Caitriona Cleary presented at the Round-Robin session at NEARI-meet in UCD on September 16, 2017. Here is a snippet of her presentation:
Category Archives: critical pedagogy
Next NEARI-meet in UCD on 16 September at 10.15 am
NEARI-meet 21 January DkIT
New Book: Introduction to Critical Reflection and Action for Teacher Researchers
We are delighted to announce the safe arrival of our new book Introduction to Critical Reflection and Action for Teacher Researchers.
It provides crucial direction for educators looking to improve their teaching and maximise learning. While many students can grasp the basic elements of researching their practice and can write about practitioner research, some need guidance and assistance to reflect meaningfully on their teaching practice so as to articulate their educational values. This book provides this guidance.
By exploring how to engage in an authentic, practical and personalised framework, the book encourages critical reflection and action on educational practice. Moving through the process of reflecting on practice, engaging in critical thinking and planning and taking action, it helps the reader to subsequently generate educational theory from their own personal learning. Examples from the authors’ experiences illustrate the issues raised in each section, with ‘Pause and Reflect’ activities, guidelines for conducting a research project and annotated further reading available for every chapter.
Introduction to Critical Reflection and Action for Teacher Researchers is based on the idea that reflection is in itself a deliberate action and something we must live – it is key to understanding our practice and is a core component of action research. This book is a valuable guide for teachers, trainee teachers and researchers interested in reflecting on and enhancing their teaching practice.
NEARImeet: Presentation by Dr. Pip Ferguson
This is a video of Dr. Pip Ferguson’s presentation at the recent NEARImeet in St. Patrick’s College.
Pip’s slides:
NEARImeet (Network for Educational Action Research in Ireland) in St. Patrick’s College, Thurles on 12 Sept 2015
The third NEARImeet (Network for Educational Action Research in Ireland) took place in St. Patrick’s College, Thurles on 12 Sept 2015.
Guest speakers were Dr. Pip Ferguson (DCU) and Dr Máire Ni Ríordáin (NUIG) with Round Robin presentations by John Cullinane and Tom Cosgrove.
Pip Ferguson, John Cullinane, Máire Ní Ríordáin and Tom Cosgrove
Dr Pip Bruce Ferguson spoke around the topic: ‘How to strengthen the rigour of action research: reflections ‘from the field’. Pip spoke about the need to judge our research with appropriate criteria. She outlined the LET approach – Whitehead’s living educational theory (1989) – which emphasises values and accountability and spoke about the need to leave a ‘snail trail’ – a clear path or track through the research that can be followed by the reader.
John Cullinane spoke about his experiences using self-study action research in St Patrick’s College as an undergraduate and how this experience has now transformed his practice as a qualified teacher. John researched his own practice around issues of equity. His research has led to the promotion of inclusive practices in his institution.
Tom Cosgrove presented a fascinating account of his efforts to promote active learning methodologies in relation to the teaching of engineering in a Chinese context. This was a richly illustrated account of teaching and learning in a difficult linguistic and cultural setting. Tom’s presentation showed how, like John he was living his educational values in his practice.
Dr Máire Ni Ríordáin spoke on the topic of ‘Making sense of your data’. Máire emphasised trustworthiness and the need for multiple perspectives and asked the question ‘How can a reader trust my account? Criteria used included: Evidence of Becoming/Improving Self-Reflexivity Multiple Perspectives , Connection , Meaningful Action Acknowledgement of Limitations Ethical and Professional use of Data.
There followed a Skype conversation with Jack Whitehead (UK) and Delysia Norelle Timm (SA) on the value of networking and sharing ideas.
Mary Roche, Caitirona McDonagh, Pip Ferguson, Máirín Glenn, Bernie Sullivan and Jane O’Conell via Skype from Jack Whitehead and Delysia Norelle Timm.
Education Symposium and Book Launch in St. Patrick’s College, Thurles
Watch the education students in St Patrick’s College, Thurles speak with passion on Irish TV about how they use self-study action research to help them enhance their practice at the college’s first Education Symposium (at about 18 minutes into the clip).
