Note something from
this article with which you disagree (note: I assume that reading this paper
was a different experience for those with P-12 experience and those
without. That said, he made a sufficient
number of bold claims so I’m sure everyone can disagree with something he said).
Why do you disagree with it? Did Labaree
give words to any tensions that you feel as you head down the road of the
educational researcher? If so, explain.
Christine here...
ReplyDelete"schools of education struggle to get their fledgling researchers to recognize and embrace the role of researcher"
This comment struck a chord with me in many ways. When I initially attended college as an undergrad, everything was new. As a result, my learning experiences often put me out of my comfort zone. I had to learn in order to continue advancing. It was evident that there was so much for me to learn and it often felt like a race I was losing.
When I returned to grad school for my Master's it seemed much easier. At the time I credited it to increased confidence in the classroom but really the program did not challenge me the same way as my undergrad program. Projects, readings and discussions centered around what I was doing each day in the classroom, it felt more reflective than invigorating.
I was excited to pursue my Administrative endorsement but again, the same thing happened. Everything was delivered within a familiar context and it didn't force me out of my comfort zone. I think part of the issue is the program is structured for the purpose of licensure not interest.
I am excited about this opportunity to explore my interests and design ways in which I can be moved out of my comfort zone by trying new things. You make of it what you put into it. If people enter the program for the letters then that is all they will leave with.
Hello, Christine here...this is obviously in the wrong place. Today was a long day.
DeleteI disagree more with the way Labaree makes his argument than what he has to say. First, I am always skeptical of articles written about people without their input; his work would have been more acceptable to me if it included the voice of the teacher-student. Instead, he presents the monologue of an educational researcher (himself).
ReplyDeleteSecond, I come away with the feeling that practitioner-students are being underestimated. I was a practitioner. I can identify with the tendency to hone in on a normative-personal-particular-experiential perspective. But I believe practitioners are also very analytical by nature, and if they are not used to thinking in intellectual, universal, and theoretical planes, practitioners who opt to mix things up in their lives by attending graduate programs are ripe for this sort of change and should catch on to the ideas quickly. I don’t understand why Labaree thinks practitioners would resist moving in and out of “practitioner” and “research” mindsets once they were introduced to and had time to practice the concepts. He seems to suggest that thinking simultaneously on personalized and generalized planes is a difficult skill to master, and I just don’t see it that way. I don’t understand why it is difficult to sell the idea of blended worlds (para 5, p 20) when the concept seems so obvious to me. Is that just me or is it obvious to you all, too?
In contrast to what Labaree wrote here, I would argue that graduate programs encourage extremely “personal” thought, specifically in the form of critical reflection. We are being encouraged to get to know (and have a relationship) with ourselves in a much more meaningful way than we may have had before--at least that has been my experience in the adult education program. All good researchers (and teachers) must know themselves to help mitigate their researcher bias and understand their data interpretations and research motivations. Moreover, graduate work depends a lot on building personal relationships—with professors and advisors, with colleagues, with students, and with research subjects and all the people (like superintendents) that need to be schmoozed so that you might have access to research subjects. Most importantly, stewardship depends on personal relationships with people and intimate relationship with ideas…of course I’ve been told by a professor that I treat ideas and people with equal reverence, so maybe I’m just too far gone into intellectualism to be on point here.
I emailed Kurt this morning to tell him about my perspective on the most recent class discussion. I told him I was having difficulties getting beyond our focus on the P-12 setting (and policy and research associated with it) and seeing how this discussion benefited my learning experience and my educational endpoint (is there such a thing as educational endpoint in a field of lifelong learning? That’s another topic). I get why we were talking about P-12. Quite frankly, it supports some of what Labaree was saying in the “From the Experiential to the Theoretical” section (p. 20). You could argue of course that we haven’t had much “theoretical” at this point so what else would there be to talk about besides “experiential” and that’s a very valid argument. And, in the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that I told Kurt I wanted to talk about expertise within the context of my own field of interest—Adult Education—which is just as contextualized as P-12, so please don’t think that I’m trying to be all high and mighty here. But what would have happened if we had moved the discussion of stewardship away from P-12 and P-12 research and not towards adult education but discussed JUST the IDEA of stewardship? Stewardship on an abstract level? What would that conversation have sounded like? I have ideas, but I’d really rather hear yours…
I have a postscript that I think speaks to embracing the tension between scholar and practitioner as defined by Labaree (although the more I think about it, the more I think that the mindsets should not be categorized in that way--I think it is artificial and prejudicial).
