Action Research A Methodology for Change and Development

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ACTION RESEARCH AND INNOVATIVE PEDAGOGIES WITH ICT 187 system of high-stakes tests and examinations was embedded in the culture of the community with the consequence that teachers often suggested leaving innovative work with the children until ‘after SATS’ in the last six weeks of the school year; rules regulated a host of matters such as children’s movement around the building, their access to computers and the internet and many related matters such as permission to save to the server, print out hard copies, and download new versions of software to enable resources accessed over the internet to run; divisions of labour governed who was a learner and who was a teacher (with the unhelpful assumption that teachers should model ‘knowing’ rather than ‘learning’), who had responsibility for keeping control and who contested that control and who was expected or not expected to have knowledge – constructing through this assumption a sense of threat for teachers who knew less about ICT than the children in their classes (as indeed often happens). In the design of PELRS, we started from the assumption that the four schools, despite their having been selected for their innovative use of ICT, would conform to the norms of schooling in England, and we looked for ways in which we could disturb these patterns and unlock new opportunities by deliberately changing things like roles and divisions of labour. One of the most constraining features of the community of schooling, we decided, was the system of lesson planning, which was normally done using a proforma with prescribed headings, developed by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA). Teachers were not forced to use this planning tool, but if not they had to be ready to explain to the inspectors on their next visit why they were not doing so. This lesson-planning tool was well suited to the emphasis in English education on efficiency, coverage of prespecified content and testing of outcomes. ICT offers mediating tools that have affordances that support exploratory, self-directed learning, but these can be emasculated by enforced containment within the very different affordances embedded in the lesson planning tool. If the aims of ‘the lesson’, the methods of teaching/learning and the resources to be used, have to be stated in advance that means that the teacher takes all the decisions without consultation with the pupils and greatly increases the danger that teacher and pupils will not share the same object in their activity. Without a common focus on an object that has been negotiated, and is at least partially shared (though situated cognition suggests that every individual will always bring different interpretations and expectations to the object), there are very unlikely to be satisfactory outcomes. This risks giving the space for pupils to develop alternative rules (‘never answer the teacher’s questions because it makes you look too keen’) and roles (clown, gang leader, teenage sex symbol) and occupy their energies in meeting very different objects from the teacher (getting through the work as quickly as possible, using the computer multi-tasking facility as an opportunity to play games under cover of an Alt+Tab flick of the wrist, acquiring high status
188 ACTION RESEARCH with peers, attracting the admiration and attention of the opposite sex). To combat these negative features of classroom practices, we developed what we called a generic pedagogic framework (GPF), as a model of the kind of innovative pedagogy we wanted PELRS to promote and a heuristic device for planning innovative learning events. Since this was a pedagogic model its basic triangular structure represented the three-way interaction between teacher, pupils and ICT tools described earlier in this chapter, rather than directly invoking the activity system model. It is reproduced here as it appears on the PELRS website (www.pelrs.org.uk). An early version of the GPF was discussed with PELRS teacher–researchers and collaboratively developed and refined. It then became the basis for the development of four ‘themed’ frameworks which the teacher–researchers used to plan learning events; ‘pupils as teachers’, ‘pupils as media producers’, ‘learning online’ and ‘pupil voice’. Figure 8.2: Reproduction of the ‘generic pedagogic framework’ from the PELRS website Generic Pedagogic Framework CO-LEARNING TEACHERS NEGOTIATION OF ROLES OTHER ADULTS INFLUENCING LEARNING PUPILS PEERS LEARNING FOCUS Framed by teachers and pupils FAMILY NEW UNDERSTANDINGS OF MEDIATED TOOL USE OUTCOMES PLAY, CHOICE AND FLOW LOCATIONS SCHOOL, HOME, VIRTUAL ICT TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING OUTCOMES 1: Creative learning 2: Active Citizenship 3: Cognitive Engagement 4: Meta-cogntion Pedagogic Strategies Learning online Pupils as teachers Pupils as media producers Pupil voice Case Studies Theoretical Resources A key feature of this model was that it deliberately avoided some of the discourse of schooling. For clarity, the terms teachers and pupils were retained, but teaching and learning were replaced by pedagogy, school was placed in the larger frame of locations, the curriculum was replaced by learning focus and lessons were recast as learning events. The concept was of learning with ICT taking place in a larger frame, incorporating the home and virtual envi-
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ACTION RESEARCH A methodology for c
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Action Research: a Methodology for
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For Robert
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8 ACTION RESEARCH Action research i
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1 Agency, Change and the Generation
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AGENCY, CHANGE AND THE GENERATION O
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2 Doing Action Research Differently
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DOING ACTION RESEARCH DIFFERENTLY 3
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Action research in health, social c
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ACTION RESEARCH FROM THE INSIDE: A
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ACTION RESEARCH AND RADICAL CHANGE
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Developing support strategies ACTIO
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ACTION RESEARCH FOR ORGANIZATIONAL
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Page 212 and 213: REFERENCES 201 Berge, B-M. and Ve,
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Page 216 and 217: REFERENCES 205 Groundwater-Smith, S
Page 218 and 219: REFERENCES 207 McClellend, D. (1978
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Page 222 and 223: REFERENCES 211 Taylor, F.W. (1992)
Page 224 and 225: Index academic-administrator tensio
Page 226 and 227: communicative validation 29-30, 78
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Page 230 and 231: James, A. 189 Jessel, J. 114 John R
Page 232 and 233: National Writing Project in England
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Page 236 and 237: Thaler, M. 29, 149 themed framework
Page 238 and 239: Conducting Educational Research ser
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