Note something from this article
with which you disagree (note: I assume that reading this paper was a different
experience for those with P-12 experience and those without. That said, he made a sufficient number of
bold claims so I’m sure everyone can disagree with something he said). Why do
you disagree with it? Did Labaree give
words to any tensions that you feel as you head down the road of the
educational researcher? If so, explain.
Since I have been a school counselor for the past 6 years, I had a strong reaction to the argument about how the author views the “experience” piece that teachers/educators in doctoral programs have as a negative. I have mixed feelings on this. I think that many research studies have value, specifically in the realm that they are carried out, but so does experience. For me as a doctoral student versus when I was a master’s level student with no experience, I feel I get more out of what I read and the class discussions because I can draw from my experience as well. I think experience brings benefit to my doctoral studies, because it keeps me a critical reader of research who doesn’t take everything at face value and I can internalize what I read better by being able to put it into context. He argues that experience “is also narrow in scope by being confined to these same contexts, learners, and intentions,” but that is what research is like, too, in many ways. Studies are carried out in specific contexts, so who is to say those trump research? I think this argument is narrow-minded and he should be looking more at the benefits that experiences provide rather than the students trumping the teacher/research.
ReplyDeleteThis is Weadé...Robyn, I agree with you about the negative stance of the author regarding the experience of practitioners who enter doctoral programs. Teachers, counselors and other practitioners bring valuable experience to doctoral programs that prepare students to become education researchers. The author views the experience of teachers as important, however, he acknowledges the “problems" that exist when preparing teachers to become educational researchers including differences in worldviews, perspectives and culture. These so called “problems” should be viewed as strengths and should encourage doctoral programs to adjust in how they prepare practitioners to become skilled researchers.
DeleteHi ... it's Holly. I think Labaree overreaches quite a bit in this article. For instance, when he writes about teachers, “…they may harbor a deep suspicion that there are no generalities about teaching – no ideas or theories or modes of practice – that will be of any use to them in dealing with their own unique pedagogical problems” (p.20). Really? If this is the case, then there’s a much larger problem at hand than how to transform teachers into researchers. At its most benign, this seems to be an outdated notion, which could be the case since Labaree wrote this piece in 2003. In our current world of accountability and evidence-based practice, teachers are aware of and must demonstrate to their supervisors how they regularly make use of ideas, theories, and modes of practice throughout their classroom instruction. At its most sinister, Labaree’s description of teachers’ rejection of ideas in their teaching practice is stereotypical and condescending. It also points to a broader issue with his argument. He assumes that all of the transitioning and transforming needs to be done on the parts of doctoral students. However, what if the problem doesn’t lie solely with the poor, individualistic, relationship-driven, “do what’s best for the kids” teachers? What if the problem (or at least part of it) lies in the separation and disconnect of educational school faculty from the real life work of schools? Could it be that the educational policy initiatives that Richardson describes as originating in Washington, D.C. are at least partly in response to the inability of public universities to meet the needs of some of their primary constituencies?
ReplyDeleteHi, this is Laurie.
ReplyDeleteI might disagree with Labaree’s binary description of researchers and practitioners as utterly distinct entities. I also might disagree with the idea that doctoral programs ought to completely transform students from one to the other.
Labaree admits “research claims in education tend to be mushy, highly contingent, and heavily qualified” (Labaree, 2003). Even McMillan, the person charged with teaching us all quantitative techniques, writes in the textbook used in the prerequisite class, “on balance, it seems that my qualitative studies have had more impact” (McMillan, 2016). If quantitative studies are noisy and qualitative studies don’t generalize and the best we can hope for are warranted assertions and beliefs, it seems as if educational research could benefit by considering a practitioner’s perspective. That practitioner’s perspective, of course, would be enhanced and improved by doctoral study. Among things Richardson envisions Ph.D.’s doing is to “represent that knowledge to others both within and outside the field” (Richardson, 2006). Holding on to the best parts of a practitioner’s perspective, while folding in all of the good things that come from doctoral studies, would make that representation to non-researchers more effective.
In other words, I think it would be a waste for doctoral students to abandon their practitioner perspective entirely. Their experience offers a perspective with pragmatic grounding and real world urgency to the field of educational research. I would prefer to see a more constructivist exercise, in which doctoral students synthesize their prior professional experience with the knowledge and skills gained in the doctoral program to become effective change agents.
Or does that sound too much like a doctoral student resisting the transformation and clinging to a comfortable paradigm, exactly as Labaree said I would do? It wasn’t an accident that I used the word might in the first sentence. It’s still too soon to tell what I really think.
