The Role of Research in Learning and Teaching: Practitioner Enquiry as a Catalyst for Both Teachers’ and Students’ Metacognitive Development

Author(s):

Kate Wall(presenting / submitting)Steve Higgins Helen Burns

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

01. Continuing Professional Development: Learning for Individuals, Leaders, and Organisations

Format:

Paper

Session Information

01 SES 01 B JS, The Professional Learning Impact of Practitioner Inquiry

Joint Paper Session NW 01 and NW 10

Time:

2017-08-22

13:15-14:45

Room:

K3.16

Chair:

Ryan Dunn

Contribution

The model of teacher as researcher can be largely traced back to the work of Stenhouse (1975) and over recent years there has been sustained interest in the process and impact of developing a research-engaged teaching profession. This has led to a range of systematic reviews and meta-analyses on the topic. Dagenais et al., (2012) found that practitioners with an inquiry standpoint were more likely to have positive views of research and therefore were more likely to use it to inform their practice. McLaughlin et al.’s (2004) state that there are three overlapping purposes evident in the teacher research tradition: (1) research and enquiry undertaken for primarily personal purposes; (2) research and enquiry undertaken for primarily political purposes; and (3) research and enquiry undertaken for primarily school improvement purposes. Where teachers are involved in these kinds of research engaged practices then the teachers can be seen to generate a more sophisticated and metacognitive (Author et al. under review) understanding of the ecology of learning, can develop cultures of risk taking that moves practice forwards, accept challenge and change, can facilitate the change processes for others and thus develop an 'ecological agency’ that is catalytic of change (Leat et al., 2014: 8).

In addition to teachers as researchers we will focus on learning, on metacognitive-based pedagogies: learning to learn. The need to develop metacognitive awareness in students (Higgins et al., 2013) and to develop 21^st century learning skills, competencies and dispositions, has been relatively consistent since the turn of the 21^st century; all be it with different names and emphasis. The way in which this might link with teachers’ engagement with research however is underdeveloped. Vermunt and colleagues have argued that this is arguably ironic considering the core business of schools is learning and what we know about patterns of student learning (Vermunt and Endedijk, 2011), yet we do not translate this knowledge to teacher learning. How different can it be?

As far back as 1987, Wittrock suggested that teachers’ thinking could influence their students thinking, which in turn could impact attainment outcomes, yet there has been limited research to explore this relationship or the impact of teachers’ metacognitive awareness on their students’ thinking and learning development. There are some researchers taking steps towards this. Wilson and Bai (2010) asserted that teachers should have a pedagogical understanding of metacognition, model thinking approaches and ensure problem solving is transparent and explicit by providing an account of how metacognitive pedagogical knowledge is reliant on metacognitive awareness of self. Soodla, Jõgi & Kikas (2016) found that teachers’ metacognitive knowledge of reading strategies was significantly related to their students’ metacognitive knowledge and highlighted the importance of teachers’ metacognitive knowledge in students’ metacognitive knowledge. In addition, Portilho and Medina (2016) have argued for metacognition as a methodology for professional learning, providing a productive space for teachers to evolve and take an active stance in their learning about practice. Yet empirical examination of this and associated process is lacking.

In this paper we will explore what we understand happens when when the trajectories of student and teacher learning are drawn together under an enquiry focus into metacognitive-based pedagogies. We aim to highlight important questions about the role that teachers who are engaging in research that targets metacognitive development might have as ‘learning coaches’ for their students (Bull and Gilbert, 2012), as well as presenting their perspective on their own learning about the teaching and learning process which we thing deserves greater examination and discussion.

Method

Learning to Learn in Schools Phases 3 and 4 (2001-2010) built on research undertaken for the Campaign for Learning, an educational charity, in Phases 1 and 2. In contrast to the earlier two phases, however, the latter two were characterised by a commitment to practitioner enquiry (Higgins et al. 2007) and engagement in and with research (Cordingley, 2013). This commitment prioritised the exploration of how practitioners were interpreting and defining Learning to Learn (L2L) approaches and how they were making them an integral part of school practice. The projects were based upon an approach to research and knowledge construction tdeveloped over the last 20 years by researchers originally based at Newcastle University. It is a model which emphasises partnership, trust and complementary roles in relation to research undertaken collaboratively by Higher Education researchers, local authorities, schools and colleges (McLaughlin and Black-Hawkins 2004); it therefore represents part of a developing trajectory of a community of dispersed research-informed practice (Lieberman and Grolnick, 1996). We undertook a review and analysis of the reports produced by the teachers involved. This amounted to 160 inquiry reports across 42 schools, covering Phases 3 and 4 of L2L, representing 160 separate inquiries, usually by pairs or small teams of teachers. Most of the teachers were involved in successive years of the project, with the majority undertaking more than one inquiry and many three or more. While two authors of this paper,were explicitly involved in the L2L in Schools Project, for the third author the project process and outcomes were more novel. For the sake of neutrality and reliability the majority of the analysis was undertaken by this researcher, with findings then codified against the formers’ experiences and knowledge. Using NVIVO, nodes were created as they emerged from the text as being of key importance within each study. This was essentially open coding but in addition, we looked thematically for evidence of the development of practitioner researchers. This resulted in a set of nodes which focussed on the learners (the students in the schools involved), alongside a set of nodes which looked particularly at the impacts on teachers. The analysis order followed their chronological production, starting with the Phase 3 case studies, working from the first to the third year of the Phase 3 the Phase 4.

