Facilitating critical reflection on practice through collaborative research

Abstract: This qualitative case study explores how collaborative teacher research serves as a professional development model for practicing teachers. The purpose of the study is to examine how participation in a collaborative teacher research group affected three French teachers' understandings of one state's foreign language standards, and to look at how those understandings were realized in a collaborative teacher research (CTR) project. This article specifically focuses on the results emanating from how the three French teachers individually and collaboratively interpreted and implemented foreign language standards while participating in CTR. Data were collected from workshops, journal entries, classroom observations, lesson plans and materials, workshop evaluations, the teachers' research, and e-mail conversations. Results show that the teachers learned about the standards primarily from collaborating with their students. Introduction New Visions in Action (NVA), sponsored by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and the National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC) in Iowa, is moving forward a national agenda for foreign language education in an effort to meet goals set forth in the national K-12 foreign language standards (Met, 2000). These standards provide a vision of instruction for which teachers need a high level of language proficiency, extensive cultural competence, a repertoire of approaches that are learner centered and focused on communication, and knowledge about implementing strategies for working with diverse learners who have not traditionally enrolled in foreign language classes (Phillips, 1998). Foreign language pedagogy, described in the manner of the National Standards (1999), will not be realized without sustained professional development for practicing teachers. Past professional development programs have been criticized for their one-shot structure, top-down approach, and failure to address the specific needs of foreign language teachers, resulting in little or no effect on classroom instruction. This professional development paradigm is changing. Current literature discussing professional development concurs that it must be long term, collaborative, content specific, job embedded, inquiry based, and focused on the needs of teachers and the goals we are setting for our students (Alien, 2004; Clair, 2000; Diaz-Maggioli, 2003; Klonsky 2002; Kreeft Peyton, 1997; Lewis, 2000; lieberman & Miller, 2000; McCarthy & Riley, 2000). Further, teachers must be actively involved in both its design and implementation (Bartz & Keefe Singer, 1996; Darling Hammond, 1997; Glisan, 1996; Kreeft Peyton, 1997). The Teacher Development Task Force-one working group of the NVA project-is in the process of establishing a national framework that defines effective professional development for foreign language teachers. Part of the work of the task force involves identifying criteria for the creation and evaluation of professional development programs and subsequently identifying and showcasing exemplary program models. Empirical data from studies investigating the effectiveness of professional development programs are needed to inform the group's ongoing work. NVA has, in particular, called for research on the effectiveness of alternative professional development models (Curtain, 2000). Action research offers a viable solution. Although this type of research, from here on referred to as collaborative teacher research (CTR), is recognized for promoting teacher development and change in teaching practice (Anderson, Herr, & Nihlen, 1994; Burns & Hood, 1995; Freeman, 1998; McNiff, 1993), and as an insightful means for contributing to the knowledge base of teaching (Allwright; 1993; Somekh, 1993; Stenhouse, 1981) we are only beginning to know how foreign language teachers carry out this type of research (Burns, 1999). In addition, while collaboration is the critical component of successful teacher research, it has tended to be promoted and conducted in an individualistic way (Burns, 1999). …

The impact of transaction costs on the institutional structuration of collaborative academic research

Numerous studies have shown how pre-service teachers struggle with a research-practice or theory-practice gap: they find it difficult to implement insights from educational theory within their real-world classroom practices. As a result, student teachers rapidly return to deeply and often traditional rooted beliefs and attitudes. Teacher education institutes, therefore, are challenged to prepare student teachers for seeing the value of educational theory and research for teachers’ classroom practices. In this chapter, we focus on bridging the theory-to-practice gap within initial teacher training, by educating student teachers about research through research. More specifically, we evaluated the implementation of a research-training module in the final year of teacher training. This module was characterised as a collaborative research partnership (between student teachers, in-service teachers, teacher educators, and researchers) and focused on developing and evaluating teaching scenarios. Data collection combined focus groups (N = 23 primary school student teachers) with the analysis of student teachers’ teaching portfolios. The study findings illustrate how participation in a collaborative research project contributed to student teachers’ research conceptions and reflexivity skills. Moreover, collaborative research partnerships enabled to bridge the world of practitioners and researchers, leading them to work together on questions that both consider as being relevant. Our study contributes to the reflection on how to strengthen the quality of teaching and teacher training, by showing how collaborative research can be seen as a valuable professional learning activity.

