Action research LS DBR
To inform practice this research intends to be situated within the context of practice (Lave and Wenger) and contextualised through the application of digital accessibility education within the primary school classroom. Research situated in practice is often conducted using case study (ref) or action research (refs). In this case as a new intervention and potential unfamiliar topic area for teachers this will need ongoing testing, so the more appropriate would be action research as this facilitates iterative cycles of implementation and improvement (ref) whereas case studies are more related to describing singular events in detail (ref). Action research has also been used in several previous studies relating to the development of educational interventions and learner response to the teaching of digital accessibility awareness (refs) and professional development of online MOOC courses for teachers (ref).
Being situated in practice, the intention of this research is to also look beyond just the classroom as a singular setting or practitioner, but also explore the teacher in their context as a practicing professional within a teaching team. It is recognised that teachers often use peer support to learn their craft (ref), and teaching is often associated as a collaborative profession drawing on a peer network as a community of practice (Lave and Wenger).
Lesson study is a form of classroom action research, but it is specifically conducted as a collaboration between teachers to plan, teach, observe and analyse teaching and learning (Dudley, 2014). The learning is centred on the practical development of teacher practice knowledge and the process includes jointly formulating learning goals, designing lessons, teaching and observing lessons, analysing the evidence generated and repeating the process in interactive cycles to improve the skills and knowledge of teaching (Cerbin and Kopp, 2006). One added dimension to lesson study is the focus on the activity of students during the observations to see how they respond and react to the lessons being taught. The development of ‘pedagogical content knowledge’ (PCK) is a core part of the lesson study process and described as developing knowledge of the subject matter, how teach the subject matter within the classroom environment and understand how students learn and respond to the subject matter (ref). Lesson study has been found to have a positive impact on the improvement of PCK and the competencies of teachers to design and implement learning (pedagogical competencies) and subject matter (professional competencies) (ref) which are the variables of data collection this study intends to explore. No studies using lesson study to specifically look at teacher development have yet been identified in the context of digital accessibility awareness education.
Lesson study puts the teachers as the practitioners researching the practice and although this is ideal, in this scenario the literature indicates that teachers do not currently have this subject knowledge (ref) and therefore this process does not account for how they will acquire the subject knowledge in the first place to inform the planning of teaching.
This research will therefore need to acknowledge the role and position of the researcher as subject expert in the topic of digital accessibility awareness and sitting within the research as a knowledgeable other (ref). Lesson study often refers to knowledgeable others leading the lesson study process, but this is predominantly as an expert teacher in that area or specific teaching context (ref), rather than the researcher without the contextual knowledge of the classroom, in this instance the context is the primary school Key Stage 2 classroom but the researcher is a subject expert in digital accessibility content creation and training within a workplace setting.
To address the difference, the research design will take from the tradition of education design research that facilitates the collaboration between teachers and researchers to implement and pilot educational interventions in iterative cycles. The subtle nuance of education design research compared to lesson study is that its primary focus is on the iterative design and development of artifacts and tangible outputs, rather than purely practical knowledge development. Adopting the two methods as a combination it is wholly relevant to the longer-term aims of the study to fill the gap to create pedagogical tools and knowledge for future development or implementations of classroom based pedagogical support in practice (ref).
This research overall aims to produce teaching materials such as lesson plans and classroom resources as well as generate knowledge about how teachers develop their own practice knowledge, so the combination of education design research and lesson study will provide this input into the academic literature, but also produce a set of tools during the process that others could build upon.
Teachers knowledge provides a starting point for critical reflection because educational acts are social acts. These are embedded and can change in particular social, historical and local contexts, and with different participant understanding of what is happening in the educational encounters (Car and Kemmis, 1986).
Teachers would need support and scaffolding to learn the subject area initially- ZPD - e.g:
https://udlguidelines.cast.org/more/research-evidence#checkpoints
The professional development of teacher participants will not only help them develop skills to learn about digital accessibility to be able to teach the topic, but will enable them as teachers to apply the skills they have learned in their own teaching by understanding how to make more accessible materials for a broader range of students, something crucial in the application of universal design for learning (UDL).
Comments
Post a Comment