Expected Outcomes

In this paper we will demonstrate what we see as the key factors that have emerged across the teachers’ learning as articulated in their enquiry write-ups. We will show how the process of engaging in practitioner enquiry focused on the development of metacognitive-based pedagogies has facilitated a process whereby the teachers have become increasingly professionally metacognitive themselves. The extent to which this is down to the enquiry stance itself, the cumulative process of action research through practitioner enquiry as represented by the case study write-ups, the focus on metacognitive pedagogies in the classroom or the combination of activity represents a complex dynamic. Within the case studies we can see parallel learning processes in operation: the students’ learning and thinking, as represented by the teachers’ developing insight, understanding and confidence in their ability to meet the students’ learning needs, alongside the teachers’ learning and thinking, with a developing proactive perspective on their own professional learning journey and a belief in their agency to make change happen (Priestley et al. 2015). The former was always our initial target, the latter naturally emerged over time as it became more and more apparent to the project community that for students to become more metacognitively aware then the teachers needed to undergo a similar learning transformation. Arguably by combining these parallel pathways within the same project ‘ecology’ (Dewey 1938) then we have started to close the gap noted by Vermunt and Endedijk (2011), certainly this was the case within the teachers’ thinking and in some cases in the students’.

References

Bull, A. and Gilbert, J. (2012) Swimming out of our Depth? Leading learning in 21st century schools, New Zealand Council for Education Research. Cordingley, P. (2013). The Contribution Of Research To Teachers’ Professional Learning And Development. Research and Teacher Education: the BERA-RSA Inquiry. London: British Educational Research Association. Dagenais, C., Lysenko, L., Abrami, P. C., Bernard, R. M., Ramde, J., & Janosz, M. (2012). Use of research-based information by school practitioners and determinants of use: a review of empirical research. Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate and Practice, 8(3), 285-309. Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Simon and Schuster Higgins, S., Wall, K., Baumfield, V., Hall, E., Leat, D., Moseley, D., & Woolner, P. (2007). Learning to learn in schools phase 3 evaluation: Final report. London: Campaign for Learning. Higgins, S., Katsipataki, M., Kokotsaki, D., Coleman, R., Major, L.E. & Coe, R. (2013). The Sutton Trust - Education Endowment Foundation Teaching and Learning Toolkit. London, Education Endowment Foundation Leat, D., Lofthouse, R., & Reid, A. (2014) Teachers’ views: Perspectives On Research Engagement. Research And Teacher Education: The BERA-RSA Inquiry London: British Educational Research Association. Lieberman, A., & Pointer Mace, D. H. (2009). The role of ‘accomplished teachers in profes- sional learning communities’: Uncovering practice and enabling leadership. Teachers and Teaching, 15, 459–470 McLaughlin, C., Black-Hawkins, K. and McIntyre, D. (2004) Researching Teachers, Researching Schools, Researching Networks: A review of the literature, Cambridge: Networked Learning Communities McLaughlin, C. & Black-Hawkins, K. (2004) A Schools-University Research Partnership: understandings, models and complexities, Journal of In-Service Education, 30(2): 265-284 Portilho, E.M.L. and Medina, G.B.K. (2016) Metacognition as Methodology for Continuing Education of Teachers, Creative Education, 7: 1-12 Soodla, P., Jõgi, A. L., & Kikas, E. (2016/ Online early) Relationships between teachers’ metacognitive knowledge and students’ metacognitive knowledge and reading achievement. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 1-18. 10.1007/s10212-016-0293-x Stenhouse, L. (1981) What counts as research? British Journal of Educational Studies 29(2): 103–14 Vermunt, J. and Endedijk, M. (2011) Patterns in teacher learning in different phases of the professional career, Learning and Individual Differences, 21: 294-302 Wilson, N. S. and Bai, H. (2010) The relationships and impact of teachers’ metacognitive knowledge and pedagogical understandings of metacognition. Metacognition and Learning 5(3): 269-88 Wittrock, M.C. (1987) Teaching and student thinking, Journal of Teacher Education, 36(6): 30-33

Author Information

Kate Wall (presenting / submitting)

University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom

Steve Higgins

Durham University, United Kingdom

Helen Burns

Newcastle University, United Kingdom

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