Lewthwaite and Nind 2018

 Methods that teach: developing pedagogic research methods, developing pedagogy

(Nind and Lewthwaite, 2018)

Nind, M. and Lewthwaite, S. (2018) Methods that teach: developing pedagogic research methods, developing pedagogy. International journal of research & method in education, 41(4), pp.398-410.

Pedagogic content knowledge allows what the teacher knows to be comprehensible to learners, because it involves knowing things like how to formulate explanations, represent content, and respond to misunderstanding. This is critically important praxis in the sense of reflection and action resulting in making prudent choices for bringing about change and new knowledge (Anwaruddin 2015).(Nind and Lewthwaite, 2018)

Within the programme of pedagogic research discussed in this paper we understand pedagogy from a sociocultural perspective rooted in Vygotsky’s (1978) ideas about dialogue and the relation-ship between social interaction and cognitive development.(Nind and Lewthwaite, 2018)

These ideas highlight the ways in which activity at a cultural and social level affects pedagogy. We hold that learning and teaching cannot be understood without reference to context: the situated, social experience of the learner and/or teacher.(Nind and Lewthwaite, 2018)

Educational action research is striking among the established pedagogic research traditions. It sys-tematizes learning by doing in research designed to improve practice alongside understanding practice in context (Carr and Kemmis 1986). This kind of action-oriented research is in keeping with there reflective practice (Schön 1987) that underpins training for higher education lecturers in the UK and beyond. Through educational action research, teachers have collaborated with peers, learners, and university partners to bring about evidence-informed developments in pedagogy that make sense from a grassroots perspective. Action research by teachers of research methods has tended towards reflective accounts of attempts to bring about pedagogic change (e.g. Barraket 2005).(Nind and Lewthwaite, 2018)

Nonetheless, pedagogic reflective narratives (e.g. Silver and Woolf 2015) are characteristic ofSchön’s (1987) reflective practitioner and developing practical, pedagogic knowledge in situ. Suchwork enhances pedagogic culture incrementally.(Nind and Lewthwaite, 2018)

Another strong pedagogic research tradition involves observational methods. While research about educational effectiveness tends to focus on outcomes data and what can be inferred about causes, research about pedagogy tends towards process data and what we can see going on. Class-room observation is common in contexts where it is not easy to talk with learners, but it has barely been used in methods classrooms.(Nind and Lewthwaite, 2018)

Non-participant, structured observation methods position the teacher and the learner as the subject of the researcher’s gaze. This can be problematic for pedagogic research if it means stripping the observed practice away from the beliefs and cultures that underpin it (Nind, Curtin, and Hall 2016).(Nind and Lewthwaite, 2018)

We needed research methods that also functioned as dialogic tools that could build pedagogic knowledge. It is this dualism of research methods that teach that we con-sider holds particular value for other researchers who are working in new and emerging teaching fields, where pedagogy is particularly ‘hard to know’ (Nind, Curtin, and Hall 2016, 51) and pedagogic content knowledge (Shulman 1987) and pedagogic culture are underexplored or underdeveloped.(Nind and Lewthwaite, 2018)

Their pedagogic knowledge is (as we found in the study) likely to come from experience, peer dialogue and primarily trial-and-error in responding to the constraints they recognize. While they develop pedagogic content knowledge, they do so in a very tacit way, making it hard for them to recognize and share.(Nind and Lewthwaite, 2018)

This mode of collaboration was informed by the teacher-led and action-oriented observation approaches of Japanese lesson study (Cerbin and Kopp 2006) applied in school-based research, while still enabling widespread knowledge transfer beyond the grass-roots, local under-standings usually associated with lesson study methods (Lewis, Enciso, and Moje 2007).(Nind and Lewthwaite, 2018)

Carroll (2009) uses the term ‘alongsider’ for researchers working with and alongside practitioners, placing a shared lens on the practice.(Nind and Lewthwaite, 2018)

#Understanding that pedagogy is hard to know (Nind, Curtin, and Hall 2016), and that ‘teachers them-selves have difficulty articulating what they know and how they know it’ (Shulman 1987, 6), our col-lection of methods needed some way of working alongside teachers and learners to tease out the pedagogic content knowledge at work.(Nind and Lewthwaite, 2018)

Our research position and needs led to the challenge we articulate here: to find, adapt or develop research methods suited to collaborating on pedagogic knowledge production, reflecting an alongsider vantage point, and generating genuine dialogue and transformation.(Nind and Lewthwaite, 2018)

This was about designing research that would avoid placing those teachers and learners as the objects of research done by others on them and respecting their agency as knowers and producers of knowledge, engaging in developing ‘shared knowledges and collective understandings’ (Erel, Reynolds, and Kaptani 2017,303).(Nind and Lewthwaite, 2018)

The role of the discussion forum as a pedagogic mode for research is also important.(Nind and Lewthwaite, 2018)

This method allowed researchers, teachers and learners to consider critical moments, identify ‘knowledge in action’ (Nind, Kilburn, and Wiles 2015, 564) and generate knowledge that is specific to a particular learning and teaching event.(Nind and Lewthwaite, 2018)

The video-stimulated focus groups were conducted so as to create a sense of common experience and understanding through exchange of perspectives, rather than to establish consensus. The opportunity to reflect together, in pedagogical terms, is- powerful.(Nind and Lewthwaite, 2018)

Working with and alongside teachers and learners to deliberately bring different perspectives into dialogue has taught us a great deal, not just about pedagogic content knowledge and approaches, strategies and tactics of teachers and learners, but about identity and emotional labour. Our experience has been that methods that are designed to be dialogic can create supportive relationships; they can bring people in to new understandings of pedagogy, involving them with us in an illuminative process of coming to know that which is hard to know. This is particularly important for areas where the ped-agogic culture is underdeveloped as in research methods education.(Nind and Lewthwaite, 2018)