Conducted by university researchers and/or teachers themselves, teacher research is a form of inquiry approached from the teacher perspective. Such research works from the assumption that teachers “make up their own minds about how to change their practices in light of their informed practical deliberations” (Carr & Kemmis, 1986, p. 219). It adds to the knowledge base of teaching, despite ongoing controversy whether that knowledge base should be codified, who should contribute to it, and for what purposes it should be used (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1998; Donmoyer, 1996; Kleibard, 1993; Shulman, 2004; Wise, 1993). The strand of research includes teacher-oriented (1) action research (Altrichter, Posch, & Somekh, 1993; Stringer, 2007; Whitehead & McNiff, 2006), (2) case study research (Adler, 1996; Goldblatt & Smith, 2005; Shulman, 1996), and (3) reflective practice (LadsonBillings, 1999; Pedro, 2005; Russell & Munby, 1994). Also, (4) narrative inquiry (Clandinin, Pushor, & Murray Orr, 2007; Connelly & Clandinin, 1999; Estola & Elbaz-Luwisch, 2003), and (5) practitioner inquiry (Day, Calderhead, & Denicolo, 1993; Dadds & Hart, 2001; Zeichner & Noffke, 2001) constitute veins of teacher research. The (6) self-study of teaching and teacher education practices (Feldman, Paugh, & Mills, 2004; Guilfoyle, Hamilton, Pinnegar, & Placier, 2004; Loughran, 2005) and (7) the scholarship of teaching and learning (Hatch et al., 2005; Hatch & Pointer Mace, 2007) are furthermore included. Additionally, (8) the use of practice as a site for research (Lampert & Ball, 1998; Wilson, 2001) forms a branch of the teacher research tree. Cutting across these related lines of inquiry are the associated literatures having to do with teacher collaboration (Achinstein, 2002; C. Clark et al., 1996; Craig & J. Huber, 2007), teacher conversation (C. M. Clark, 2001; Feldman, 1999; Hollingsworth, 1994; Rust, 1999), and teacher community (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999; Olson & Craig, 2001; Wilson & Berne, 1999; Grossman, Wineberg, W Wood & Lieberman, 2003) and teacher research networks (Ainscow, Booth, & Dyson, 2004; Atwah, Kemmis, & Weeks, 1998; Reason & Bradbury, 2001) such as the Collaborative Action Research Network (http://www.did.stu.mmu.ac.uk/carn) (which began in the TEACHER RESEARCH AND TEACHER AS RESEARCHER

Many arguments have been voiced in favor of establishing teacher–researcher collaborations in the context of Teacher Professional Development (TPD) and curriculum reform. This chapter draws from a longitudinal co-design effort with in-service science teachers, and reports data from the process of co-design, and the classroom implementations of the co-design outcomes, to discuss these as contexts for supporting teachers as “transformative intellectuals.” We view co-design with teachers as a fertile setting for unsettling established educational practices of passive teaching and learning, in support of moving towards critical praxis and a transformative approach to one’s own teaching. This chapter draws from the second cycle of a TPD which included 27 in-service, science education teachers at the elementary, middle, and high school level, working in disciplinary co-design teams, each guided by a university researcher. The co-design teams developed inquiry modules that integrated Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) ideas, which advocate a more dynamic and inclusive relationship between scientific advancements and societal involvement. Through a qualitative analysis of the data, we report on how teachers were able to become intellectual partners in design and discuss the conditions and challenges to teacher learning and professional growth.

Service-learning pedagogy provides practical learning experience for students by integrating community service with academic learning. However, experience is not enough, reflection on that experience is essential to produce new understanding. The concept of collaborative reflection has been recognized recently however, there is lack of research on how to structure guided collaborative reflection to view the process of knowledge building and how technologies can support it. To shed light on this issue, this study proposed a computational workflow of structured collaborative reflection which is adopted from integrated collaborative reflection model and implement a prototype (i.e. named as ‘Co-Reflective’) to proof the concept how Computer Supported Collaborative Reflection System (CSCRS) is supporting collaborative critical thinking and knowledge building. For this purpose, design science research methodology was employed in this study. The evaluation of Co-Reflective is provided where we asked our participants to evaluate their experience and give feedback about system. Based on the positive feedback of participants we conclude that Co-Reflective can effectively support for guided collaborative reflection activities to promote collaborative critical thinking and knowledge building. Implementation of Co-Reflective not only addresses the limitations of current technologies but also contribute in the body of knowledge by presenting the concept of integrated collaborative reflection model that promotes collaborative critical thinking and knowledge building.
 Keywords—collaborative knowledge building, collaborative reflection, Computer Supported Collaborative Reflection System (CSCRS), service learning.