DeleteElizabeth Tisdell (2012) writes: "Far too often in graduate programs we teach the importance of critique almost as if this is a form that transforms thinking, but we do not invite learners often enough to call upon the wonder of their own creativity, which is important in cultivating hope, possibility, and action. This is about engaging more aspects of oneself that can lead to the transformation of being as well as thinking" (p.27).
This speaks to the idea of balance rather than replacement and as Libby Tisdale is most definitely a scholar, shows that not everyone at a university thinks like Labaree. Forgive my sloppy APA below--the Saturday morning cartoons blaring from the television are softening my brain.
Tisdale, E. (2012) "Themes and variations of transformational learning." In P. Cranton & E. Taylor (Eds.) The Handbook of Transformative Learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Hey Laura,
DeleteI agree that the conversation around Stewardship remained within the P-12 arena. Nonetheless, I think there are points from this discussion which affect the global concept.
In P-12 Education thousands upon thousands of advanced degrees are awarded yearly. These individuals return to the P-12 profession to purportedly make it better, improving practice by imparting the knowledge gained. If we accept this as an expectation of Stewardship then it is important to reflect on the reality. Are advanced degrees and knowledge of educational research improving the profession? Many would argue that it has not resulted in vast improvements or that any improvements made have been slow and awkward. So, if the multitude of degrees being awarded in the P-12 arena aren't necessarily making an impact, what does that say of other degrees in education?
I agree that there were points in the discussion that could be abstracted to the global concept. It is an interesting experience, however, to be in the minority. In the minority, you are expected to make your own way/make your own meaning/work a little bit harder to come to an understanding of the material that doesn't automatically fit your own life experience than the majority, who doesn't even know that there's a problem. I'm not angry or personalizing it here because it really isn't that important in the grand scheme of things, but I am fascinated by the minority viewpoint, of which I have had only a few opportunities to experience previously. I can totally see how it could be horrible, particularly if it was a standard, daily occurrence. Just throwing it out there to add another dimension to the conversation--that's all :)
DeleteI'm with you Laura, I wondered why the voice of the practitioner-student was not included. I also agree (and wrote about) the practitioner who constantly strives to learn more...and there are a lot out there...are those considered by Labree in this article? I recognize our skewed perspective because we are obviously all people who want to learn more...but my perspective of my teacher colleagues is that they too want to better their practice.
DeleteThis is what happens though when the researchers have control of the airways (in this case I mean scholarly journals) while the practitioners are the silent masses who are too overwhelmed to get proper expertise in action research or do not have enough time to write it up. I would also suspect too few places to publish their research. Researchers can write the world from their perspective while the practitioners fail to prioritize their own research or self-care, because to do so would take time away from their students...and taking time away from the students is not morally acceptable to the public, other practitioners, or to themselves. And this is where things get tricky...I've met quite a few practitioners who take the moral high road and say that they aren't interested in turning away from their students (patients) so that they too can become out-of-touch with the real world. But how much of that is just because they feel trapped on a hamster wheel and they don't want to admit it to themselves or others? It's a tangled web that practitioners weave and are woven into.
DeleteDiane here. . .
DeleteI am more than willing to move the conversation to the theoretical realm. I transferred to VCU to have these conversations because the program I was in focused exclusively on P-12 practice. No opportunity presented itself to get involved in research.
