Innovation and Learning from

Research: Turning Schooling on its

Head and Moving into the Future
with Learners at the Centre

Professor Geraldine Castleton

Dean & Head of School of Education
University of South Australia
 Innovation and Learning from Research: Turning
Schooling on its Head and Moving into the Future
with Learners at the Centre

Innovation in the context of schools may

involve different forms of change, e.g.
• in the way work is organised among teachers;
• in the administrative or organisational activities of
schools;
• in the implementation of new teaching methods,
assessment tools or curriculum content; or
• in the use technologies to enhance learning and
improve students’ learning outcomes.

(Roberts, K. & Owens, S. 2012, 17)

 Action research/practitioner research

Three particular characteristics of action

research are that it:

• arises from practical questions;

• is participatory in nature; and

• its validity is strengthened through peer examination

and discussion.

(Bartlett, S. & Burton, D, 2006,401)

 Action research/practitioner research as inquiry

The objects of inquiry are:

• observable social activities, patterns, structures;

• intentions motivating those activities;

• shared, available interpretations of these activities.

• Goal & interest to document, explicate, critique,

transform.
 Researcher’s toolkit

• Methodology – framework for conduct of research

project [e.g. ethnographic, case study, discourse
analysis, action research].

• Method – systematic, theoretically derived means

employed for producing a public knowledge. It
includes techniques to be employed for the
collecting of data (e.g. survey, questionnaire, data
bases, standardised or teacher-developed tests,
field notes, participant observations) as well as
the analytic techniques employed to analyse and
interpret data.
 Action Research
Practical
• Studying local practices involving
individual or team-based inquiry
• Focusing on teacher development
and student learning
• Implementing a plan of action
leading to the teacher-as-
researcher
(Spears, B. & Skrzypic, G. 2012)
Participatory
• Studying social issues that
constrain individual lives
• Emphasizing “equal”
collaboration
• Focusing on “life-enhancing
changes”
• Resulting in the emancipated
researcher
Action research as cyclic
(Spears & Skrzypic, 2012)
Stringer’s (1999) Action Research Interacting
Cycle
Look ↔ Think ↔ Act
Stringer (1999)

Look

Think

Act

Look

Think

Act
 Action research/practitioner research

Action research/practitioner research involves

engaging educator researchers and collaborators in a
cycle of

• experience

• critical reflection, and

• action.
 Key characteristics of Action Research
(Freebody, 2003, 86)

• It is a ‘deliberate’ rather than a purely exploratory

entry into a naturally-occurring educational setting.
That is, it is planned and self-consciously focused
examination of changing practice.

• It is ‘solution-oriented investigation’ aimed

explicitly at solving particular problems rather than
simply documenting their instances, character or
consequences.
 Key characteristics of Action Research
(Freebody, 2003, 86)

• It is ‘group or personally owned and conducted’.

This is a reference to the politics of knowledge
ownership,… which emphasizes the importance of
the educational practitioners’ role as determinants
of the description of the problem, what counts as
solutions, and what form the reporting of the project
will take.
 Key characteristics of Action Research
(Freebody, 2003,86)

• It takes the form of a series of iterations on and

around the problem, its documentation and
theorization, and the analyses that are used to
display how it has been redefined and solved. These
iterations are referred to as … ‘spirals’ but are more
commonly known as the Action Research cycle. This
‘cyclic’ feature of Action Research is taken to be
central to its core emphasis on the documented
improvement of practice.
 Key characteristics of Action Research
(Freebody, 2003, 86)

• The ‘trying out of ideas’ is not undertaken solely for

the purposes of re-theorizing educational practice,
or adding to knowledge, but is also aimed at
improving educational practice, then and there. In
that respect, Action Research is concerned as much
with outcomes on the original research site as it is
with generalizations to other sites or leading to
theoretical refinement.
 Process
(Freebody, 2003,87)

1. select focus – study available literature;

2. collect relevant data from variety of sources;

3. analyse, document & review the immediate,

cumulative & longer-term effects of teachers’&
students’ actions;

4. develop and implement interpretive analytic

categories;
 Process (cont)
(Freebody, 2003,87)

5. organise the data and its interpretations by

grouping instances, events, & artefacts into
systematic, interconnected displays;

6. taking action on the basis of redeveloped

short-and long-term plans; and

7. repeat the cycle.

