Participatory Action Research

During the irst year of the PhD programme, I undertook the Post Graduate Certiicate in Teaching and Learning (PG Cert) as a condition of the Doctoral

research funding.15 _{As part of that process, I carried out two small Action Research}

(AR) projects. I was able to use aspects of these projects as pilots for the doctoral research, testing out different qualitative methods, such as interviews, focus groups,

14 From Chelsea BA Fine Art Handbook 10/11: ‘If you regularly miss sessions you will be contacted by your Course Director or Personal Tutor and offered the opportunity to discuss any dificulties that might be affecting your attendance and ways in which the University might help you attend more regularly. If your attendance continues to be poor you will receive a warning letter, your visa or student loan could be revoked and, eventually, you will be withdrawn from the course.’ p. 81.

15 The PG Cert in Teaching and Learning was run by CLTAD and was the standard teaching qualiication for HE tutors at the University of the Arts, London. From autumn 2011, this qualiication as provided by CLTAD will change and become part of a Continuing Professional Development in Academic Practice in Art, Design and Communication

Programme. The two CLIP CETL Doctoral awards were conditional on undertaking this qualiication.

and forms of action research. This process was instrumental in determining that it would also be necessary to work with the students in a ‘different’ way within the PhD project and that I needed to ind methods that could acknowledge the students’ contributions to the research, such that all contributions, including my own, could be in some ways jointly owned. Thus, I opted for a form of Participatory Action Research (PAR), that built on the Action Research undertaken for the PG Cert, but with an initial focus on the diagnostic stage of the action research cycle. According to Cohen et al., Action Research is regarded as being a methodology that enables a Habermasian notion of critical theory, which was highly relevant to

me because of my interest in Habermas’ particular notion of relection.16 _However,

as Hannula, Souranta and Vadén points out, at the core of Action Research is the intervention, which has a speciic goal. This, in turn, leads to the question: in whose interest is it to promote this goal? There is always the danger that Action Research can become a mechanism of control, like the methods that it was developed to undo. Carr and Kemmis book on action research, Becoming Critical, was both a

point of departure for this process and an ongoing touch stone.17 _{This book has a}

philosophical grounding and resonates with Habermas work, and as such aims for

educational research to operate as critical social science.18

The implications and full potential of PAR will be discussed in Site 3, the Praxis Site, which considers the project FL∆G, conceived to closely link pedagogy and practice through appropriating aspects of the so-called ‘pedagogic turn’ in the art world. The main purpose within this section, however, is to analyse and interpret the curriculum-based teaching as a teaching-practice-based activity. Thus, the teaching itself, (or what should more correctly be described as the different forms of student-teacher encounters), was the primary research material-generating activity for Site 2.

For someone who wishes to practice relectively within their ield(s), Action Research provides a somewhat obvious methodology, as observed by Wisker,

Cowan and Cohen et al.19 _{There is a strong link between Action Research as}

a research methodology and relective practice within pedagogy. Relection has two main roles within Action Research: irstly before the plan of action, where the researcher observes and relects on the current situation. The second phase of

16 Cohen, Manion, and Morrison, Research Methods in Education, p. 30.

17 Wilfred Carr and Stephen Kemmis, Becoming Critical: Education Knowledge and Action

Research, RouthledgeFalmer, 2006.

18 Carr and Kemmis, Becoming Critical, p. 2.

19 Gina Wisker, The Postgraduate Research Handbook: Succeed with your MA, MPhil, EdD

and PhD, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Cowan, On Becoming an Innovative University Teacher. Cohen, Manion, and Morrison, Research Methods in Education.

relection takes place after a cycle of action, where the action is considered in terms of its effect. Both points of relection are in a sense retrospectively applied in that they represent distinct activities in a cycle constituted of relective and non-relective tasks. As Cohen and all have pointed out it can be said that forms

of relection take place at every stage of Action Research.20 _{There are several}

models for the cycle of Action Research. I have conceptualised this process for this research though the basic action research spiral: observe, relect, plan, act, which then repeat. However, the smooth diagram is misleading as in the research parts of the cycle would at times take place almost simultaneously, and certainly when working as a group, the cycles would not be synchronised across all involved at all times. Action Research can be seen as having political agenda, (for instance for Carr and Kemmis, striving towards emancipation in the Habermasian sense), and although my research is not politically motivated, politics inevitably comes into any research within an institutional arena.