The flip side of that is the research I did last semester where I discovered a balance between research and practice. However, we are not properly preparing P-12 teachers to be informed consumers of research, so I do believe that schools of ed are at fault. I have some ideas on how to rectify the situation, but I'm curious as to what others have to say . . .
Dianne - I agree that teachers need to be more knowledgeable but where in the world would research fit into their day? They already go above and beyond any time we might pay for.
DeleteDiane here . . .
DeleteWith inclusion, I believe more opportunities exist for collaboration. If teachers do their planning together, they would have more time to implement existing research and document its effectiveness (or lack thereof). The other side is to pair a researcher with a teacher to conduct research. And there may be other ideas as well . . .
I love the idea of pairing researchers with teachers; I've often wondered if I could do this somehow for my dissertation. I agree with Christine that teachers absolutely do NOT have the time to fit research into their day. ~Meg
DeleteI don't know...I can come up with several arguments for having several academics on a research team who have limited relationships with practitioners. Practitioners are so focused on the "problem at hand" and couched within the context of how we do it right now that sometimes they have problems seeing waaaayyy outside the box. You need some wild thinkers on the team...
DeleteAlison here…. When I first began to read this article, I read the first page and put it down. I had to digest Labaree’s words for a short period of time before I picked it back up. In the end, he has many valid observations, but lacks in the pessimistic delivery of his message. So, the statement that Labaree uses regarding teaching as “the largest and least esteemed of the professions” (p.13), I disagree with on the basis that he does not provide ample support for the statement. Labaree provided cited one chapter from a book published in 1990 as evidence that teaching is the “least esteemed of the professions”. However, what parameters are used to make this statement? Is esteem dictated by salary only? He does not define how he came to this conclusion. Conjecture would say that Labaree has some inferiority issues regarding his own profession. With that being said, he clearly defined the difficulties I confronted in the 707 Critical Issues course with viewing research from a personal to intellectual point of view.
ReplyDeleteI read this article twice and then after reading Laura's response I read it a third time. I agree that Labaree's voice comes across as negative and more of a collection of thoughts than research. Nonetheless, it doesn't discount the message, the professions of teaching and educational research exist in rather separate vaccums. Being a doctoral student while also existing within the demands of the teaching profession can cause great difficulty.
ReplyDeleteLabaree comments on how teachers can not also act as educational researchers unless they add it on the already existing task of teaching. Given the increasing demands on teachers and the ever shrinking "planning period" they are given, it is not difficult to understand why teachers are hesitant to take on this additional responsibility. When you choose to go to graduate school while still in the classroom you do it knowing there will be an increase of demands, you rightfully accept the extra work. (Well, you either do or you simply do not finish the program)
I no longer teach in the classroom. I now work with teachers providing intense professional development and I am in classrooms/schools everyday. In general, the teachers I work with are overwhelmed by the demands placed upon them. The amount of paperwork/documentation teachers are required to do above and beyond teaching is staggering. (As a former Special Education Teacher perhaps I am biased here, but general education is requiring more and more 'documentation' everyday)
So, when I meet with these teachers and we talk about what is concerning them I am often asked for a solution in the first meeting. Teachers are frustrated when I tell them we will go through a process to find a range of solutions, there are no quick and easy answers. We look at data, collect new data, clearly define what they want to change and then we 'experiment' while collecting data to determine what to keep and what to remove. Often times we discover that it is not one singular issue at all, but a combination of factors that need to be teased out before strategies can be put into place. The strategies that we end up implementing are not nearly as important as the learning the process of being a reflective practictioner. Effective teaching requires analytical thought, every year, class and student will present individual challenges. There is no secret weapon that addresses them all.
Back to Labaree, when getting my Master's Degrees meshing practice to study was not diffcult. Projects were based upon what I was already doing. I learned from it but in the end I was still a practitioner, a teacher. Work at the Doctoral level requires a push to a more scholarly, abstract sense of self. It becomes much more difficult to manage as you are now hovering between two very distinct disciplines. Projects and readings now challenge your beliefs and you learn to look at education thorugh a new lense. The question becomes 'is this new lense something all educators should obtain in order to improve the profession on a whole'? I don't know the answer to that.
