Researching partnership and/or research partnerships

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Researching partnershipand/or research
partnerships

• Dr dReen Struthers

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Why research partnership?

• The positioning of partnership personnel
• Praxis to bridge theory-practice divide
• The power relationships
• Operating at the borders
• Moving between different cultural and dialogical
  contexts
• Working across difference (purposes of study)
• Self-study, action research, reflexivity,
• entering a bigger conversation

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My contextual background

• PL Schools Partnership
• Managerial or pedagogical partnerships?
• Furlong, J., McNamara, D., Campbell, A., Howson,
  A., Lewis, S. (2008). Partnership, policy and
  politics initial teacher education in England
  under New Labour.
• Partnership models
• (related to the initial teacher education
  school experiences for student teachers)

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Learning from models of partnership
HEI - led

• What could I learn from these kinds of
  partnership models?

Complimentary HEI
School Complimentary
4th model the market driven model -
Collaborative school
Collaborative HEI
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The legitimisation of knowledge

• Whose knowledge?
• The positioning of different forms of knowledge..
  And how accessible?
• But from different sources.

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The shared questions

• What types of knowing and knowledge contribute to
  my work?
• In what ways and to what ends could my practice
  be further informed?
• What values and beliefs underpin or inform my
  practice? What have I taken for granted?
• How can my practice be improved?

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Practitioner Research and University Culture
Dimensions Cochran-Smith Lytle (2009)
Inquiry as stance Practitioner Research for the
next generation.
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Insider-outsider partnerships

• Speaks of the challenges and ethical aspects of
  relating to outsiders when they enter others
  daily spaces
• Without insights from the reflective engagements
  of practitioners in her research, outcomes would
  have been only partially formed and the potential
  for impact on personal and wider pedagogical
  practice and on policy development much reduced.
  
• Such partnerships can change perspectives and
  practice for the educators and the researcher, as
  well as creating a robust platform from which
  wider influences on policy and practice might
  spring.
• Broadhead (2010) in Connecting Inquiry and
  professional Learning in Education Campbell
  Groundwater-Smith (ed)

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Continuum of AR practices.???

• Research lead totally by the university
• Research lead by teachers wanting an HE award
• Research lead by teachers wanting HEI assistance
  award not the motivation
• Research led totally by teachers with no HEI

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Responding to an invitation

• transitions

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To be an invited guest -

• Where does one sit at the table?
• Am I a partner or a collaborator?
• or merely a companion?
• Could I be a research coach or mentor?

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Coaching is

•  "a process that enables learning and development
  to occur and thus performance to improve. To be a
  successful a Coach requires a knowledge and
  understanding of process as well as the variety
  of styles, skills and techniques that are
  appropriate to the context in which the coaching
  takes place"  
• Parsloe Leedham (2009) Coaching and Mentoring
  Practical conversations to improve learning

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Boundary spanner

• K Zeichner 2008, 2010 Third spaces

University culture
School culture
Dialogic space of knowledge creation and shared
focus
Debates over the meaning of Third Space (e.g.
Bridging vs. integration)
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Teacher ownership

• Agency
• Authentic voice
• Co-constructing the recipe
• Working with their ingredients, in their kitchen,
  within their house set in their, neighbourhood.
• Yet also pondering other ingredients..

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Looking more closely peeling the layers back
Lots of different ways of seeing.
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Yet as we share the gaze
Are these two sharing the same thoughts and
motivations about this possible purchase?
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Sharing our pensieve our common spaces

• Dumbledore explains to the young Harry that the
  stone basin he calls the pensieve is used to
  hold excess thoughts from ones mind so that they
  can be examined at leisure.
• It becomes easier to spot the patterns and
  links, you understand, when they are in this
  form he says.
• In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK
  Rowling. Cited by Elizabeth Holmes IoE writing on
  teacher professional development.

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Communities of dialogue/inquiry

• ARC (Action Research Circle) meetings offer the
  dialogic space for the facilitation of increasing
  reflective and critical contemplation about
• the literature read, the themes from our
  pensieves
• the actions troubled
• the obstacles of data collection

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The challenges for an academic partner

• To want to listen
• Remember whose agenda it is
• What form will the reciprocal invitation take? (
  presupposing .)
• There is always something to learn
• Ethical concerns

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Discussion

• What are the benefits for schools in having an
  academic partner?
• What might be the impact for the teaching
  profession?
• What role can professional Learning Journals
  play?
• What are the benefits for HEIs to having
  pedagogical partnerships?

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Bibliography

• Campbell, A., Groundwater-Smith, s. (Eds.).
  (2010). Connecting Inquiry and Professional
  Learning in Education. London Routledge.
• Cochran-Smith, M., Lytle, S. (2009). Inquiry as
  Stance Practitioner Research for the Next
  Generation. New York Teachers College Press
• Edwards, A. (1995). Teacher Education
  Partnerships in Pedagogy? Teaching and Teacher
  Education, 11(6), 595-610.
• Edwards, A., Mutton, T. (2007). Looking
  forward rethinking professional learning through
  partnership arrangements in Initial Teacher
  Education. Oxford Review of Education, 33(4),
  503-519.
• Furlong, J., Barton, L., Miles, S., Whiting, C.,
  Whitty, G. (2000). Teacher Education in
  Transition Re-forming professionalism?
  Buckingham Open University Press.

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Bibliography cont..

• Furlong, J., Campbell, A., Howson, A., Lewis, S.,
  McNamara, O. (2006). Partnership in English
  initial teacher education Changing times,
  changing definitions. Evidence from the Teacher
  Training Agency's National Partnership Project
  Scottish Educational Review, 37, 32-45.
• Furlong, J., McNamara, D., Campbell, A., Howson,
  A., Lewis, S. (2008). Partnership, policy and
  politics initial teacher education in England
  under New Labour. Teachers and Teaching theory
  and practice, 14(4), 307-318.
• Gorodetsky, M., Barak, J. (2008). The
  Educational-cultural edge A participative
  learning environment for co-emergence of personal
  and institutional growth. Teaching and Teacher
  Education, 24(Jan), 1907-1918.

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• Le Cornu, R. (2008). Reconceptualising
  professional experiences in pre-service teacher
  education ... restructuring the past to embrace
  the future. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24,
  1799.
• Parsloe, E., Leedham, M. (Eds.). (2009).
  Coaching and Mentoring Practical conversations
  to improve learning (2nd Ed). London Kogan Page.
• Zeichner, K. (2010). Rethinking the connections
  between Campus Courses and Field Experiences in
  College- and University-based Teacher Education.
  Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1-2), 89-99.
• See also www.apte.org.uk/research

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Contact Details

• Dr dReen Struthers
• d.struthers_at_roehampton.ac.uk
• Also Research Publications - APTE