Practice and performance: changing perspectives of teachers through collaborative enquiry

Abstract

Background: This paper considers the role of collaborative enquiry as a means of developing equity in education. The context was a collaborative project in which a university was supporting local schools in carrying out enquiry into their practice, with the purpose of moving the practice towards greater equity. Purpose: The research question addressed is as follows: What characterises and explains teachers’ different and changing perspectives in a process of enquiry directed towards more equitable schooling? Sample: Participants were teachers involved in a systematic process of collaborative action research in the north-west of England. Design and methods: During an 11-month period, spanning a school year, the authors engaged with teachers, supporting enquiry processes. Teachers’ perspectives were explored as they participated in this enquiry network. The study design was ethnographic, with tools introduced to generate systematic data within the process. In particular, five months into the process, 16 of the teachers were invited to participate in an activity based on Q-sort methodology. They were asked to rank, and comment on, statements which described how they might be thinking about, and responding to, the enquiry process. Results: Analysis of the ways that teachers sorted the cards led to identification of four groups of participants: (1) those focused on practice, (2) research, (3) collaboration and (4) those feeling themselves to be outsiders to the process. As the two dominant perspectives were ‘practice’ and ‘research’ (groups 1 and 2), two contrasting case studies were then developed in order to explore the perspectives in more detail. While the initial questions generated by the participants arose out of their existing development plans, and both aimed to contribute to equity in the school, analysis showed that the processes in the two schools differed and suggested that teachers’ experience of enquiry in the two case studies was also different, both in terms of the ways they were empowered to consider their own work critically, and the contexts in which they worked. Conclusions: Enquiry can work as a tool, offering teachers a way of tackling a problem. But, in addition, enquiry can change the way teachers see themselves, overall leading to a deepening of teacher professional identity.