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CPD Team

BERA – Practitioner day

Con MorrisSeptember 7th, 2008

I represented the CPD Team at the BERA annual conference on Saturday at Heriot Watt University.

The keynote was delivered by Professor Ken Eichner, Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the U.S.

Ken spoke eloquently on how we need to rethink educational research to remove the divide between practitioners and academics. An early remark questioned the wisdom of having separate ‘practitioner days’ at conferences such as these was greeted by a few cries of ‘hear, hear!”

He propounded a ‘3rd space’ theory that links the 1st space of practice-based knowledge creation and the 2nd space of a largely academic route.

He used a number of examples of ‘boundary crossings’ to illustrate this third space:

  • ITE students drawing on practitioner research. See the Carnegie Foundation on how teacher educators use these web sites to educate teachers
  • Hybrid educators who work in both schools and universities
  • Mediated field experiences where academics / teachers learn from each other (similar to professional learning rounds work being led by Graham Thomson here in Scotland?)
  • Professors teaching children and documenting it for teacher education
  • ‘professional development schools’ that are part of faculties within US universities

Some of the issues highlighted by Professor Zeichner:

  • Teacher action research is still largely ignored by academic world
  • We should consider changing the funding model (currently based on the amount of published research) to include post-research and ongoing dialogue
  • Presentations and publications should be defined by topic not by the source of the research.

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One Response to “BERA – Practitioner day”

  1. jaye richards September 9th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
    The SERA conference this year in Perth will have a Saturday morning session which could perhaps be described as a ‘practitioner’ day – papers presented will have a classroom focus and I suppose their logic is that it’s easier for teachers to get along on a Saturday to take part and meet thepresenters wh are in the main, classroom teacher-researchers themselves, although the TLRP conference in London bucks this trend with the schools day being on a Monday
    The ‘third space’ comments from professor Z are interesting – it’s how I’m working at the moment, in collaboration with an experienced university academic (Dr Steve Draper at Glasgow Uni) on a series of journal papers based on my own action research and I have a research student funded by the university summer work funding helping with this work. Another example maybe of how we are a little ahead of the pack here in Scottish educational research and practice.
    I think Ann Brown’s work on design-based research where the designer actually carries out the study activity is a useful ‘middle ground’ where university academic principles and classroom-based teacher researchers can interact and collaborate effectively.

    Here is the link to SERA… conference is in Perth this November

    http://www.sera.ac.uk/

    Good CPD perhaps

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