Caruana, V 2005, Innovative learning in action (ILIA) issue four: New academics engaging with action research , Education Development Unit, University of Salford, Salford, UK.
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Abstract
This edition of ILIA showcases four papers which were originally submitted as action research projects on the Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education Practice and Research programme. Within the programme we offer an environment where participants can explore their unique teaching situations – not to produce all-encompassing approaches to Higher Education (HE) practice but to develop an ongoing dialogue about the act of teaching. In effect, there are no generalisable ‘best’ methods of teaching because they never work as well as ‘locally produced practice in action’ (Kincheloe, 2003:15). Thus rather than providing short term ‘survival kits’ the programme offers new HE teachers a ‘frame’ for examining their own and their colleagues’ teaching alongside questioning educational purpose and values in the pursuit of pedagogical improvement. This ‘frame’ is action research which Ebbutt (1985:156) describes as: …The systematic study of attempts to change and improve educational practice by groups of participants by means of their own practical actions and by means of their own reflections upon the effects of their actions… We promote ‘practitioner-research’ or ‘teacher-research’ as a way of facilitating professional development for new HE teachers, promoting change and giving a voice to their developing personal and professional knowledge. Teachers as researchers embark upon an action orientated, iterative and collaborative process to interrogate their own practices, question their own assumptions, attitudes, values and beliefs in order to better understand, influence and enrich the context of their own situations. The action researcher assumes that practitioners are knowledgeable about their own teaching situations and the fact that they are ‘in-situ’ and not at ‘arms length’ as the value-neutral, ‘scientific’ researcher is often claimed to be, does not invalidate their knowledge. Thus, practitioners are capable of analysing their own actions within a ‘reflective practitioner’ modus operandi. Action research is on-going in conception and well suited to examining the ever-changing and increasingly complex HE practice environment. Findings from action research are always subject to revision since it intrinsically acknowledges the need to constantly revisit widely diverse teaching situations and scenarios across everyday HE practice. Teaching is not predictable and constant, it always occurs in a contemporary microcosm of uncertainty. Action research provides an analytical framework for new HE teachers to begin to engage with this unpredictability on a continuing basis, that is its purpose and also its perennial challenge. The papers presented here describe how four relatively new HE teachers have begun to address the challenge of improving their practice within their locally based settings utilising the action research ‘paradigm’.
| Item Type: | Other |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | Contributions: Students' perceptions of the discontinuity between tutorial and examination questions in an engineering programme, by Steven Allison; Interdisciplinary engagements at the margin: child & adolescent mental health provision within pre-registration child health nursing programmes, by Celeste Foster; Assessment in the diploma in nursing programme with advanced standing: patchwork text possibilities, by Jean Parnell; Encouraging a deep approach to learning among students of prosthetics and orthotics, by Martin Twiste. |
| Themes: | Subjects / Themes > L Education > LB Theory and practice of education Subjects / Themes > L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB2300 Higher Education Subjects outside of the University Themes |
| Schools: | Schools > No Research Centre |
| Publisher: | Education Development Unit, University of Salford |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | Institutional Repository |
| Date Deposited: | 03 Apr 2009 11:01 |
| Last Modified: | 27 Aug 2021 22:07 |
| URI: | https://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/1825 |
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