network in a systematic and purposeful way. The forceful approach does not involve giving instructions but challenging teachers to act by asking questions such as What have you done in the intervening period?, What questions do you 417