Christine, I think you could take much of what you said (which all resonates with me, by the way) and abstract it to "practitioners" and "researchers" and apply it to all sorts of contexts. This weekend I bounced Labaree's theories off a completely outside source--my husband (he's good for this--the man doesn't know anything about education or educational research). To put it in his language, I had to use the terms "community physician" which is your "teacher" and "academic physician" which is your "researcher." We talked about how community physicians are so overwhelmed with day-to-day work and have a singular focus on individual (Rosie or Gerald or Bobby) patient care that sometimes it is difficult for them to see outside of the box to a more global concept of patient care. We decided that practitioners are often given a set of tools in a top-down scenario and then are forced to focus all their time on sharpening those tools to make them work within their context. There is little time or energy available (and often they aren't empowered) to throw all the tools away and tinker with making a completely new tool box. The academics, on the other hand, play with different tool boxes all the time but often forget that their endpoints should advance the care of individuals (Rosie or Gerald or Bobby). I can't tell you how many times I or my husband have picked up a professional journal in which one of those crazy academics at Mayo Clinic are saying such-in-such should be standard of care--we just stare at each other in dismay trying to figure out how we are going to make their "standard of care" work in non-Mayo Clinic America. Luckily I don't have to deal with it anymore, but I certainly don't yell at my husband when he throws the journal across the room and I eventually have to pick it up...I understand the sentiment.
DeleteSo, to recap, we decided that right now,the way things stand in our capitalist society, practitioners are really good at refining toolboxes and making things work in order to push things forward towards a moral-driven endpoint (often at the detriment of their sanity and "big picture" vision) while academics are good at designing tool boxes but not necessarily pushing things forward to an endpoint. So we agreed with Labaree, just not his language or tone, which I would argue is more condescending than negative. Because one of the bad things about categorizing is that it encourages hierarchy and judgement--and in this case Labaree puts the researcher mindset above the practitioner mindset.
The goal should be to be able to flip back and forth out of "researcher" and "practitioner" roles in a flexible fashion to check up on yourself and make sure you aren't living too long in one or the other. It's kind of like phenomenology writing and being able to zoom in and zoom out.
Kierstyn here...... Christine, I absolutely agree that it is very difficult to coexist as a researcher and a teacher. You put it best when you said “Being a doctoral student while also existing within the demands of the teaching profession can cause great difficulty.” I often feel pulled between the two job descriptions. It almost feels as though when I walk into class at VCU I have to take my teacher hat off and switch to my researcher hat. I think it is even more difficulty because I literally leave one environment (K-5) at 3:30 and enter another (educational researcher) at 4:00pm. I am expected to treat each title as a separate entity. However the reading made me realize that I do not have to abandon my experiences as a speech teacher. I can use my teaching experience to create research ideas and questions.
Delete“Under these circumstances of clashing worldviews, it is not surprising that many former teachers resist what they see as the oddly intellectualized perspective encountered in doctoral study. Finding the scholarly approach to education cold and impersonal, with little connection to the flesh-and-blood world of emotional interaction they recall in the K–12 classroom, they frequently (in my experience) hang back from embracing the intellectual skills that they need in order to become educational scholars. To adopt the intellectual perspective seems to do a disservice to the teacher’s view of teaching, to turn teachers and students into actors who are imprisoned in a world governed not by people but by abstract ideas.”