Listen to Dr. Mary Roche speak at the launch of her new book in the college. Mary is on the shortlist for the prestigious UKLA Academic Book Award 2015 for her beautiful new book Developing Children’s Critical Thinking through Picturebooks: A guide for primary and early years students and teachers, which is published by Routledge. UKLA say: ‘The voices of children and teachers, richly engaged with picturebooks, resound enthrallingly from this enthusiastic, thoughtful and superbly well-informed account of productive classroom practice.’
Students speaking about action research and book launch in St. Patrick’s College, Thurle
Action research: an intervention or a potentially transformative process ?
A teaching colleague recently told me how he had undertaken a highly successful action research project with his maths class. When asked, he explained how he had used a software programme to help his students learn 2D and 3D shapes. I thought the project sounded interesting and asked him to tell me some more about it. He explained how he was interested in using technology and decided to use the software to help raise students understanding of 2 and 3D shapes. He had done a pre-test and tabulated the results. He then introduced the students to the software and after a couple of weeks, administered a post-test. The scores showed that the students’ understanding had increased greatly and my colleagues was delighted.
I was disappointed when I realised that that was all he had done! In my opinion, action research encapsulates much more than trying out a new idea. While the aim of improving one’s practice is always admirable, I think that calling, what is basically an intervention, an ‘action research project’, demonstrates disappointing lack of understanding around the underpinning features of action research.
Maybe this is an opportune moment to remind ourselves what we mean by self study action research.
Undertaking an action research project assumes, for example, that one-
has an understanding of one’s educational values,
is living or trying to live, in the direction of one’s educational values,
has engaged in critical reflection on their practice,
experiences oneself as a ‘living contradiction’ (Whitehead, 1999)
is seeking to improve one’s practice or one’s understanding of one’s practice,
is aiming to generate a theory from one’s learning in the process of the project and
acknowledges that the focus of the research is ‘I’ (along with others). (See McDonagh et al. 2012 and Whitehead and McNiff 2006 for more on these ideas.)
Engaging in action research allows the the teacher to be a researcher and a theorist. It encourages a dialectic between theory and practice. It enables the practitioner to assume a sense of autonomy over their practice as they develop theories and ideas from a personalised grassroots perspective. It enables practitioners to potentially transform their thinking, their practice and their sense of professionalism while generating educational theory from their practice.
So, while I believe that self-study action research can encompass the staging of an intervention or an experimentation with a new idea in one’s classroom, its essence is far greater and more powerful than that. Let us not reduce the power of action research to a hollow victory narrative based on increased test scores. Let us embrace self-study action research in its powerful, transformational wholeness and try make a sustainable difference in our professional lives!
Exciting new publication
(Image from http://www.amazon.co.uk/Developing-Childrens-Critical-Thinking-Picturebooks/dp/0415727723/)
Mary Roche’s new book Developing Children’s Critical Thinking through Picturebooks: A guide for primary and early years students and teachers was launched at the recent Reading Association of Ireland (RAI) 37th annual Conference in Dublin.
This accessible text shows students and class teachers how they can enable their pupils to become critical thinkers through the medium of picturebooks. By introducing children to the notion of making-meaning together through thinking and discussion, Roche focuses on carefully chosen picturebooks as a stimulus for discussion, and shows how they can constitute an accessible, multimodal resource for adding to literacy skills, while at the same time developing in pupils a far wider range of literary understanding.
By allowing time for thinking about and digesting the pictures as well as the text, and then engaging pupils in classroom discussion, this book highlights a powerful means of developing children’s oral language ability, critical thinking, and visual literacy, while also acting as a rich resource for developing children’s literary understanding. Throughout, Roche provides rich data and examples from real classroom practice.
This book also provides an overview of recent international research on doing ‘interactive read alouds’, on what critical literacy means, on what critical thinking means and on picturebooks themselves.
Lecturers on teacher education courses for early years or primary levels, classroom teachers, pre-service education students, and all those interested in promoting critical engagement and dialogue about literature will find this an engaging and very insightful text.
Should philosophy be included in the curriculum?
Click to read Irish Times article Wed 19th Nov 2013 Say No to Groupthink by Joe Humphries
