Session Information
15 SES 13, The Role of Models as Tools in the Ecology of Research and Practice Partnerships
Research Workshop
Contribution
The key conceptual argument of this workshop is that models, when used as tools utilised in the intersection of professional practice and research, have the potential to facilitate effective research partnerships. Within research partnerships situated as sites for learning, they can provide opportunities for reciprocal learning, and a way of enacting partnership. These models can function as boundary objects supporting boundary crossing such as that between schools and university, and through which learning can occur as a result of reflection and transformation, and often involving aspects of confrontation (Akkerman and Bakker, 2011). We suggest that using and developing models has many potential benefits to aid partnership including: encouraging reflexivity and criticality; adding a dynamic to dialogue; enabling mapping of experiences; providing a relational platform; and acting as a visual mediation of encounters.
During this workshop we will describe how models can play different roles in the research process depending on how they are used. We argue that models as tools to aid research partnerships are primarily used in three different ways:
- Application: Existing theories can be made accessible to the participants of research and practice partnerships through their application as models which can be input into the research and practice partnership at any stage, such as a framework for design, or as explanatory power.
- Elaboration: Models can be generated and / or adapted as an inherent developmental part of the research and practice process to scaffold learning within the partnership.
- Creation: New models can emerge which conceptualise the findings or working practices of the research and practice partnership as an output based on reflection on the learning through partnership.
We will discuss how the positionality models have results in differing learning experiences within research partnerships and can illuminate the different roles that each partner plays. We will present our analyses of these three uses of models as tools in the ecology of research and practice partnerships from our own work. Examples of models will include the collaborative action research model (Lofthouse, Flanagan and Wigley, in press); theory of change frameworks (Laing and Todd, 2015); and a practice development led model for individual professional learning and institutional growth (Lofthouse, 2015). Each model will be described, situated in a real world research partnership example, and the benefits and challenges for research partnerships outlined.
Following this framing and exposing of ideas, we will involve the participants in a range of activities to further extend the dialogue and reflection. In small groups we will consider how the application of a model, the elaboration of a model or the creation of a model relates to participants’ own work, and how these models can be used as tools to aid research partnerships in the particular cultural and pedagogical contexts that participants are working within.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Akkerman, S.F. and Bakker, A. (2011), Boundary crossing and boundary objects, Review of Educational Research, 81 (2): 132-69. Briggs, A. R. J. (2007) ‘The use of modelling for theory building in qualitative analysis’, British Educational Research Journal, 33 (4): 589-603. Dewey, J. (1938) Logic, the Theory of Enquiry. The Later Works of John Dewey, vol.12 edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. Dyson, A. and Todd, L. (2010) ‘Dealing with complexity: Theory of change evaluation and the full service extended schools initiative’, International Journal of Research and Method in Education, 33 (2): 119-134. Eriksson, D. M. (2003) ‘A framework for the constitution of modelling processes: a Proposition’, European Journal of Operational Research, 145: 202-215 Hammersley, M. (2003) ‘Can and Should Educational Research be Educative?’ Oxford Review of Education 29 (1): 3-25. Kemmis, S., Edwards-Groves, C., Wilkinson, J. and Hardy, I. (2012), ‘Ecologies of practices’, in Hager, P., Lee, A. and Reich, A. (Eds), Practice, Learning and Change, Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 33-49. Laing, K. and Todd, L. (2015) (eds) Theory-based Methodology: Using theories of change for development, research and evaluation, Research Centre for Learning and Teaching, Newcastle University. Lofthouse, R. (2015) Metamorphosis, model-making and meaning; developing exemplary knowledge for teacher education, PhD thesis. University of Newcastle. Lofthouse, R., Flanagan, J. and Wigley, B. (in press) ‘A new model of collaborative action research; theorising from inter-professional practice-development’, Educational Action Research. Thomas, G. (2011) The case: generalisation, theory and phronesis in case study, Oxford Review of Education, 37 (1): 21-35 Thomas, G (2012), Changing Our Landscape of Inquiry for a New Science of Education, Harvard Educational Review, 82 (1): 26-51
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