Educational theorists and researchers suggest that the needs of learners in post-industrial 21^st century ‘knowledge societies’ are different to those in 20^th century, industrial societies. To better meet the needs of learners of the future, schooling systems and teaching practices need to change (see, for example, Gilbert, 2005; Hargreaves, 2003). Transformation of educational practices requires educators to reconceptualise understandings of knowledge and learning (Andreotti, 2010).

A multi-dimensional, multi-level, collaborative research project provided opportunities for a group of New Zealand teacher educators (practitioner researchers) at the University of Canterbury College of Education to: reconceptualise understandings of knowledge and learning and explore what it means to ‘shift’ conceptual understandings; develop and implement initiatives in different teacher education and curriculum contexts that encouraged shifts in student teachers’ and teachers’ epistemological understandings and changes in teaching and learning practices; and undertake practitioner inquiries related to these initiatives. A collection of research case studies was developed from these practitioner inquiries. The findings of the case studies were synthesised by project investigators in a meta-ethnography. The meta-ethnography addressed the broad research questions:

1)   How are shifts in conceptualisations of knowledge and learning interpreted within the different knowledge domains of the practitioners (teacher educators)?

2)   How do shifts in the conceptualisation of knowledge and learning affect student teachers’ and teachers’ interpretations of the New Zealand Curriculum?

3)   What are the characteristics of effective initiatives for shifting student teachers’ and teachers’ conceptualisations of knowledge and learning?

Meta-ethnography is a form of meta-synthesis that supports a holistic analysis across a range of research that is undertaken in different contexts and which utilises different methodologies (Doyle, 2010). The aims of meta-ethnography differ from those of traditional, positivist meta-analysis. Consistent with the interpretivist tradition, meta-ethnography utilises interpretations of data as the material for comparison in a synthesising process, to produce a meta-interpretation. It does not seek to provide statistical inferences and generalise across large bodies of quantitative research (Doyle, 2010; Savin-Baden, McFarland and Savin-Baden, 2011; Weed, 2008). The interpretivist theoretical underpinnings of meta-ethnography and the capacity to utilise a range of case study research that was conducted in different teacher education contexts and which adopted a range of methodologies, but which all related in some way to the research questions, made meta-ethnography an appropriate synthesis methodology for the project.

A point of distinction in our meta-ethnography was the use of different theoretical (interpretive and post structural) frameworks to provide multiple interpretations. We argue through this paper that the use of dual analyses, from two different theoretical perspectives, enriched the meta-ethnography and provided a deeper and more nuanced analysis than would have been achieved from a single theoretical perspective. 

The project was supported by the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI) research fund, New Zealand.

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