research and academic working methods - 1

summary of the first class 06.03.2013

- Malaysia project - changing landscape of education - practicioner research - my own values - investigative attitude - 

 

Connection Malaysia Project:

Get to know about their expectations. Are they as globalised as we are? How do they see themselves as teachers in the next few years? Maybe we need schools in future for socializing! What do we see in the future and what do they see in the future?
We will get data from this project and try to analyze it.

 

Changing landscape of education -> group work:

1) Nordic countries have reached the future first. They are coming up with highly innovative solutions.

2) Nordic countries are very powerful in two areas: innovation and social conclusion.

3) The Nordic’s success depends on their long tradition of good government, which emphasizes not only honesty and transparency but also consensus and compromise.

4) Increasing the share of “free” schools in a particular district leads to better performance on a variety of measures, from school grades to university attendance.

5) The Nordic countries are probably the best governed in the world.

The whole text is about why the Nordic Countries are better than the other ones.
(Skype, Lego, many famous authors, Pippi Longstocking, IKEA, H&M, many swedish musicians are in Hollywood, new ideas in restaurants…) They learn from their mistakes and are open for changes. Invention of free schools -> education got better!

 

Video:

Children have become agent of their own enculturation (=become part of a culture)
Children want to have their culture visible in the school (bottom up choreographer)

He wants to learn children to be cooperative (strong children help other children in learning in group works-individual product) and collaborative (working together on one project-team product)

 

Practicioner research:

"Practitioner research is often used as an umbrella term for a large number of research- based activities undertaken in the fields of practice in education and social and health care. It implies that practitioners will learn from their research into practice which is not always the case in other forms of research. It also aims at improving rather than proving as an approach to research. Groundwater-Smith and Mockler (2006:107) argue that in the field of practice based research, ‘those involved in practitioner inquiry are bound to engage with both ‘theoretical’ and ‘practical’ knowledge moving seamlessly between the two.
                                                                   
To define practitioner research we must turn to Stenhouse (1975), Elliott (1991), Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1993) and Ziechner and Noffke (2001) and their work which promoted curriculum reform and teachers as researchers of curriculum and the practice of teaching. They foreground:

• teachers’ work and teachers themselves as a basis for research;
• critical reflection and systematic study of practice;
• practitioner control and ownership of research.

These are key reference points for practitioner research.

Practitioner research is closely related to, and draws on, the methodologies of the ‘family of action research’ described by Kemmis and McTaggart (2005:560) as including: participatory research; critical action research; classroom action research; action learning; and action science. Practitioner research does draw on methods from a wider field than action research allowing practitioners to undertake small scale research in case studies, ethnographic studies and to be eclectic in their use of methods, as suggested by Campbell et al (2004:80). Narrative, story and fiction methods are also valuable tools for practitioner researchers." (http://www.tlrp.org/capacity/rm/wt/campbell/)

 

How do you see yourself as teachers in 25 years?

I see me as a coach and not as a lecture. It will be about integrating every child in the class, so I will have many different students in one class and every child has its own individual assignment. We will have to teach the children how to interact social and what social activities they could do, because everybody is just watching TV in their free time.

It is my ability to enter their mindsets and make them see alternatives. So that they can be social human beings.

What are the key concepts in the second video?

-        reflecting critical

 

-        take action on what you think is not working the way it should (so it has a focus on action)

 

-        my own values:because they lead to special behaviour and thinking; f.e. if you do a research and you have special values you would react in another way -> what is in control of my values?
What are my values and what are they based on? What are my preexpections? Do I expect the pupils to be in a certain way? And why do I do that?
My values has an influence on what I am expecting from the children and what materials I chose for class. How can I add my own personal engagement in this system?

 

-        Sometimes I as a teacher feel like I am hanging in a system, where I do not really know how I can help children to improve. So I have to do some action to change it.

 

-        How do I deal with the situation, that the values of a teacher are not important?

Investigative attitude:

In my opinion, having an investigative attitude means that I try to do something new. To me it means that I broaden my horizons and learn recent things.

When did I start to be investigative? As a child, when I started to crawl or to walk. How I got from growling to walking. How many times I had to fall to learn to walk.

It seems like the school system is making people less investigative! (When I was in school the teacher gave me a question and I had to investigate and research for an answer.)

My  first investigation was, when I was standing in the bathroom, put a sponge in the water and waited for it to sank.

I want to investigate, so I am travelling and I investigate in a school system and country I don’t know. This erasmus semester is part of my investigative attitude.