McGrogan, N (2024) Teachers as researchers: understanding the lived experience of engagement in research through collaborative close-to-practice enquiry. PhD thesis, Bath Spa University.
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Abstract
In the context of the long-standing discourse of the teacher as researcher and the recent deprofessionalising of teachers to consumers of specific research of ‘What Works’, this thesis explores what it could mean to be both teacher and researcher. It seeks insight into the experiences of teachers in England and Wales as they engaged in separate small scale research projects and is the focused examination of their research experience as it was lived through engagement in small scale research activity. In seeking to understand this lived experience this thesis is phenomenological. It is also hermeneutical in exploring teachers’ interpretations of their experience. It assumes a Longitudinal Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (LIPA) approach and, throughout their engagement in the research process, participants engaged in semi-structured interviews where they shared their experience as they lived it. Analysis of these interviews moves from the descriptive to the increasingly interpretative to shed light on research questions which focus on the experience of engaging in small scale research, participants’ views on collaborative inquiry and potential influences on sustained engagement in research. Findings indicate that the process of engagement in research could be an empowering-challenging-enticing form of professional development but that this is a fragile, affective experience that requires careful support. Further, the reality, or lived experience of research, can be different to a perception of it as an ‘extensive’ and ‘overwhelming’ activity. This thesis therefore argues for a reframing of teacher research as inquiry, specifically Collaborative Close-to-Practice Inquiry (CCtPI), to support teacher engagement in research as a form of professional development: collaborative to provide support, partnership and reassurance, close-to- practice to facilitate the relevance to practice and referred to as ‘inquiry’ to facilitate a perception of the activity being accessible to teachers. Engaging both with research and in CCtPI can support the teachers as professionals, moving beyond the role of technicians to be both consumers and producers of research.
| Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) |
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| Keywords: | teacher as researcher, longitudinal interpretative phenomenological analysis (LIPA), collaborative close-to-practice enquiry (CCtPI), teacher engagement, professional development, |
| Divisions: | School of Education |
| Identification Number: | https://doi.org/10.17870/bathspa.00016291 |
| Date Deposited: | 31 May 2024 14:02 |
| Last Modified: | 03 Jun 2024 08:14 |
| URI / Page ID: | https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/16291 |
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