Elizabeth...There wasn't anything that I completely disagreed with in this article, because once I read the reasoning for certain statements I could understand the rationale. What caught my breath most, though, was the author's calling educational research "highly soft and highly applied." In particular, the word "mushy" put me on the defensive. I do understand the argument that research is on a continuum of soft to hard and pure to applied, and why Labaree put education research at the soft and applied ends, but the implication is that education research cannot hold strong next to other types. I disagree with that. Perhaps this hit a nerve because I struggle with qualitative research. My struggle is with my personal preference in gathering and interpreting data, not in a belief that quantitative is better. Much of what I am interested in, however, would be well suited for qualitative research, so perhaps my reaction to Labaree's description of education research struck the tension among my interests, my preferences, and the views of how different methods are perceived.
ReplyDeleteIt’s Jodi… I was also struck by the same sentence as Elizabeth in the article but a bit further in the sentence where Labaree states “…producing findings that neither very clear nor very convincing.” I disagree with this statement about educational research because historically there have been many helpful, clear, and convincing research conducted that have changed the educational realm for the better. While this statement has not discouraged me in my journey of research, it has made me think of how other professions tend to gain more public respect from their research (i.e. medicine and engineering). I hope to be able to make a change with the research I plan to pursue and intend to advocate in the school system for children without a voice which I can see as being very convincing to others.
ReplyDeleteI feel as though both quantitative and qualitative research can be valuable in all realms of study. I plan on using qualitative research as I feel it fits my topic best but it will probably contain some quantitative information as well. Berliner says we have the “hardest science of all” in educational research which may be true considering many times our research deals with children.
This is Carolyn... Labaree suggests that a PhD culture clash stems from a conflict in perspectives: the classroom teacher “puts a premium on doing what’s best for the student,” but educational research is “a distinctly, more analytical process which focuses on the effort to produce valid explanations.” I would like to think that the end goal for both practitioners and researchers is the one Labaree attributes to the teachers; what’s best for the students is everybody’s aim. Ultimately researchers should want this too, and if they lose touch with students’ best interest, what’s the point?
ReplyDeleteLabaree definitely give words to the culture shock I am experiencing as I return to school after 20+ years in the classroom presumably to assume a new role as researcher. I have been (and still am) a subscriber to the belief, as he puts it, that “The general rule of teaching is that general rules don’t help very much.” Many times as a practitioner I felt “research-based” claims were not only irrelevant to my practice, but were threats to my ability to do my job and to my reputation, when mandated research-validated practices did not translate to my particular context. I have smugly played the practitioner-experience trump card in grad-school discussions several times. (“Who cares about the computer-based instruction research when the wi-fi in my trailer doesn’t work?!”)
In McMillan’s educational research class and elsewhere, we hear about how a positivist, medical research model has been imposed on the field of education by federal policy the past few decades. McMillan and others stress how the statistical significance gold-standard is misguided in education and other complex fields of research, and in our first class Kurt made a statement to the effect that the more controlled and sterile your experiment is, the less it relates to the real world. The real world is what matters, though, and my time in the classroom was very real, and I am not ready to toss all that experience aside.
The discomfort of this awkward developmental stage between teacher and scholar is perhaps what’s driving my current interest in inquiry approaches that blur the lines between practitioner and researcher. Larabee touches on interrupting the misconception that “teachers don’t think and researchers don’t care” through teacher research/action research. I conducted practitioner research as a teacher, and I am sold the power of this approach to not only address context-bound local problems but also to explore wider issues. I agree with Labaree’s stance that teachers and researchers can do complimentary work in designing pedagogy and then analyzing its effectiveness, which, “after all, is what it means to do scholarship in an applied field such as education.” However, I disagree with his suggestion that conducting research is somehow “disrespectful” to teachers’ time and that the endeavor of legitimate research is out of reach for teachers. P-12 teachers cope with breaches of time boundaries all the time, but they don’t deal as well with constant disrespect of their points of view. The ability to cite empirical evidence from research that they have conducted on matters that are relevant to them affords credibility for teacher voice, and thus is means toward respect for teachers. Teachers are required to devote many hours to professional development anyway, and conducting relevant practitioner research builds professional capacity in ways that hours spent sitting in in-service training may not.
Labaree makes many generalities about teachers but the one I most disagree with his idea that teachers stay "at arm's length from the arguments they encounter in the theoretical and empirical literature". I don't believe teachers aren't able to understand broader statements and arguments because they have personal experiences that contradict the findings. Teachers can be analytical and accepting of alternate views. They can view research as an "outsider". I think a number of his arguments have elements to be considered and provided an interesting perspective on the transition from practitioner to researcher.
ReplyDeleteVivian here...
