- Title
- (In)sights from 40 years of practitioner action research in education: perspectives from the US, UK and Australia
- Creator
- Mockler, Nicola; Casey, Ashley
- Relation
- Practitioner Research in Early Childhood: International Issues and Perspectives p. 122-138
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781473921924.n8
- Publisher
- Sage
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2015
- Description
- This book advocates practitioner research as a vehicle for transformation and change in early childhood settings. This chapter draws on the rich history of practitioner research in schools to suggest some (in)sights - both personal (in) and theoretical (sights) - gained over the past 40 years of practitioner action research in education that might be salient for early childhood educators embarking on practitioner research. In the first part, we provide a brief history of practitioner inquiry and action research in schools, drawing on traditions developed in the United States, United Kingdom Australia. In the second section, we contrast these traditions with the recent 'evidence-based practice' turn in education, arguing that the best practitioner action research is critical, emancipatory, contextual and generative, focusing on problematisation of practice as opposed to solving either real or 'manufactured' problems. We then draw on our personal experiences - as practitioner researchers and academic partners to practitioner researchers in school contexts - to provide illustrations of approaches to practitioner action research that, we consider, move beyond 'evidence-based practice', before concluding with some observations that we hope might support our early childhood colleagues. Before we begin, however, a note about terminology. A useful summary of the way the term 'practitioner research' is used was given by Cochran-Smith and Lytle (2007: 25), who described it as 'a conceptual and linguistic umbrella to refer to a wide array of education research modes, forms, genres, and purposes'. They argued that the expression encompasses a range of educational research methods such as: action research; teacher research; self-study; narrative (or autobiographical) inquiry; the scholarship of teaching and learning; and the use of teaching as a context for research (Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 2007). In a comparable article Zeichner and Noffke (2001: 7) made their own list of practitioner research traditions that developed through decades of 'evolution and contestation'. These include: 'the action research tradition; the British teacher-as researcher movement and the participatory action research movement in Australia; and the teacher researcher movement in North America'. It is the US, UK and Australian traditions that we pay particular attention to in this chapter. That is not to say that expressions of action research developed elsewhere are not noteworthy or significant but that, in providing a background to practitioner research, these contexts afford us enough scope to explore the traditions that have most influenced our own experiences of and beliefs about practitioner research Australia.
- Subject
- reflexive inquiry; evidence-based practice; practitioner research; praxis
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1316480
- Identifier
- uon:23175
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781446295359
- Language
- eng
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