Fig. 3. Basic Action Research Spiral from Action Research Induction Kit. 21

2.1.4 Reflection

For Site 2, (as in Site 1) relective practices are reapplied within different contexts and for different ends. As noted earlier relection has a historical connection to educational research as well as to artistic research (see Site 1). For example, in educational research relection and interpretation are key to understanding the cyclical nature of Action Research. The Habermasian schema, as we just saw, has

20 Cohen, Manion, and Morrison, Research Methods in Education, p. 310.

21 See Australian Government website, http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/sa/housing/pubs/ homelessyouth/induction_kit/Documents/p3.htm, (accessed 23.02.12).

become a signiicant method within social science through its place within critical

theory. As such it is frequently used for pedagogic research too.22 _{I have already}

proposed that there are forms of relection and relexion that are integral to, and can be developed from, forms of artistic practice (see Section 1.4.3). I hope also to show that these also come into play in the teaching and learning encounter in the art school.

Within HE the relective teacher is increasingly held up as a paragon of teaching, supported by a plethora of literature focussing on relective teaching and relective teachers that builds on Schön’s seminal texts, Educating the Relective Practitioner, and The Relective Practitioner, and Dewey’s How We Learn, which was speciically

aimed at student teachers. More recent texts include, On Becoming an Innovative

University Teacher: Relection in Action by John Cowan and Facilitating Relective Learning in Higher Education by Anne Brockbank and Ian McGill.23 _{Both these}

texts centre on relective practice in learning and teaching and are recommended reading for higher education (HE) teaching and learning qualiications such as the PG Cert at Centre for Learning and Teaching in Art and Design (CLTAD). A signiicant difference between these texts is that Cowan deines a new model for relective practice (developed from Schön and Kolb’s learning cycles), whereas Brockbank and McGill build on and promote different, already existing models to

facilitate learning within HE.24 _{However, authors of both texts agree that the only}

way to facilitate relective learning is to become a relective practitioner oneself. In essence this means ongoing commitment to relection on one’s own teaching practice. Cowan, Brockbank and McGill further agree that only by relecting on what we do, how we do it and why we do it as teachers, can we, ‘teach’ relection. However, for Site 2, I am more concerned with the ways that private knowledge linked to subjective art practices can be relected into a public teaching context (as articulated by Brian Catling’s quote on p. 19). The above texts are, (unlike this research), not concerned with subject specialisms, nor do they show how a subject or a practice become integral to the teaching-learning encounter. Very little is said about the relationship between practice, research and teaching in general except for teaching as a specialised practice.

Schön’s book, Educating the Relective Practitioner, is more relevant and

applicable to this research, irst because it deals with how relective practice can be taught in the application of the concepts of relection-in-action and relection- on-action. Secondly and most signiicantly, it was written speciically for educators

22 Ibid, pp. 26-32.

23 Dewey, How we think. Schön, The Relective Practitioner, Schön, Educating the

Relective Practitioner. Brookbank and McGill, Facilitating Relective Learning in Higher Education. Cowan, On Becoming an Innovative University Teacher.

of professionals.

In Educating the Relective Practitioner, Schön discuss the relective practicum, ‘a setting designed for the task of learning a practice’, which for this research should

be understood as being part of the teaching site.25 The relective practicum relates

to the kinds of artistry needed by the student to form a competence within the unixed and uncertain area of their practice. For Schön, the relective practicum is a place of doing, where students work in parallel and tutors work with the students actively demonstrating professional practice through relection-in-action, as well as relection-on-action. The paradigmatic example of a relective practicum for Schön is the architecture teaching studio. This concept of the practicum will be referred to later to understand and pinpoint the different kinds of relection undertaken through teaching, and my attempt to pinpoint a process of relection where one’s own art practice becomes relected into teaching practice.

So far in the preamble to Site 2, we can see three main articulations of relection that have been or will be addressed in the remaining Site 2 text:

1. Relection as a step or stage within an Action Research cycle

2. The teacher as a relective practitioner

3. The possibility of relecting practice into teaching