ReplyDeleteIn reading Larabee’s article, I initially felt offended by his perspective. His discussion appeared to be very one sided and focused on the challenges universities face in education doctoral programs due to the characteristics of the students. Larabee seemed to say that experience, commitment to education and maturity were a problem to be dealt with by faculty in the process of converting teachers into doctoral students. Equally insulting was the description of education as a “lesser profession.” While I do not agree with this perspective, I do understand that it is a perspective that exists. This perception may even contribute to defensiveness on the part of teachers when faced with perceived criticism.
I agree with the author in the sense that the role of a researcher is different from the role of a teacher. I disagree with the idea that there is a need to convert teachers who are pursuing a doctoral degree to researchers. Teachers, in their daily practice, look for results and valid explanations – although they may find both outcomes elusive in challenging situations. Given the opportunity, time and resources, classroom teachers can (and do) effectively engage in quantitative investigations. In fact, teachers are expected to make data-based instructional decisions as part of their instructional practice.
As I read through Larabee’s article, I was able to calm down a little (being emotional is probably a natural consequence of the “emotional labor” I have engaged in for over 23 years!). After discussing the differences between teacher and researcher, he ends his article by listing similarities between the two positions and advocates for changes to training programs that take advantage of the strengths teachers bring to their programs.
There are certainly a wide variety of statements to disagree with in Labaree’s article. I was initially struck by the lack of respect given to schools of education. He states that such schools pay “minimal attention to academic and professional quality”, have “easy access and low standards”. At one point he even refers to schools of education as “one of the lesser schools” and claims professors in these schools may have difficulty establishing authority over students or spurring emulation from them because students lack respect for the professors.
ReplyDeleteWhat I will note for this article is my disagreement with the premise of the entire article itself; the notion that the teaching culture and academic culture are distinctly different with a vast gap between the two. While there are differences between the practice of education and the formulation of theories in education the two overlap and must work collaboratively in order to effectively and positively impact the field of education.
Labaree himself provides information to contradict this claim. He states that “nearly all (doctoral) students have experience as elementary and secondary teachers. How can there be a wide gap if the majority of researchers were former practitioners? One of the tensions mentioned is whose questions get answered the researcher or the practitioner, however earlier in the article he writes that education students pursuing their doctorate are more mature then their counterparts. “This means they don’t want the doctoral program to explain to them what they already know but instead want it to allow them, as scholars, to continue exploring issues they already started examining as practitioners.” If the questioned being answered began formulation while the researchers were practitioners, why would there be tension regarding whose questions get answered.
Tonya here...
ReplyDeleteI struggled with Labaree's limited explanation regarding the role or "mission" of educational research. He suggests that the goal of an educational researcher is only to make sense of the ways schools work and the ways that they do not. He goes further to say that the object is not to fix a problem of educational practice but to understand more fully the nature of the problem (2003, p.17). I disagree because I feel that this is only one aspect of the research, and that additionally as researchers we may strive to take this understanding and use it to affect outcomes and develop implications for the research. The research does not exist independent of the problems of practice.
Labaree also suggests that the "scholarly" approach or doctoral study may be too distant and cold for teacher practitioners to adopt the analytical "distance" required for scholarship as the research may not be concerned with student outcomes (p. 18) I again disagree with Labaree's narrow-minded thoughts about teachers as practitioners who pursue scholarly research. I feel that even if this situation exists, as it may naturally exist in any field of study, that it is the role of the institution to teach about some of the differences that may occur and that ultimately the goals of both the scholar and the teacher practitioner are the same: to produce positive outcomes.
This is Mo….I disagree with Labaree’s main claim that students and professors in research training programs encounter a cultural clash between the world- views of the teacher and researcher. Based on my experience as a doctoral student, I do not feel being asked to abandon my culture as a teacher and an administrator in favor of a new academic culture. It is true that due to institutional differences, the work roles of teachers and researchers differ, but they complement each other in a lot of ways. Doctoral students are encouraged to use research to inform their practices and question their assumptions. Questioning does not mean abandoning one’s own "professional culture".
ReplyDeleteI found Labaree’s last statement interesting:
Faculty members in research training programs in education need to be sensitive to the traits that teachers bring with them, but they do not need to apologize for seeking to change these teachers into researchers. That, after all, is their job.
He agues elsewhere in the article that K-12 teachers take on a moral responsibility to ensure that the changes they introduce are in the best interest of the students and not merely a matter of individual whim. Changing a student has to be for good reasons and it needs to be justified. Assuming that the goal of his doctoral program is to turn experienced educational practitioners into accomplished educational scholars as he claims, my question is: why does he think that turning educational practitioners into educational researchers does not need be morally/ethically justified?