ReplyDeleteI will start by admitting that I am not your average teacher-turned-researcher, but I also know for certain that I am not one of a kind in my background and training. I taught in the public schools for 7 years before applying to Boston University for my masters program. A requirement for enrollment in this program is that the student is a full time educator. Boston University is a research institution, and following suite, the online masters degree program that I was enrolled in was research oriented; however, given that the students were placed around the world, all of the research occurred within the classroom as action research. This program served me well in making the transition into doctoral study because I was familiar with research methods, but Labree seems to be saying that these ideas are so foreign to teachers that they are hard to reconcile. I absolutely disagree. Even my colleagues that I worked with over the years were acting as researchers constantly, critically applying theory to practice and observing the effects. I never viewed research as “oddly intellectualized” nor did I ever resist the “intellectual skills” that are necessary to become a scholar because they were simply a way of life. Given the abundant professional development and recertification requirements adopted by states and individual counties, it’s hard for teaching to not be testing new strategies and measuring their effectiveness in their classroom. I’m not quite certain what Labree means when he’s talking about the intellectual perspective doing a disservice to teachers, and a matter of fact I find it quite offensive to classroom teachers. I never, during my tenure as a teacher or now, saw teachers and students as “actors who are imprisoned in a world governed not by people but by abstract ideas”…do researchers typically look at the process of education in this manner? If so, no wonder researchers are so horrible at predicting outcomes – eliminating the human aspects of the process is dangerous in that you ignore evident sources of error. Perhaps I’m too much of a pragmatist, but I find folly in living in theory land and ignoring individualism.
This was not an easy article for me to read. I had to put it down several times and reflect upon my beliefs and the author’s perspective/intent. Ultimately, I came to terms with most of it. Upon reflection, I went back to some of my earlier struggles when deciding between and Ed.D and Ph.D programs.
ReplyDeleteIf pressed, the idea that I struggled with the most was Labaree’s belief that teachers are not “hired to pursue the goals of their clients.” Labaree states: “… teachers are in the business of instilling behaviors and skills and knowledge in students who do not ask for this intervention in their lives and who are considered too young to make that kind of choice anyway. By setting out to change people rather than to serve their wishes, teachers take on an enormous moral responsibility…” I would argue that students still choose to attend to instruction and learn, or not to learn, and furthermore that this argument assumes that children do not want to learn what they are being taught. I believe that children possess a natural curiosity. Assuming that children do not want to learn to read or do mathematics and that we are restricting student liberties is a bold statement that I would like to further explore in the literature. I do agree that the field of education is filled with moral obligations. Bruce
I agree with your comments, Bruce! The article, definitely, is not written from a constructivist-perspective of the current state of education. I do not feel I'm a dictator in the classroom manipulating students. Those sentiments in the article confused me as well...
DeleteI questioned this area as well...as a parent, I don't feel like the teacher has liberal control over my child's behaviors and skills and knowledge...one move I disagree with and I can swoop in like an evil demon, holding meetings with anyone I like including the principal. Teachers are catering to parents and the community's political and social mores.
DeleteEducation is a messy discipline, and we should revel in it. It's a field of study that under-girds our hopes for our childrens' learning, daily experiences, and future quality of life. This article spoke to an imbalance in several spectrums of variance of focus between practitioner and researcher.
ReplyDeleteFor me, I wear two hats: one during the day, and one when I sit in my Ph.D. class. I liken it to the Tao: the Yin and Yang. A balance is achieved when the practitioner sees herself as a researcher, and the researcher sees herself as a practitioner. It is a symbiotic relationship.
Where did I disagree with this article? The author assumes, in my reading, a position that all educational researchers, whether quantitatively-or-qualitatively-persuaded, take on a post-postivist perspective to research. There are many other postmodernist perspectives & research methods that should be considered when dealing with maybe the most complex, and context-contingent, of all of the "soft" sciences, education...
As a practitioner and doc student, I can't relate to the article. I have no problem in the compartmentalization of both roles. I find myself opposite of what the article stereotypes as typical teachers on the various spectrums...
Shawn, are you a fragmented, postmodern soul living with contradictory but coexisting conceptual frameworks? :). Can you think of a way in which we could get rid of the compartmentalization...where you wouldn't have to be Clark Kent by day and Superman by night? It is possible to mix the yin and the yang? I can't, I'm just asking...