University-industry linkages (UIL) provide firms with creative ideas and solutions to their problems and universities with critical research funds. In Japan, a series of institutional and policy reform has been made to promote UIL since the end of 1990s, including the historical incorporation of national universities in 2004. Traditionally, a UI collaborative research in Japan has been formed by facultypsilas informal, personal relationships with firms. To overcome the limitations of traditional approach, a formal, specialized boundary spanning structure, such as UI liaison office, was established in major research universities to effectively bridge universitypsilas knowledge seeds with industrial needs. The goal of this research is to show how the formal boundary spanning structure has changed the patterns of UI collaborative research based on the data of 3,041 UI collaborative researches between 2003 and 2006 in the University of Tokyo. Especially, we analyze how the <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Proprius</i> 21, which is a boundary spanning program focused on intensifying prior feasibility study, searching the best researcher, matching best partners, and strengthening research planning between UI, has increased the number and size of collaborative research projects.

Introduction

This article highlights two insightful methods for advancing teacher research: practitioner self-study in relation to a range of texts, with which to examine one’s educational landscape; and classroom interventions conceived as a Vygotskian activity, via teacher-researcher collaboration. Both approaches allow teachers and collaborating researchers to share individual expertise across institutional boundaries and engage in creative local action.

Research – practice partnerships (RPPs) engage the diverse perspectives of researchers and teachers, transforming both educational research and practice. However, an increased understanding of the day-to-day activities of research conducted within RPPs, and of the role of teachers and researchers in this research, is needed. In this study, teachers and researchers involved in research projects framed by a Swedish RPP between a university and thirteen municipalities were interviewed. In total, we interviewed twelve teachers and researchers in a selection of four research projects in this RPP. We studied how teachers’ and researchers’ roles evolved over the phases of the research process and found that collaboration was more extensive during the data collection phase than during project initiation and data analysis and reporting. We also found that characteristics of the project’s initialising phase were consequential to the evolution of teachers’ and researchers’ roles in later phases. This study contributes to the literature on collaborative research by elaborating on teacher and researcher roles across the research process. This knowledge will assist the development of strategies for conducting collaborative research in education.

Expert finding systems try to alleviate the information overload problem and recommend experts who can satisfy users' needs. They support researchers to find research collaborators automatically. The main challenge of current expert finding systems is that they retrieve experts based on the content of their documents but ignore the human interaction perspective. The human interaction perspective comprises the factors that influence collaborator selection decisions in real life. This study aimed to develop a collaborator selection model for expert finding systems in research universities. This model includes human capital, social capital, and cultural capital factors that influence collaborator selection. The researchers integrated the Scientific and Technical Human Capital (STHC) model and Social Capital Theory to determine these factors. The authors conducted a survey comprising 349 researchers from Malaysian research universities to validate the research hypotheses. A partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM) was employed to analyze all the survey data. The empirical results revealed that the significant factors that influence collaborator selection in the research universities context were cognitive accessibility, reliability, relevance, commitment, physical accessibility, cultural experiences, complementary skills, and research experience. Surprisingly, the results revealed that network ties, relational accessibility, and reputation were insignificant factors for collaborator selection. This study proposed a research model for collaborator selection in the research universities context and provided several recommendations for the policymakers and practitioners. The model will help to provide sufficient criteria to select academic research collaborator in universities and can be used by expert finding systems designers, researchers, collaborators, and universities.

