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Date:         Fri, 8 Jan 1993 09:31:21 -0700
From:         WILLD@BYUVAX.BITNET
Subject:      Re: EDUCATORS AS INQUIRERS

The responses to my query regarding educators as learners, action research,
participatory inquiry, etc. have been intriguing. Thank you Russ Hunt for
suggesting that we use ERL-L rather than start a new list.  Russ asked that
I comment on the books I mentioned in the original query: John Smyth's
TEACHERS AS COLLABORATIVE LEARNERS, Goswami and Stillman's RECLAIMING THE
CLASSROOM, Fostnot's ENQUIRING TEACHERS, ENQUIRING LEARNERS, Hitchcock and
Hughes' RESEARCH AND THE TEACHER, Brause and Mayher's SEARCH AND
RESEARCH:WHAT THE INQUIRING TEACHER NEEDS TO KNOW, Kincheloe's TEACHERS AS
RESEARCHERS: QUALITATIVE INQUIRY AS A PATH TO EMPOWERM.  I have read only
the first four and suggest you begin with the first two if you have not
read anything along these lines.  Smyth espouses critical theory and
invites, guides, and provides examples for teachers and administrators to
use clinical supervision as a means to seriously question their own
practices.  But he does this after severely attacking clinical supervision
as practiced on the grounds that it is a political and power enterprise,
not a serious attempt to tap the intellectual strengths of the
participants.  I highly recommend this book and hope colleagues from
Australia and other places where they have been talking about these issues
for a long time will give us further suggestions.  The Goswami and Stillman
book is a collection of articles written by university AND school people
about their experiences doing action research or what they call "classroom
inquiry," as well as their thoughts about the need for this kind of inquiry
and ideas about how to do it.  This is another excellent source.  The
Fostnot book is subtitled "A constructivist approach for teaching," which
summarizes her theme well-- she proposes an entirely different kind of
teacher preparation process that begins with a different kind of
undergraduate curriculum than most students experience.  She documents the
need for professors who are reflective teachers themselves and who help
their students do the same rather than fill them with someone else's
constructions of knowledge.  She invites all teachers at all levels to
invite their students to be true intellectuals, to take responsibility for
their own ideas.  This is a radical invitation and one we ought to consider
seriously.  Hitchcock and Hughes subtitle is "A qualitative introduction to
school-based research."  They do exactly that-- review the need for
teachers to do research in their own classrooms, provide an overview of
models of social research from "positivistic scientific" to "interpretive
ethnographic," and then discuss and illustrate ways to conduct qualitative
inquiry in classrooms.  The approach seems to be more of a translation of
"researcher" techniques for teachers to figure out how to use in schools
rather than a dialogue with teachers about how they might be more
reflective and thoughtful in ways that may be unfamiliar even to seasoned
researchers.

I have received several personal messages regarding this topic and other
resources people are aware of.  I hope the authors will post these messages
for all to consider.
David D. Williams    Instructional Science Department
201-C MCKB    Brigham Young University    Provo, UT 84602
Voice:  801-378-2765      Fax: 801-378-4017
Internet: willd@yvax.byu.edu. Bitnet: willd@byuvax.bitnet
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU