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?
Amy Jefferson: I disagree with Labaree when he implies that K-12 teachers only focus on, “what to do and how to do it,” instead of looking through the lens of a scholar and asking, “what it going on and why?” (p. 18) I think impactful teachers focus on what, why and how. Assuming that teachers do not consider the why diminishes the capability of a teacher’s intellect and ability to be a high-level thinker and evaluative problem solver. Maybe this assumption is part of the reason that there is a lack of respect for the field of education. On the other hand, when I went through the National Board Process the coaches trained us in how to think and write analytically. They referred to it as “writing scientifically.” Observations had to be fact based not opinion based. Writing had to include specific evidence, and analysis of the evidence and/or explanations about why next steps/strategies etc. were selected based on the analysis of the evidence. The NB process raised my awareness for always explaining the why supported with specific evidence. So, in response to Labaree, maybe the transition from classroom teacher to researcher is as simple as learning how to balance teacher knowledge with how to think, how to collect data, and how to synthesize it all, scientifically.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Labaree in that, “faculty members need to be willing to talk more about how they carry out their own research…the real process from beginning to end.” (p. 21). The tensions I feel as a novice researcher stem from the fact that I have done very little research in the past. I don’t know what I don’t know about the process, but I want to learn. In addition to learning from faculty members about all the facets of research it is helpful to be in classes with other doctoral students discussing their experiences and where they are in multiple stages the program.
Lauren:
ReplyDeleteAs a veteran teacher, now turned graduate student, this article strikes a chord with me. I delayed entering a program twice due to the love of the classroom and my students. I identify with the claims that teachers thrive on connecting with their students to promote a positive classroom climate. Also with our need to remain practical, often not having the luxury of time for pure intellectual pursuits; I was constantly framing everything I was learning as, “how can I best apply this to my students and my classroom?”
But that starts to highlight some inaccurate assumptions made in this article. Pre-service teachers are trained from a wide variety of backgrounds. Specifically in Virginia (until recently), there is a whole generation of teachers that were required to get a bachelor’s degree in something other than teaching/education, because it was only a Master’s level offering. This means as a science teacher, I was classically trained in a research-focused program at an R1 university, so naturally I welcome research, the practices that are derived from them, and the pursuit of new intellectual knowledge to keep bettering the field.
One of my major motivations for entering a Ph.D. program, is that in professional development sessions, Twitter, Edutopia, faculty meetings, etc., we were preached to incorporate new pedagogical practices because they were “research-based” but rarely were we shown the research. I want to not only conduct useful research to assist teachers and the students they serve, I want to be a conduit connecting teachers to the research being done. Therefore, the same heart and humanity that I used to help me in the classroom, and my love of learning can be combined and used in my new career path.
Lastly, I push back on the general assumption that the elements discussed in the article are mutually exclusive. I think that all professions have large cohorts that can utilize skills on both sides of each set proposed in the article, but personally, I’ve seen teachers especially being able to be both focused on the individual and the whole classroom/school, on the person as well as the science behind their field, and on the practice and the rationale behind it.
Kristian Robinson -
ReplyDeleteGoing through this article, I found myself agreeing with many of the bold claims that Labaree was making. This could be due to my background in research (biology & environmental science major in undergrad at an R1), my lack of interest and experience in working in P-12 settings, and my background in counseling profession, which I believe marries the concept of the research-practitioner a little better than other departments in my experience. Though it varies from university to university, it is not abnormal for faculty members in counselor education to take on practitioner positions concurrent with their faculty/research responsibilities. I do not know that I have ever known a faculty member in teacher education to continue to be actively working in a classroom setting, though this is not my domain so this could be entirely incorrect. It is common practice for doctorate trained counselors to use their clinical experience to inform their research and then immediately turn around and allow their research to inform their own clinical practices, which creates a positive feedback loop in which individuals are able to advance their understanding of both their researcher and practitioner identities while better understanding the intersectionality of the two.
Though I agree with the article in that there is a divide in intellectual culture between the practitioner (read: master's trained) and the researcher (read: doctorate trained) in schools of educations, I do not entirely agree with the Labaree's suggestions as a way to systematically narrow the gap in the cultural divide. Rather than working to close the gap after practitioners enter their doctoral programs, I personally believe a more effective way in addressing the problem would be to more thoroughly introduce and embrace the research-practitioner mindset in entry level training programs (e.g. Master of Teaching, Masters in Counseling, etc.). The counseling profession has worked to close this gap by requiring a research course in CACREP (Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs) Accredited Masters Programs as a means of formally developing a research mindset, even for those who do not intend to move towards a doctorate or pursue a career in research. In my opinion, Schools of Education are almost creating this gap themselves by safeguarding research education courses, discussions, and opportunities to (almost) exclusively students at the doctoral level. It was instilled in my master’s program that research was a burden to be carried by everyone in the profession, regardless of degree, which worked to demystify research and make it more accessible at the entry-level practitioner level. Though Labaree’s suggestions (e.g. faculty being more transparent and open about research with doctoral students, faculty embracing practical knowledge from practitioners in doctoral research, etc.) are one’s that will work to close the gap, they come across as secondary prevention methods, leaving more systemic primary prevention to be desired.
As a former K-12 teacher, I found myself agreeing with many of the bold claims Labaree made. Prior to reading this article, I have been overwhelmed by a fear of distancing myself from the practical perspective of K-12. Labaree describes this fear as “Abandon[ing] teacher culture in favor of a new academic culture.” Although my viewpoints coincide with most of Laboree’s claims I do disagree on the following points.
ReplyDeleteIn theory, Labaree’s bicultural programs sound great but I disagree with the inner workings of these theoretical programs. 1. Teachers don’t have time. As a special education teacher who also case managed, I have needed to collect data on behavior interventions for BIPs, IEPs and progress monitoring reports. When asked to collect extensive behavioral research, I occasionally supplied dummy data that mimicked normally observed data. Frankly, I did not have time between teaching, classroom management, and other responsibilities to collect valid and reliable quantitative data. Consequently, I often overly relied on my observations which caused me to have a singular perspective. 2. Every teacher is not doing what is best for their students. In my opinion, Labaree over generalizes the idea that every teacher exemplifies “moral craft”. Culture, economic status, etc., stand in the way of teachers really doing what is best for their students. Labaree asserts, “Teachers make sure the changes they introduce are truly in the best interest of the student and not merely a matter of individual whim or personal convenience.” However, in my opinion, I believe the opposite to be true. Social justice, culturally responsive teaching and pedagogy came about because teachers teach with personal convenience and individual whim. In addition, there are many areas where teachers teach using a convenience model rather than models of whatever it takes or what’s best for the student.
Tosha Yingling:
ReplyDeleteIt may be just because my backwards evolution from scholar to educator, but I don’t know that I agree with Labaree that there is a cultural rift between k-12 and academic researchers, making the journey from teacher to researcher a presumed difficult one. While being very green to the idea, I still posit that this rift is more exaggerated or self-perpetual than material from my (very recent) observations. Though Labaree takes care to disclaim that he isn’t arguing that “teachers don’t think and researchers don’t care,” it feels exactly like that is the origin of the rift he expounds, where k12 educators are compassionate and wide-eyed non-intellectuals mastering the pragmatism that airy and abstract academics lose in their generalizing and out of touch approaches (19).
As I am wont to do since I feel like my own past work is the only thing I have a clear grasp on (imposter syndrome, wk 3), I think again of my backwards evolution, and how I push for my work to be highly personal and individualized; in fact, personhood and the emotional labor required of teaching is my prime research interest in applying disability studies ideas of trauma and embodiment to prison education. I realize this may be unusual in academic research as feminist scholarship is generally admitted a more personal or almost ethical lens of research. On the other hand, I really bristle at the implication that teaching before scholarly research is somehow too practical to be intellectual, that it is praxis over theory; teacher education is a very complex, though generally ignored art, that many academics could stand to learn from before building their own classrooms. To me, it seems like this rift is mostly a self-fullfilling prophecy that dictates the way educators embark on researching their interests.
Waleed Sami:
ReplyDeleteOn the whole, I found myself agreeing with Labaree’s analysis on the state of education, its “lowly” stature amongst the disciplines, and the cultural clashes inherent between the researcher in the ivory tower, and the practitioner in the trenches. However, my disagreement mostly comes from Labaree not acknowledging important cultural factors that mediate education and its role in American society. Specifically, the culture of education in America plays an outsized role in informing the internal dimensions that Larabee points too when he discusses the conflicts between researcher and practitioner. My basic critique lies in that Larabee does not go far enough in discussing the cultural epoch that American education finds itself in. First, education in this country is viewed through a market-based lenses, which I believe heavily distorts one’s relationship with their education. American education is mostly conferred through evaluation, testing, and ordinal design. Our latest educational interventions championed by elites, inevitably fall into a transactional relationship with education. This creates a very mechanistic relationship with a student (and a teacher’s) process of inculcating educational values. If education is seen as simply a vehicle to attain a certificate and to be eligible for employment on a market level, then education's emancipatory potential will be lost. Education, as a means to broaden one’s horizons, to push against cultural dogma, and to be exposed to different ideas of the world, take a secondary role for how valuable your degree prepares you execute tasks for an employer. Educational achievement then simply becomes indoctrination for the workplace, where you are positioned to be a highly productive producer who does not question authority (honor’s level student). If you do question authority or find the rigid confines of what should be taught boring, then you are placed into the (average, or C-level) class, to serve the professional class being taught above you. I know, since I was a C to F student for my entire life, often being told that I would not graduate high school. This is the nature of American education today, where a market based perspective shapes us into a modern caste system, and inevitably intrudes on the culture of education. I also believe Larabee does not go far enough into the comparison of other educational systems around the world. There are social and political factors at play within our education system that leave our educational schools without prestige. Education as a public sector job continuously faces an onslaught of regulation and de-funding. Our schools are not federally funded, but are funded through local taxes, entrenching inequality and marginalizing minority populations. Many of these cultural and political factors are not at play in others nations. Finland, for example has a very prestigious teaching culture, built on critical thinking and a lack of traditional outcome measurement. This would be allergic to a modern administrator in an American school. (cont)
(Cont)*
ReplyDeleteThe Finnish model also emphasized the "didactician model", as a means of fusing theory and practice within the teacher’s educational journey in the classroom. Larabee spends time discussing the details of the scholar and practitioner divide, but is unaware that other nations successfully have bridged this tension, by giving teachers safety nets in the classroom to apply theory and practice. I believe Larabee and others who want to advocate for education, its prestige, and the rigorous fusing of theory and practice, need to create a momentary truce in the pedagogical academies. Rather, we should counter and push back against wider social changes in our educational system, one that privileges selection and market-based approaches, expands the idea of education, and confers the importance a “didactician” like model within the university. The necessary work of classroom interventions and behavior analysis in modern educational research is important on a technical level. However, no degree of classroom technique and insight can turn the cultural and social tide of education in this country (as it stands). Education as a emancipatory enterprise needs to be the guiding ideology and advocacy within the academy should be focused on it. Once this accomplished, we can then worry about our "prestige."
Mitchell Waters - I find myself agreeing with most of Labaree’s statements, one of them being that educational practitioners bring many ideal traits into the role of educational researchers. My opinion has been that research informs best practice. My bias, however, is that I have very little research experience and my experience up until this point is largely practical. This holds to the conflict between practitioner and scholar identities.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I do not agree with Labaree’s assertation that teachers or, in my background, counselors and psychotherapists, mostly focus on the “what to do and how to do it.” Although the focus on the practical is a large piece of practicing the counseling profession, good counselors focus on the “why” as well. I fully embrace the scholar-practitioner model and reject the idea that one can be one or the other, but not both. A good counselor first asks the question of “why” to inform his or her “what” and “how.” For instance, in my history of treating trauma disorders, I first had to ask “why” questions regarding client symptoms that would eventually guide me to the “what” and “how” questions for treatment. Psychotherapy practitioners have certain degrees of autonomy in their concentrations and methods of practice frees the counselor up to ask as many “why” questions as he or she wants and this opens up doors to find answers that inform practice. The hypothetical situation Labaree writes about, "Posed with a situation in which two children are fighting in the back of the classroom...," I believe that there is room for both separating the combatants (practical) and pondering the social, psychological, economic, and pedagogical reasons for this conflict (scholarly). As a counselor, I have come to a deep appreciation for situations that are not clearly "black or white" or "one or the other" but "both/and."
Elizabeth Severson-Irby:
ReplyDeleteI found myself shaking my head at the statement “They [teachers] may well put a lower priority on getting things straight in their heads rather than on getting things right in the classroom” (p.18). This implies that teachers are mainly concerned with the “here-and-now” of what is happening in the classroom, and tend to move past it once the fire is out. While it is true that classroom teachers need to be able to think on their feet and constantly adjust their trajectory based on the needs of the students all while maintaining some semblance of order in the classroom, this does not mean that once the day is over, they do not reflect and analyze. In fact, the opposite is true; most teachers spend the majority of their time away from the classroom thinking about what happened in the classroom (instructionally or behaviorally) and how to improve it. Even though most teachers do not have access to research databases (ERIC, ProQuest, etc), they do try to base their practices on research-based methods. In fact, most teachers are trained to do so. While most undergraduate and Master’s level programs are not heavily research oriented, they do focus on literature review and analysis. This instills the need to look at and analyze research, consider best practices, and reflect on current practices and how those practices coincide with, or differ from, the research. So, while Labaree is trying to make the point that classroom teachers do not focus most of their efforts on research and analysis, he made a broad generalization that implies that classroom teachers do not want to, or have time to, analyze their practices. If that were the case, then presumably classroom teachers would not leave the profession for doctorate studies, and the only people in doctorate programs would be those who are truly just research focused.
Catina
ReplyDeleteLabaree essentially argues for four transformations of the teacher-researcher-normative to analytical, personal to the intellectual, particular to the universal and experiential to the theoretical. While there is no inherent issue in his belief that a myopic researcher is problematic, there is confusion over the premise. The tension, if any, isn't created by the idea of the need for development of or highlighting of specific skill sets that make an effective researcher. The tension is created in the presentation of these skills as binary, mutually exclusive traits that classroom teachers could not possibly possess.
While opposing professional myopia from the educator researcher he makes completely blind assertions and assumptions about the educator researcher. The most notable assumption in Labaree's perspective on the teacher-researcher is that it does not account for the different paths to and from the classroom to the lecture room. He fails to account for breaks, additional study or any other deviation that would enhance the educator-researcher perspective . In his estimation, a career-switching educator, who may have each necessary research lens he deems important from other endeavors is non-existent. Second, he assumes that the role of the teacher obliterates the individual’s capacity of analysis, intellectualism and theory. As if it is improbable that an inherently analytical, intellectual, theoretical person decided to teach in a public school or that they could maintain those things after being in the classroom. The classroom just scrubbed it all out. Third, he assumes the transformations are absolutes as opposed to varied mutations based on individual experiences and research interests that could potentially weave artfully.
Despite the fact that he admits to exaggerating the dichotomous nature of the teacher-researcher, as a tiny disclaimer to impending criticism, he goes on to do exactly that. If each trait of an effective researcher is on a continuum, and every educator-researcher has some degree of these things then the charge for a program is refinement and cultivation over total transformation. The latter perspective creates a wrongness in the educator and furthers the lack of respect and esteem he believes is present in the academic world.
He argues the teacher practitioner as limited because of his/her over reliance on anecdotal experiential evidence guiding their perspective by, oddly enough, presenting his own anecdotal experience as an educator of educators to frame his perspective. In establishing a macro perspective, a Ph.d program could build more assessment and less of the assumptions Labaree proffers, into its indoctrination processes. Education doctorates diminishing or dismissing the educator is irony on the low end and unnecessary professional cannibalism on the other end.
Amy Taloma: I must start with the preface that I have never been a teacher and so I read this not wanting to presume Larabee was correct or incorrect in any of the outlined arguments for the great divide between teachers and researchers. My background is in health care and it made me think of the ever-present conflict between health care administrators who make the rules and practitioners who have to put those rules into practice while being the frontline for the patients.
ReplyDeleteThe article calls attention to the paradox between individuality and generalization within the two roles. To me, this seems to be the sort of crux of the article. Larabee suggests that teachers are taking into account individual factors that they are consistently utilizing to influence their art of teaching. I think that researchers can also zero in on these important individual factors with their research as well. I think the methodology of both is what is most different. Teachers have become attuned to taking in data and adjusting their practice in real time while researchers are using a formal methodology and report out system. Both parties are doing research. Saying that teachers “become” researchers is really kind of condescending if they feel they have been utilizing their own research of experience to influence their own practice. It could also be sensitive for researchers to come in and “prescribe” techniques and strategies if a teacher does not see their own research in the “formal” research. In the end, I think this article actually provokes perspective-taking and sensitivity to the “researcher knows best” culture that could be present while instilling the power of collaboration and respect, even if it didn't mean to.
From my perspective Labaree made bold claims, but I have not been a teacher and have a research heavy background. While there are differences in worldview between researchers and teachers, I do not believe this is as devastating as Labaree would make it seem. I think the difference is beneficial and the benefits of having experience as a teacher outweigh the learning curve in thought process. I chose to earn my Ph.D. in Education over a Ph.D. in Psychology because I wanted to be around people who have experience in school systems. Their viewpoint and experience are very valuable in understanding the environment I will do research in. Those who are teachers and part-time Ph.D. students have valuable access to schools and classrooms to conduct research in or find participants, because they are involved in the school system. I do not agree a plausible solution is having teachers conduct their own research in the classroom. If Labaree is concerned about the tension between researcher and teacher, I would expect research to be done early in teachers’ academic careers. With little research experience and tension, how can a teacher conduct research in a way that will not further their convictions. In addition, expecting teachers to add more to their workload while teaching full time and being a student is a great deal to ask. Perhaps adding skills analyzing research and understanding how studies work to undergraduate and master programs’ curriculum is more plausible.
ReplyDeleteWhile Labaree notes the importance of keeping the teacher’s perspective and adding a researcher’s perspective, he places a heavy importance on the researcher’s perspective. Labaree’s perspective may be linked to educational research’s lowly status. This is parallel to what I have experienced in psychology. There is pressure to prove educational and psychological research is a science and has a higher status than it awarded. This leads to an overcompensation and importance placed on being a analytical researcher and cutting out other perspectives.
As I reading Labaree, I read a few things that I didn’t agree with. I don’t have much experience from the teacher educator perspective however, I compared the reading to school counseling. I recognize the article was published in 2003, so it is possible some of the information isn’t as accurate. One thing that stood out for me are the statistics and age of students continuing education by getting their doctoral degree. In my cohort 5 out of 6 students came straight from the master’s program. 5 out of 6 students are below the age of 32. This statistic does not parallel to the statistics given in the article. I am interested if the statistics are the same for counselors and how they have changed throughout more recent years. Being a younger doctoral student, I also don’t agree with the statement that maturity makes a student a more equipped researcher. I would argue that it comes more from experience and practice. I sometimes feel that I was not taught to be a researcher entering the doctoral program. I knew that it was a requirement. Being a part time student, I took all of my counseling core classes first. I believe this course is preparing more to be a researcher than I have been in the entirety of the program thus far.
ReplyDeleteMartinique Sealy: I find that David Labaree’s reflection and comparison of teachers to educational researchers is both reasonable in aspects and paranoid in others. I would also like to hope that his reflection is outdated and I am hoping this assumption is not because I am naive to the field. It may be true that the teacher’s role is more directly connected to individual students and therefor highly moral, but I would expect that an educational researcher’s role is also moral in a broader since. While a teacher may be focused on the student outcomes of ten to twenty students, a researcher is analyzing more concretely the outcomes of larger numbers of students. In a sense, researchers need to be objective and straight forward if they want their research to be significant and influential; however, their driving question, that their thesis and hypothesis is based upon, could be very much moral and student oriented. In fact, the educational researcher should have the same ethical drive as the teacher because their research is intended to impact the ever changing field of education. Although Labaree focuses on the culture clash between existing educational researchers and novices to the field, this culture blend should be seen as beneficial to the field overall. Yes, current and advanced members of the research field should teach students how to conduct accurate and valid research, yet maintain their experiences and perspectives from the classroom. Who better to understand the ever changing education system, that we as researchers aim to decipher, than the individuals who experienced it first hand? Labaree proposes a doctoral program that is bicultural and incorporates the researcher perspective as well as the teacher perspective; however, I propose a program that is multicultural. The world in 2019, as well as the modern student, has a vast variety of influences. Hence, research for modern education should incorporate all of these perspectives and culture. The modern woman, the modern man, all ethnicities, language overlap, dialects, special education, economic status, environmental factors, relationships, the modern family, teachers, students, etc. This field that is “soft and applied” as Labaree mentions, is human driven and ever changing; therefor, it should not be only one type of human aiming to make effective outcomes for all students.
ReplyDeleteJia Gui
ReplyDeleteI strongly disagree with Labaree’s claim on the scholars focus on what is going on and why, whereas the K-12 teachers only pay attention to what to do and how to do it (p. 18). A qualified teacher would ponder what to teach and how to teach students before the class, it is called preparation phase in the classroom teaching model. After class, teacher would reflect on what was going on in the classroom and why would this happen. This phase is known as teaching reflection. I believe many scholars would share the same view with Labaree, and I assume it may be the prejudice against who posses more profound knowledge, higher education scholars or k-12 teachers.
While reading paragraph 6, it reminds of a popular topic in China in recent years --Research has been Valued over Teaching in Higher Education. College professors are encouraged to conduct research for pursuing better pay, research funds and promotion. As a result, more and more professors tend to have lackadaisical attitude to teaching, some are even reported by students as “inability to teach”. The ministry of education adopted a series of measurements to solve this problem. However, many professors argue that it is hard to be a good teacher and researcher at the same time. So, do we really have to make teacher a researcher?
Erica Ross- As a previous K-12 teacher turned graduate student, I did agree with some of the things that Labaree was saying. I also had quite a few things I disagreed with. He noted that teaching in general is noted as a "moral" craft. I can't say that every teacher does what is best for the student, but I can see that as a generalized statement. I don't really agree with this being in comparison to the educational researcher as there should be a moral element to the research as you are still doing research with people. One of the bigger things I disagreed with was the concept of the teacher as a "Lone Ranger". I believe this article was written in 2002 just at the introduction of No Child Left Behind. Teachers are now required to meet so many nationwide/statewide standards in regards to testing that it is impossible to operate as an individual and just teach what you want to teach. I also found that there are school wide paradigms that are pushed by administration with research that they pair it with to back it up. There seems to be a gap between teachers and researchers. I found that if admin throw in "evidence based practice" or "research based" then it was often taken at face value. While it may have been research based, that research may not necessarily have been directed towards every population in our building, or even the middle school population of our school to begin with. With putting standards to be met on teaching, along with requirements from school systems and administration, teachers aren’t as able to be independent and to teach what or how they would like to teach.