DeleteI work hard to nurture my inner schizoid (-:
DeleteIrina here:
ReplyDeleteI generally agree with Labree’s claims, most of which are supported by research. The only statement he makes that I don’t necessarily agree with is “ strong control over neither its methods not its subject and producing findings that are neither very clear nor very convincing” (p. 14).
I regard education as a science, even if, as Labaree puts it, an applied, soft science. Most of the methods used in education are also common with other social sciences, but the ways they are implemented are specific for this discipline. So, as a science, education does have control over its methods, and it is possible to produce causal findings. I agree that most educational methods are naturalistic and research is often performed in the classroom, where there is little experimental control, but I expect that experienced researchers can contrive designs that control for most confounding variables and are able to produce conclusive findings.
I can’t say that I read anything surprising in Labaree’s article, I expected there to be a hiatus between practitioners and theoreticians, or researchers, as they are mostly called. However, even Labaree agrees this rupture is not as significant as described, and there can be fluent communication between the two.
Mindy — I like to snap on the proverbial latex gloves and do a quick and dirty search of the people I read about. Dr. Labaree has quite an impressive educational repertoire as a sociologist; Harvard educated with higher degrees at U. of PA, a smattering of one-year stints at several colleges, tenure at Michigan State, and finally coming to rest as department chair at Stanford. As I carefully pull off the gloves (as they’re now filthy and so…used!), I do a superficial glance at the good Dr.’s publications and specialties. He strikes me as someone I’d like to have a beer or two with (as long as I’m prepared to listen to a good deal of gratuitous self-citation, watch some finger-pointing, and see some self-righteous chest thumpin'), as I was fine with a good deal of his reasoning. My biggest problem with what Dr. Labaree wrote was the slight contradiction where he stresses the importance of norms when teaching research methods to teachers (pg. 9), while at the same time (and in the same paper) suggesting that teachers shun their highly normative practice and have a cathartic experience where they (the teachers) embrace a more analytical practice that provides them valid explanations (pg. 5); he stresses that teachers who become PhD students are more focused on norms and less focused on research.
ReplyDeleteKierstyn here.... I enjoyed reading the Labaree article. I thought he did an excellent job of presenting many reasons why it is difficult to prepare teacher to be educational researchers. Many statements in the article stood out to me, but I will discuss the one point that stood out the most. Labaree makes the claim “As a result, educational researchers continually tend to rebuild the foundations of the field, instead of building scholarly skyscrapers on the apparently durable base of hard-pure research “. His statement implies that educational researchers are constantly producing the same research and are not progressive. He implies that the field of education research is not advancing at the same rate as other fields.
ReplyDeleteI also noticed that the author gives the reader a brief glimpse of his resume by stating his credentials, training and experiences as a researcher. I began wondering if he stated his credentials to prove why his statements were valid. I also did not appreciate his constant use of the terms soft and hard to describe different types of research. For example, when discussing qualitative and quantitative research, Labaree noted “ Quantitative work has a harder feel to it, which helps it produce results that come across as clearer, more definitive, and more conducive to causal inference. “ His statement reveals his personal bias toward qualitative research. The term “harder” implies that one type of research is more difficult than the other. His statement made me question if completing a dissertation that uses qualitative data would be considered less rigorous by my colleagues.
Kierstyn, great points. You just stated exactly why this paper is a a Position Statement rather than research. Thanks! - Alison
DeleteThe thing I most disagree with in the Labaree article is his statement on page 21….
ReplyDelete“They need to be persuaded to retire teaching experience as a trump card and use it instead as one possible perspective, to explore the possibility that theory can be as useful as experience and that the practice of theory building can be as important as the practice of teaching.”