This paper examines research collaborations in the field of business and management in Malaysia, a fast-developing economy in Southeast Asia. The country aims to become a developed nation by the year 2020, guided by its well-charted Wawasan 2020 or Vision 2020 program. Research and development are important agenda items within this program. Rarely, however, have studies investigated the research collaborations of researchers based in Malaysia from the network perspective. After a manual author disambiguation process, we examined the network of 285 business and management researchers at the individual, institutional, and international levels. Author collaborations per paper almost doubled between 2001 and 2010 compared to the period 1980---1990. The popularity of researchers and the strength and diversity of their ties with other researchers had significant effects on their research performance. Furthermore, geographical proximity still mattered in intra-national collaborations. Malaysian institutions more often collaborated intra-institutionally or with foreign partners than with other institutions within Malaysia. The country's five research universities are among the top-most productive of all institutions in Malaysia. Malaysia's top international partners are all developed countries, including the US, Australia, Japan, the UK, and Canada. Surprisingly, Malaysia has had relatively little collaboration with ASEAN nations, of which it is a prominent member and which has an important agenda of educational cooperation within its member states. Internationally co-authored articles have been cited almost three times more than locally co-authored articles. Based on these results, we suggest an effective co-authorship strategy.

This study aims to determine the extent to which the use of Problem Based Learning method to improve Critical Thinking Skills of Asthma’ul Husna Class 4B SDN Tambakaji 01. The formulation of the problem is How high is the increase in critical thinking skills of students in class 4B SDN Tambakaji 01 in the subject of Islamic Religious Education and Ethics material Asthma’ul Husna using the Problem Based Learning (PBL) learning model? How can the Problem Based Learning (PBL) learning model improve the critical thinking skills of students in class 4B SDN Tambakaji 01 in learning activities of Islamic Religious Education and Ethics material Asthma’ul Husna ? Collaborators in this class action research are Senior PAI Teacher Peers. This research is a Classroom Action Research consisting of 2 cycles, each cycle consisting of 4 stages, namely planning, implementation, observation, and reflection. The data collection methods used were observation and documentation. Data analysis in this study is by comparing the achievement of grades with criteria for achievement of learning objectives 70-75 and is characterized by an increase in the Classical Completeness Criteria in each cycle. Data collection is done by looking at the critical thinking skills of students during learning activities. From the analysis of the data obtained, it can be concluded that there is an increase in the critical thinking skills of students in the pre-cycle, cycle I and cycle II shows that the critical thinking skills of students have increased, students with scores below Criteria for Achievement of Learning Objectives in the pre-cycle were 52%, in cycle I decreased to 26%, cycle II decreased to 0%. So there is an increase in students in critical thinking skills from 48% to 74%, or an increase of 100%. With this increase, it has shown success in this classroom action research. The classroom action research target on improving critical thinking skills has shown the planned results, namely 85% of active students in the implementation of learning in Cycle II

Research – practice partnerships (RPPs) in education have been on the political agenda in Sweden during the last years. RPPs are long-term collaborations between higher education institutions and school districts (municipalities) and schools which intend to facilitate teacher-researcher collaboration in close relation to the teaching practice. This study focuses on a Swedish RPP between one university and multiple municipalities. It explores why two comparable municipalities differed in their success in the partnership’s core activity: calls for funding for collaborative research. Using the theoretical framework of absorptive capacity and boundary infrastructure, the internal organization of the two municipalities and how the RPP-initiative was docked into these organizations were analysed. We interviewed municipal- and school-level actors involved in the application processes within the two municipalities. Significant results include that for equal opportunities for teacher – researcher collaboration, municipalities must develop an organizational capacity that allows them to learn productively from external partners and recognize the knowledge provided by boundary spanners. This study contributes to the expanding literature on partners’ strategies to address emerging challenges of RPPs. It expands our understanding of how municipalities’ internal organization facilitates or hinders collaborative research within RPPs in education.

A healthcare administration internship is discussed as an important factor in academia’s response to criticism that graduates are not well prepared for job challenges. Employers contend that many graduates have limited critical thinking strengths; a cognitive attribute that manifest itself in needed workplace skills.This article summarizes the conceptual framework and organizational features that, over a seven-year period, fostered the establishment of a statewide undergraduate health administration internship program. The internship is embedded in an AUPHA-certified health administration curriculum in a Midwest state university. The internship is discussed as a part of the health administration curriculum and as an experiential bridge from the university’s didactic world to the health service work environment. Enhancing interns’ critical thinking is the internship goal; an outcome pursued through experiential learning in the placement site and augmented with structured input from the university. Internship projects, assignments, project execution, and, preceptor guidance continuously augment the internship’s cycle of experiential learning. As the internship matured, mutual benefits between the program and participating facilities emerged. These returns are discussed under the headings of: a) employment support, b) research collaboration, c) networking opportunities, d) promotional outreach, and e) outcome-assessment research. These returns continuously reinforce value for all internship stakeholders.