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For the past four years, I have been investigating the use of action research as a catalyst for changing the research culture of my institution, a New Zealand polytechnic which had just gained degree granting status. Research done in the institution prior to this time tended to be either informal and not reported, or of a fairly positivistic nature, apart from what was being conducted under the auspices of other tertiary institutions for qualifications upgrading.My perception, based on comments passed by staff in professional and personal discussions, was that while many staff were indeed investigating good research questions of being reflective practitioners, this research was not being written up or disseminated in any way. Furthermore, it was not even seen as valid research by the staff involved. The inception of degrees into the institution, with a formal requirement now being made for staff to undertake research, had caused considerable anxiety among many of the teaching staff who feared that 'researchers' would be favoured over 'teachers'. My aim in conducting my doctoral study was to show that by researching and reporting on their own practice, staff could meet the requirement to conduct research while simultaneously improving their own teaching practice. In the paper I discuss some of the theoretical issues I have had to wrestle with, and report on its success to date.
This disquiet was brought home to me in a very poignant and focused way late in 1992, when I had a staff member in my office who was nearly in tears. She had been told that the course which she had always taught, satisfactorily to her knowledge, she would be debarred from teaching in 1993. The reason for this was that her course was part of a programme which had been accepted as a degree programme, and that as she was not the holder of a degree herself, she would no longer be able to teach the course. She wanted to know what she could do about this situation.
Her concern set me thinking. I could not change the parameters governing teachers of courses in degree programmes (which require such teachers to have a qualification at least one level higher than that of the programme in which they are teaching). I was aware that with the introduction of the concept of recognising prior learning which was being promoted by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, some universities were now accepting into Masters programmes people who had not gained an undergraduate degree but who had demonstrated their ability to operate at Masters level in other ways. It seemed to me that if I could assist staff who lacked a degree, to 'prove' their ability by producing quality publications which were accepted in refereed journals or at conferences, this would stand them in good stead if they wished to apply to a university for admission to a Masters programme.
I should explain, at this point, that the whole concept of devaluing a person's skills simply because they lack a university or other credential, struck me as fundamentally unfair. It raised issues of what constitutes valid knowledge; of why some forms of knowledge are considered of more value than others purely because the holder of the knowledge has a certain piece of paper; of why our certificating institutions exclude different ways of acquiring knowledge. I explored these issues in a paper published in the New Zealand Action Research Network Newsletter, 29th May 1995. "On the nature, control and certification of knowledge" (paper presented to Research Forum, City College, Norwich UK 1994. Available from author by emailing espmf@twp.ac.nz).
I enrolled with the University of Waikato in August, 1993. I had decided that the issue I wanted to investigate was, how effective is action research as a catalyst for changing the research culture of a tertiary institution? The reason for selecting action research was that a couple of years earlier I had completed an action research course with Drs Tony Morrison and John Jones of the University of Auckland. This course showed me how easy it is to convert teaching practice to a publishable form of research. As one of the strong fears which was being expressed to me by some staff was that, in the new environment, the researchers who were being bought into the institution were likely to be on more favourable conditions of service and salary than the teaching staff, and that disparities of status would therefore occur between research and teaching (see also Sylvester, 1993), I wanted to show staff expressing such fears that there was a way for them, too, to demonstrate their competence and have their teaching valued.
I decided to offer courses in action research, along the lines of the one Tony and John had taught, as part of our own Certificate in Tertiary Teaching (CTT). There was a sound political reason for offering the courses as part of this programme. Staff taking the course, which counted as two weeks' full time equivalent, could do so during working hours as their conditions of service required them to complete the CTT. I was aware of work and stress levels among the staff and felt that completion of the work required would be very difficult for them without time relief. This belief was justified; even with the time relief many of them still had difficulty (see also Woods, 1994). But the situating of the course as part of an assessed and credentialled programme raised contradictions of its own (see Ferguson, 1995). My proposal, then, was based around case study material derived from interviews conducted with staff who had satisfactorily completed the action research course, one year later. The delay was in order to see how effective action research had been in affecting the research culture of those people's departments, and therefore of the institution also. (I accept, of course, that my approach is just one of a number of initiatives aimed at attempting to change this culture at The Waikato Polytechnic). The proposal was accepted by both the Research Committee at the Polytechnic, and by the Higher Degrees Committee at the University.