In my opinion there is no need to “retire teaching experience” in order to do a thorough job in analysis of theory. What good is theory anyway if you don’t have at least some frame of reference to apply the theory? I think that no matter the occupation one must be constantly seeking new information to remain relevant, synthesizing the information to inform practice, and reflecting on what works and what doesn’t. Maybe it’s a case of having to teach an old dog new tricks? Labaree seems to think there is a boundary between theory and practice; I would think it is more of an easement. Transformation of skills to application is often difficult and removing oneself from a comfortable environment into the realm of the unknown isn’t always easy. I imagine that training doc students allows you to witness people in the midst of the change and struggle…..and perhaps also witness the tension that comes when trying to change human behavior.
I could be just the type of teacher that Labaree is frustrated with. I recognize that I’m in the camp that believes research should be aimed at improving policy, and thus improving practice. Therefore I feel that I must be fluent in the practice in order to be able to break down the task and analyze it at its most basic levels. Analysis must be balanced in both practice and theory. To tip the scale in either direction is losing the best of both worlds. The person who is skilled at reaching a balance will likely be the best suited to train future practitioners or future researchers.
Carol
Hi Carol, you make a very valid point. As practitioner we see the gaps and fell the need to change, which draws us to research. Thus research will help in changing practice.
DeleteFor the most part I agreed with what Labaree had to say and found that he did a great job of articulating my own experiences and feelings as I have moved from teacher to doc student. I agree that teaching, in this country, is the least esteemed of the professions; that education is a perplexing mix of both highly soft and highly applied knowledge; that there is a need for multiple perspectives in order to "understand" education; and that the "marshy epistemological terrain" make it difficult to construct "scholarly high-rises" in the field of educational research. I also have found in my own experience that while I may have been (or at least tried to be) an "educational intellectual" as a classroom teacher, I am experiencing some cognitive dissonance as I move into the world of research. This may be due in part to my "withdrawal" symptoms as I left the classroom completely, but it is also due, I think, to the shift from the personal to the intellectual, from the particular to the universal, from the experiential to the theoretical that Labaree discusses.
ReplyDeleteI guess my biggest question coming away from this article has to do with L's statement that "we should not be surprised to find that doctoral programs in education often fail to produce all that we ask of them." Do we think this is true at VCU? Why or why not?
Oops....That was Meg (P.) above....
ReplyDeleteSo I struggle with terms/ vocabulary in the Labaree article. I believe that more time considering term connotations may have developed an article that p-12 teacher practitioners who are entering doctoral studies might actually read and better get the message Labaree wanted delivered.
ReplyDeleteYvette Modestin shared at the Charlottesville Race Unity Week two weeks ago, "sometimes strong words are the only way to get the message across and sometimes strong words will not deliver the message you want."
I struggle most with the difference between "personal to intellectual" as recommended by Labaree. I find it to be slighted toward the researcher. He explains so well in the beginning, although the hairs on my neck do rise to attention, about the "soft" situation of education both in knowledge and methodolgy. Yet when he chooses his words to explain the differences he labels the practitioner view as "personal" a term not well tolerated in the business or hard science world and the researcher end "intellectual" a respected academic term and use of time. If you are doing something personal, society may wonder if it is the best use of your time, but intellectual is "academic" and worthy.
I wandered and wondered a great deal this weekend about if the possibility of continuing with my practitioner self (personal driven) and striving for a doctorate (intellectual driven) was truly compatible. I found myself referencing, after Labaree and the term/vocabulary discomfort, what many of my successful Upward Bound students have done for years - "Code-Switching". I think I just have to figure out how to practice "code-switching" and being content with it while I work through the dichotomous process.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/
Diane here . . .
ReplyDeleteI could barely get through the article without hitting point after point. For example, education in this country is not very highly thought of. Teachers are almost 2nd-class citizens and are frequently ignored or not taken seriously. But in China, teachers are at the top of the food chain -- well-respected, listened to, consulted as the "experts" they are. That being said, since I don't have any practitioner background, making the transition to research is fairly easy. I've always done both research and practice in my earlier career, but the difference with education is learning a brand new discipline.
