Hostile reaction towards educational research due to tensions between researchers and practitioners?

Morrison, M. (2002). What do we mean by educational research. Research methods in educational leadership and management, 3-27.

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Morrison’s inquiry upon educational research took off from the recognition of “hostile reaction” received upon educationalists’ research outputs due to the awareness on issues such as political manipulation and concerns on the research methods, integrity and usefulness. The significance of educational research is strengthened with the research integrity is affirmed and when the research efforts and outputs can be further developed with educational practitioners and leaders engaged to share the ownership of research knowledge and practice.

The tension between educational researchers and practitioners may relate to the sense of superiority. Educational researchers tend to post arguments and testify assumptions, practices and even claims of outcomes in a more “vacuum” or test-tube like settings. Educational practitioners at different levels usually make decisions and take actions for desired educational goals and learning outcomes in a real world setting with a complicated and dynamic context and time frame. Some of them would usually embrace an attitude to not only stay reflective and critical but practical and effective and so they make adjustments or remedial actions to tackle any arising or unpredictable challenges in order to achieve the goals and outcomes. Which group of these educationalists may or can claim to be more superior?

As revised Bloom’s taxonomy (Krathwohl, 2002) states, creating is regarded as an intellectual thinking skill and outcomes higher than evaluation. Which group of the educationalists is doing a job at such a level?

Researchers’ creative outputs are usually knowledge in the form of literature while practitioners’ are experiences in the form of learning outcomes, practices and even policies etc. How to establish an effective dialogue and enable a constructive collaboration between them?

Reference

Krathwohl, D. R. (2002). A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy: An overview. Theory into practice, 41(4), 212-218.

 

New Schemas for Mapping Pedagogies and Technologies

Grainne Conole. “New Schemas for Mapping Pedagogies and Technologies”. July 2008, Ariadne Issue 56 http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue56/conole/

Below are some of the points summarized and quotes from Conole.

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“I will further argue that the current complexity of the digital environment requires us to develop ‘schema’ or approaches to thinking about how we can best harness the benefits these new technologies confer.”

inherent tension between the rhetoric of Web 2.0 and current educational practices

• speed and immediacy, slow learning vs digital learning
• user participation, variety in form & challenges for setting assessment criteria and strategies
• Internet and access to information: validity for assessment focusing on memorization
• Wiki vs editing others’ work and combine sources (plagiarism?)
• academic referencing and difficulty in identifying sources as high speed and wide spread of information through digital channels & means
• “pedagogy is learner-centred, current educational systems are not – administrative processes and assessment practice remain firmly bound to hierarchical, differentiated educational structures”

Technology affordances mapped to different learning theories

“Recent thinking in learning theory has shifted to emphasise the benefit of social and situated learning as opposed to behaviourist, outcomes-based, individual learning. What is striking is that a mapping to the technologies shows that recent trends in the use of technologies, the shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 echoes this; Web 2.0 tools very much emphasise the collective and the network.”

There are three interesting figures illustrating 

• Pedagogy framework for mapping ‘tools-in-use’
• A framework of learning characteristics
• The impact of new technologies on organisations, individuals and practices

“It is evident that the new technologies now enable individuals to personalise the environment in which they work or learn, appropriating a range of tools to meet their interests and needs.”