My dual role of being a practitioner, colleague and a researcher sometimes required me to juggle my responsibilities. Researching practice in schools other than my own, sometimes made it difficult to find the necessary time for face-to-face reflections, but we managed to tackle this problem through email exchange and ‘phone-reflections’. Due to all the ‘non- teaching responsibilities’ of the teaching participants, including my own, teachers were not always able to keep their logs as agreed, or to work with me on the micro-analysis of the videos. Therefore it became my responsibility to make notes of the teachers’ reflections and to add them to my reports, and often, to select the critical incidents for feedback moments with the group, which should have been joint decisions. This could have impacted the outcomes, since I was in the expert/researcher position and, clearly, looking through my own lens, identifying what I perceived as key incidents to explore (Dunne et al, 2005). Thus, I was, inevitably influencing what the teachers focused attention on. However, because I took the vulnerable position in the classroom, by taking over the group, putting the teacher in the position of the ‘critical observer’, this limitation was also an advantage as I was then viewed as a colleague and partner. Because I was the one that had to explain my actions and decisions, and had to share my thoughts and feelings, the teachers were also very open and sharing. Thus, they emailed me situations that they had experienced during the week, described how they had dealt with these, and identified arising questions. There was, therefore, a high level of critical reflection from all participants, face to face and on email, central to AR (Carr & Kemmis, 1986; Ponte, 2005).
Initially, my main reason for wanting the teachers to keep a log was because I wanted to find out how teachers experienced the transition process from ‘teaching social skills’ to ‘facilitating learning social skills’; and identify what skills and knowledge they needed. However,
demanding a log, as agreed prior to the interventions, would, clearly, have been unethical, given teachers’ workloads (Drake & Heath, 2011) and I would have placed myself in a more
powerful position as researcher. What I have learned from this experience, as an
‘insider/outsider’ researcher, is that participants and I discussing our thoughts and feelings made our relationship more equal. We cooperated as colleagues exchanging ideas, in the spirit of AR (Carr & Kemmis, 1986), supporting teachers’ current and future development.
Carrying out linear (and cyclical) AR in a series of schools across time, is challenging, even for an experienced researcher. The significant amount of data collected was difficult to manage and report on, especially using time-consuming video interaction analysis. However, the knowledge gained in each school proved to be a significant advantage to the cycles of each of the subsequent schools. For example, the different concepts of ‘bullying’ in School A, raised our awareness of the importance of language and definitions in social interaction, which was then used in the other schools, enabling understanding on key topics to be deepened. A final limitation was the fact that School D withdrew from the research, having decided to divide the participating class into two and not to persevere with supporting pupils as a ‘group’, raising ethical and other issues. The decision was caused by pressure from pupils; I and one of the class teachers did not agree with it, although of course we respected the head teacher’s decision. The research ended in an amicable way, with the head allowing me to use all data collected thus far. Schools C and D had particularly interesting contexts, having Catholic denominations but with many non-Catholic pupils from diverse cultural backgrounds. School D’s above decision was based on their principle of treating all children equally. Although several of the problems experienced in class could be related to the cultural and religious background of some boys, based on the experience in School C, I suggested involving the parents in finding solutions. The school however was hesitant, stating that the parents that they ‘desperately wanted to talk to’ would not come to school, and the school did not want to make exceptions by making house visits to these parents, thereby putting them in a ‘special’ position.
Due to Act 23 of the Constitution (summarised in Appendix A), the influence of religion on education is a sensitive issue to discuss. All participating schools had Catholic denominations, although the majority of pupils in School C and D had other religions. The assumption of the schools however, was that, by enrolling their child in a Catholic school, parents and schools had ’common grounds’. Also, in both schools, teachers wanted to treat all children equally. However, wanting to treat all children equally, is not a synonym for ‘doing justice to all’. Literature (e.g. Azghari, 2014; Bläser, 2001) highlights that children growing up in two different cultures or religions may struggle with their identity and as a result, have their own ‘special
needs’, that are underestimated, or perhaps even ignored, due to the ideology in Act 23. Although a limitation, School D’s withdrawal enabled me, with the permission of the head teacher, to deepen understanding of issues about ‘equal rights’, adding a new perspective to the concept of ‘Adequate Education’.
Finally, as in all AR, this qualitative research is small-scale and the knowledge generated is situated, not generalizable (Ponte, 2005). A strength is that it was longitudinal research, conducted in four contrasting schools with similar themes and findings and the problems reported in the schools all showed many similarities to what is stated in the inspectorate reports. Thus, it deepens knowledge and understanding of the complexity of developing pupils’ interactions and social skills in school.