some institutions have employed staff especially to create a research culture, a working environment where research is valued and integrated in all aspects of work, and staff are supported in developing research skills. Further, Both spatial and temporal margins can be effectively used in creating a research culture.[ii]She then discussed what she terms "liminality", or "corridor consultancy", being the approaches made to her by tentative researchers outside the formal spaces of offices and classrooms. Woods found tutor anxiety about the new need to engage in research to be such that they occupy unorthodox spaces in their attempts to come to grips with what is required. Hence, the technique of stopping her in stairwells and corridors where, as Woods explains, they can test out their ideas before committing them to formal scrutiny. She described various techniques for both capitalising on the liminal spaces, and helping staff move beyond these.
Sylvester's (1993) study, carried out in another New Zealand Polytechnic which had gained degree granting status, identified further issues which are relevant in establishing a sound research culture. Sylvester stressed the need for staff development as "vital to the success of polytechnic degrees and the development of a 'degree culture'."[iii] This is backed by Powell (1992). Sylvester's staff also expressed the need for
...more communication among themselves on research issues - specifically, research seminars where staff and postgraduate students regularly contributed.[iv]She quoted Moses (1985,) who found that some staff coming in to degree teaching from the professions and without a background in research sought professional development in research methods, including assistance with writing research grant applications.[v]
Another study which was helpful was that of Bazeley (1994). Quoting Moses and Ramsden (1992), Bazeley commented on the fear of staff in an institution which was in transition from a College to a University, that good teaching practices would be devalued as a result of the change, a fear which I alluded to in my own institution earlier. A further point Bazeley made was that institutions undergoing such transition need to allocate time, library facilities and laboratory space, to name some basic resources. Bazeley commented that
It was evident that research development would require action at several levels, from structural change through to skills development, career advice (e.g. re qualifications upgrading) and personal time management techniques. The availability of time, money and infrastructure predictably were a major focus of attention. But it was the importance of creating a research ethos (or culture), where research activity was encouraged, facilitated, a focus for discussion and valued, which was particularly emphasised as being critical to the development of quality research within the new university.[vi]My action research work fits Bazeley's aspects of encouraging and facilitating research and providing a focus for discussion, identified as critical in the establishment of a research culture in Bazeley's paper. It is particularly appropriate as a focus for discussion, since action research places a high value on collaborative work.
Poole (1991) added to the list of factors contributing to a sound research culture, including
research management, policy, structures, strategies - such as strategic planning, staff workloads and expectations; the creation of a research culture or ethos through, for example, scholarship and research, visiting scholars, colloquia and symposia; the development of research infrastructure in the short and medium term and, of course, performance indicators.[vii]Her work stresses the managerial responsibilities inherent in the development of a research culture which impinge on those discussed earlier, pertaining to the staff perceptions of status, time and workload. Poole concludes that
Research is a complex set of intellectual, social, environmental, and cultural activities. It requires thought, time, resources, and a capacity to ask interesting and original questions. It also requires complex knowledge bases -substantive and methodological. Research does not occur in a vacuum, and requires development and nurturing.[viii]It seems very important, then, that an institution such as ours adopts a wide variety of strategies in its encouraging of a research culture, and that approaches which work to reduce the fear that teaching will be devalued are particularly appropriate.