ReplyDeleteWith that, there were some things Labaree mentioned that resonated with me. I do think in most cases that there is a gap between teachers and research. If anything, understanding research is important not just to enforce your own practices, but to be able to ask questions of requirements too. If I understood it correctly, I liked the concept of programs of study being more bicultural. This would be in the sense that in undergraduate teacher prep programs are exposed to more research in order to have a better understanding.
Jaime Williams: First, I will acknowledge that my experience in the classroom is limited- I did the requisite student aiding and student teaching for my undergraduate degree in music education, and have guest lectured a college course in assessment on occasion. However, I do see myself as an educator, and Labaree really annoyed and offended me in the first couple pages of this article. The feel of it all, until he owned up to his own practical experience on page 15, was elitist and privileged. From categorizing education schools as those for “lesser professions” (p. 13) to calling the preparation of educational researchers “peculiar” (p. 14) to questioning the existence of “credible research” (p. 14) in education… Frankly, I was so incensed three pages into it that when he finally got into some reasonable opinions I had a difficult time absorbing much else from the rest of the article. Perhaps that was his goal. Whether it was intentional or not, I am not impressed.
ReplyDeleteI’m glad he turned it around and included some aspects of how and why teachers make good educational researchers. However, I don’t really see this change from practitioner to researcher as that big of a deal, nor do I see the need for “tension of agenda” (p. 16) between researchers and practitioners. You need both, particularly in education. There doesn’t need to be tension- it’s and/both, not either/or. And, regardless of what is valued in other disciplines or the hard sciences, I believe anyone responsible for educating others should be a practitioner-researcher. Experience is a valuable contribution when educating others (or, it should be) and research should inform our practice.
Robyn Lyn:
ReplyDeleteI wrote a long post and submitted and it disappeared into internet land (and yes, I created it in word but that disappeared also ugh!), so is a more concise version: I disagree with Labaree that educational research is about making sense of the way schools work and the way they don’t in that the mission of an educational researcher should be to make sense of the way students learn, and don’t learn, in a school environment. Perhaps this is semantics but the emphasis on school systems and top-down approaches, instead of bottom-up theory centered on student learning, is problematic. It is political of course. The way funding and opportunities differ for minority students exuberates the problem. Which brings me to the second issue I take with Labaree. The failure of minority education is a construct of our white supremacist societal norms, not that community. Poverty is not immoral. The color of our skin is not immoral. Our gender is immoral. The systems in place keep power in the hands of rich white men and disproportionately privilege their education and experience. Educational research and knowledge production cannot be looked at through an intellectual lens until the system that tries to maintain power and control over the disenfranchised are dismantled and destroyed. There will be no equitable education without acknowledging how society, and the education of all, is structured to favor white people and disempower non-white communities.
exasperates ^^^ (not exuberates)
DeleteSo this is what happens when you try to rush...
Delete"Our gender is NOT immoral." (corrections abound)
Jonathan Staylor: As a former public school teacher in Special Education, I was constantly going to professional development to learn about research-based and evidence based practices. This focus on research allowed me to differentiate instruction for the students so that their educational needs were met. As a professional school counselor, I am able to gather data and construct programs based off of the needs of the student population. In the article, there was reference to the fact that teachers are not as concerned with research. It is the teacher's responsibility to educate students so that they can be independent thinkers. Teachers should require students to utilize research and determine what works best for them. Within the school of education, teacher training programs should include a course in which the future teacher is required to conduct research within their discipline which would determine the best practice for practical implementation. Also, I disagree with the article where the author indicates that students who enter doctoral programs in education tend to resist looking at education through the analytical lens. If a student enters the doctoral program in education, they are committing themselves to looking at education through multiple lenses and should be open to different perspectives in education.
ReplyDelete