 Action Research/practitioner research
results in data-driven action

• What constitutes data?

• How do you collect it?
• How do you analyse your data?

• How do you substantiate your findings?

- WARRANT
 Research Checklist

• research that can be completed with the

available resources, including time (do-
able);
• research processes that are logical and
coherent (credible);
• products of the research that are meaningful
to the stakeholder groups who ought to be
its beneficiaries (useful) SO WHAT;
• outcomes are achieved in a timely way
(efficient).
 Ethical practice in action research

Action research is subject to the same

ethical protocols as other social research.
• Informed consent from participants- students,
teachers, parents or others;
• There must be an earnest attempt to ‘do no
harm’.
• Processes should be transparent –
– in the conduct;
– researchers accountable for the processes and
products of their research – making these public
is part of the transparency.
 Ethical practice in action research

• It is collaborative in nature:
- provide opportunities for colleagues to share,
discuss and debate aspects of their practice
with the aim of improvements and
development and involves responsible sense-
making of data collected from within the field
of researchers’ own practice.

• It is transformative in its intent and action:

- Practitioner researchers engage in an
enterprise which is about contributing to
transformation of practice.
 Leading for innovation – a case study

While there are many different models of

leadership, a number of them share the notion of
‘distributed leadership’ (e.g. Gronn, 2000; Spillane
2005) with that term defining leadership as a more
shared responsibility across a school staff.

Recent literature makes a link between this form of

leadership & student educational outcomes (e.g.
Fullan et al, 2005; Graczerski et al, 2008; Robinson,
2008, Alton Lee, 2011)
 Leading for innovation – a case study

Achieving high levels of student literacy outcomes

requires strong and effective leadership.

It is the role of leadership to model and live the

shared beliefs and understandings about literacy that
underpin a school literacy program, ensuring that the
school implements ongoing self-evaluation, and
maintains the focus on literacy improvement (Sharrat
& Fullan, 2006).
 Leading for innovation – a case study

Agreement in literature about need for strong

focus on
• enhancing teacher expertise in teaching literacy
• professional learning for teachers
(evidence-based effective literacy
pedagogy)
• expertise seen as shared
commodity – residing in a community
of learners (including leaders, teachers,
aides/education workers, parents/carers,
community)
 Leading for innovation – a case study

School Literacy Plans as a site for investigating

effectiveness of leading for literacy.
They provide a vehicle for analysis of each
school’s understanding of the processes involved
in literacy learning, their intentions in terms of
providing leadership for literacy within the
classroom and school community, their
articulation of the needs of their educational
community, and the intended mechanisms for the
evaluation of their efforts to improve student
outcomes (Castleton et al, 2011, 98).
 Leading for innovation – a case study

Common features across 5 schools that showed clear

evidence of leadership roles and responsibilities were
• strong connection between leadership positions/roles
and classroom teaching (often identifying leaders as
being classroom teachers)
• specific detail on how leaders would lead to
achieve improvement of practices
• clear descriptions of how performance of leaders
would be monitored and/or evaluated.

• ACCOUNTABILITY
 Leading for innovation – a case study

One school identified key elements of its literacy

leadership as a “focus on teacher learning and
pedagogy through the development of
learning/teaching teams”
- and linked the work of these planning teams
explicitly to what was being taught, professional
learning activities, the establishment of school-based
standards of exemplary practice (linked to student
achievement),
and a requirement for teams to
engage in action research to extend
and refine teachers’ repertoires of
practice.
 Leading for innovation – a case study

Strong leadership :
• is collaborative in nature
• allows for distribution of
responsibilities
• maintains a strong focus
on self-evaluation &
continuous improvement
• knows how to define success and set appropriate
goals and targets
• develops a shared vision that leads to shared
ownership - a key foundation for SUSTAINABILITY.
 References

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329.
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