Action research is a form of self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants (teachers, students or principals, for example) in social (including educationl) situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of (a) their own social or educational practices, (b) their understanding of these practices, and (c) the situations (and institutions) in which these practices are carried out.[ix]Working from this definition, then, I believed that action research would be an appropriate tool by which staff in a changing environment could learn research skills which would both enable them to research their own practice and to critique the research of others by which they might previously have felt intimidated. One of my course participants confirmed this perception, saying that he had never previously understood how research was done and had found it mystifying. Now that he has done his own research, he finds the research of others much more interesting and feels empowered in being able to quote his own research to support the teaching approach he uses with his students. Kincheloe (1991) and McNiff (1992) discuss how much of the research carried out in the field of education in the past has been done by "researchers" rather than "teachers" and has therefore been perceived as of limited relevance, and the need for this to change. An advantage of using action research is that "teachers" become "researchers" and, as they are researching their own practice, find the results much more relevant and useful. I use the words in inverted commas because it is my perception that the distinction between the two is unhelpful. While there may be at either end of a continuum, researchers who never teach or teachers who never research, most people fall somewhere between the two extremes of the continuum. I have striven in my course to encourage teaching staff to see themselves as part of a research community, offering to that community the benefits of very practical and useful work.
Another reason for introducing action research as a good approach for teaching staff, besides the transcending of unnecessary dichotomies between teaching and research, is that it is an excellent vehicle for discovering and disseminating new knowledge; even for changing the current paradigms of education. Describing the work of action researchers who work from a critical perspective, Kincheloe (1991) explains:
teacher researchers begin to look at how students produce knowledge. They examine how students bring their own socially-constructed meanings into the learning situation; they explore the dialectic between student life histories and school knowledge. Thus, critical constructivist action researchers take seriously the historical experiences of their students. When such history is appreciated then education can no longer serve as a tool of cultural conquest, a form of intellectual colonialism...[x]In an environment in which change seems endemic and frequently stressful, the ability to engage in a form of practitioner research such as action research has enabled staff to feel that they, too, have some control over their environment by defining their own issues, working on these and striving to implement the changes that suggest themselves through the research. Where this is possible, staff find it encouraging. However where it happens that blocks or negativity occur in the research process, the opposite occurs.
Bazeley, P. (1994). "From Vocational College to New University: The Research Profile and Development Needs of Academic Staff in a Period of Transition", in Higher Education Research and Development, Vol. 13, No. 2l.
Carr, W. and Kemmis, S. (1986). Becoming Critical: Education, Knowledge and Action Research. Falmer Press, London.
Durie, A. (1992). Whaia Te Ara Tika - Research methodologies and Maori. Paper presented at Seminar on Maori Research, Massey University, Palmerston North, July.
Ferguson, P. (1994). "On the Nature, Control and Certification of Knowledge". In New Zealand Action Research Network Newsletter.
Ferguson, P. (1995). "Is 'Teaching Action Research' a Contradiction?" In New Zealand Action Research Network Newsletter, 29th May.
Kincheloe, J. (1991). Teachers as Researchers: Qualitative Inquiry as a Path to Empowerment. The Falmer Press, London.
McNiff, J. (1992). Creating a Good Social Order Through Action Research, Hyde Publications, Poole.
New Zealand Qualifications Authority (1993). The Approval and Accreditation of Degrees and Qualifications.
Poole, M. (1991). "Establishing a Research Culture". HERDSA News, Vol. 13, No. 2, July.
Powell, L. A. (1992). "Keeping it Alive: Staff Development as an essential part of the change process". In Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, Vol. 17, No. 2.
Sanger, J. (1994). Transcript of notes from a critique of a paper I offered at a Research Forum. City College, Norwich, November.
Tripp, D. (1996). Draft copy of paper "Action Inquiry" received for comment March. Available from the author (tripp@murdoch.edu.au)
Sylvester, G. (1993). The Professional Development of Polytechnic Degree Teaching Staff. A research paper submitted for the degree of Master of Educational Administration, University of Auckland.
Woods, P. (1994). "Poised on the research theshold: Using liminality in creating a research culture". In Adey, D. Steyn, P. Harman, N. and Scholz, G. (Eds), State of the Art in Higher Education. University of South Africa, Pretoria.
| Author: Pip Ferguson, Professional Development Unit, The Waikato Polytechnic, Hamilton, New Zealand. Email: espmf@twp.ac.nz Fax: 07 838 0707
Please cite as: Ferguson, P. (1996). Action research: A catalyst for change. Different Approaches: Theory and Practice in Higher Education. Proceedings HERDSA Conference 1996. Perth, Western Australia, 8-12 July. http://www.herdsa.org.au/confs/1996/ferguson.html |