Having an MS in Management should make the transition easy because a lot of what I learned and have used in the MS program directly translates to education. But education is just now discovering the business processes and procedures I've used for the last 30 years. While I know the business side of things, I know less about the people side. Teachers and educators appear to have different temperaments than those in business, which makes the transition more challenging.
One more point that Larabee makes is that "the mission of the educational researcher is to make sense of the way schools work and the way they don't" (p. 17). I strongly disagree with that statement. In special education, I'm always reading research about interventions and instructional methodologies and looking for ways to make them work in generic situations. Therefore, my role as a researcher is not only to make sense of things but also to teach others what the "best practices" are and to make research easy to understand and use.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteJenny here…First of all, Labaree makes several claims that I do not agree with. He automatically assumes that all teachers are skeptical about approaching education from a researcher perspective. He makes the statement on page 21 that teachers need to be convinced “that there is something valuable they can learn about education by examining it as an outsider, as a researcher”. As I agree with the statement, he makes this assertion because he feels most teachers do not feel this way. In my master’s program, there were several instances in which I observed classes as “the researcher” for a paper I was writing and I learned a lot from the experience. In my own experience as a teacher, there have been several times that I have observed other teachers in an attempt to learn from them. Two important cases come to mind: when struggling with teaching a particular concept, I observed another teacher teaching the same topic so I could get ideas for how better teach my class. A second time, I was struggling with classroom management, so I observed a teacher who was strong in this area to help me with my own struggles. In both instances, I learned a lot about how to improve my teaching and was amazed at how different we all are as teachers. I have not entered this program as a “skeptic” to the power of observation. I see the great potential in observations and learning from others, making generalizations, or even applying theory to what is observed. I am not a skeptic, as Labaree tends to generalize all new doctoral student s in education.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, Labaree says on page 20 that the “reach for theory and generalization is not necessarily what teachers in doctoral programs want” and I disagree with this as well. As a student of educational psychology, I have been exposed to many theories about different aspects of education. I have been able to use many of the theories of student motivation in my current classes. I have had some success (although small) with using some of the motivation theories to increase motivation in my own classes. As a teacher, we are encouraged to research certain areas of education to improve our teaching. Labaree also states that teachers think there are not generalizations that can be made in teaching and that no ideas or theories can be used to drive practice. Again, there are many generalizations that can be made in the field of education. Isn’t this how we come up with theories in the first place? We look for commonalities across various educational settings?? Theories definitely have their place in the classroom, as well. As mentioned above, when understood and correctly implemented, they can have an impact on instruction.
As I read Labaree’s article I had mixed feeling. I agreed to parts of it, but not all. It is a sad to know that a profession that influences lives of many young minds does not get the respect that it deserved. This is the same case in India; most see this profession for women who are not interested in fields that are more competitive. I always thought that teachers in the US got a better deal, but was amazed at seeing my peers agree to Labaree.
ReplyDeleteAs the article discusses the gap between practitioners and researchers, I did not quiet agree to all of it. In any field where we are required to learn something new and move out of our comfort zone there is going to be dissonance. Personally, I feel there are times I require this imbalance to help me put things in a new perspective. I am sure students in any field feel it at the beginning of any learning experience. I felt it when I moved from the Masters to the Doctoral level. It took me a semester to settle in. However, I do not feel that putting on my researcher hat has in anyway changed me as a teacher. However, I feel that my teaching experience will certainly influence me as a researcher. As a teacher, I always felt that there was very little time to nurture or attend to the affective domain, and not attending to it affected students’ academic achievements. There is a lot of research along these lines and still there is little change in the field. As a researcher, I would want to add to the scholarship, but also bring about a change in practice.
As I read this article, I also felt that a lot has changed since 2003. Policy requires teachers to implement evidence-based practices, record student progress, implement data driven decision-making process in education. Thus, teachers that now come in as doctoral candidates are more aware of research practices.