Action Research and Postmodernism: Congruence and Critique (Conducting Educational Research Series) / Edition 1

by Tony Brown, Katie Prentice, Harry Torrance, Liz Jones

Overview

How can we move forward from or develop traditional approaches to action research which have dominated teacher research for many years now? How can teachers work at improving their teaching when there are so many different understandings of what education is trying to achieve? In which ways can post-structuralism, which has had such a major impact in other disciplines, offer practical support to teachers developing their own professional practices?

A premise of much teacher research is that reflection on practice can lead to a development of that practice. Such reflection, it is purported, enables the practitioner in organizing the complexity of the teaching situation, with a particular emphasis on how 'monitoring of change' can be converted to 'control of change.' This book questions the notion of construing developing practice as 'aiming for an ideal' and suggests that such a pursuit has a questionable track record. The very desire for control, and the difficulties encountered in trying to document it, can cloud our vision from the very complexities we seek to capture. The book offers detailed discussion of teacher research inquiries carried out in the context of masters and doctoral degrees. It focuses in particular on how the reflective writing generated by the teacher might build towards an assertion of professional identity through which professional demands are mediated.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780335207619
Publisher:	McGraw-Hill Companies, The
Publication date:	11/01/2001
Series:	Conducting Educational Research Series
Pages:	210
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 6.00(h) x 0.44(d)

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgements	vi
	Introduction	1
1	Emancipation and postmodernism	3
2	Research and the development of practice	13
Part 1	The hermeneutic backdrop: narrating the researcher	31
3	Creating data in practitioner research	33
4	Transitions: issues of temporality and practitioner research	57
5	On identity	70
Part 2	The postmodern turn--deconstructing the nursery classroom	91
6	From emancipation to postmodernism: a nursery study	93
7	A tale of disturbance	105
8	Identity, power and resistance	116
9	Deconstructing the nursery classroom: that will undo nicely, but so what?	132
10	Transgressive agents: an optimistic possibility?	150
	Conclusion	167
11	Critical pedagogy in a postmodern world	169
	Bibliography	185
	Index	196

Editorial Reviews

Brown and Jones (both education, Manchester Metropolitan U.) explore difficulties encountered when moving from a common-sense understanding of what it means to be a teacher to grappling with the complexities that lie between knowing and doing. Among their topics are creating data in practitioner research, temporality, identity, deconstructing the nursery classroom, transgressive agents, and critical pedagogy in a postmodern world. Distributed in the US by Taylor and Francis. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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