DRAFT ONLY - NOT FOR CITATION

Research and Social Justice: lessons from a collaborative study

Jon Austin and Di Mayer

Faculty of Education,

University of Southern Queensland,

Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia

A paper presented at the Australian Association of Research in

Education annual conference, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 30th

November - 4th December, 1997

The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of Bronwyn

Herbertson in the process of the collection of data and evidence upon

which parts of this paper draw.

...the role of science in sustaining social injustices is too

significant to ignore.

(Allen, 1992)

There is nothing worse than being part of a project that someone is

doing at arm's length, then you read it and you say 'that's not our

school"

(Field-based researcher, Reform in Education project, 1997)

Researchers, in the end, always betray their subjects

(MacDonald, 1983)

Research and Social Justice

The reasons for the conduct of forms of inquiry loosely captured within

the term "research" are many, and the range of ideas about what

constitutes "valid" or "important" or "significant" research is equally

diverse and idiosyncratic. The literature on various means of

categorizing research is vast, and the arguments contained within it

too well-known and exhaustive to be rehearsed here. The purpose of

this paper is to draw upon the experiences of a group of researchers -

some university- and some school-based - to identify potentially

valuable ways of viewing and living forms of research that have as

their underlying imperative a commitment to contributing to more

socially-just forms of community.

Precise notions of social justice are notoriously elusive, as has been

demonstrated by aspects of the other papers presented in this

symposium, but, at root, there would seem to exist an amalgam of

concepts of fairness, equality, respect, dignity, empowerment,

participation and agency. Those who feel compelled to contribute to

the achievement of states of existence that give presence and actuality

to these ideas in the lives of those for whom they are currently

largely absent form part of a group or, in Alice's Restaurant Massacree

style, a movement, working to achieve social justice. Again, the

literature on the imperative for, the faces of and programmatic plans

to achieve social justice is large and growing (see, for example,

Young, 1990; Sleeter, 1996; Adams, Bell & Griffin, 1997).

The arena of socially-just practice to be foregrounded in this paper is

that of research design and methodology. In particular, lessons from

the field experience of inquiring into forms of social justice in

educational settings will be drawn upon in order to expose some of the

contradictions and difficulties begging resolution and defeat in the

pursuit of social justice outcomes. The essential question that guides

the preparation of this paper is: How might genuine activity in the

project of social justice - in this case, illuminative research - avoid

perpetuating forms of engagement that are, in themselves, generative

and supportive of socially-unjust social relations?

The link between forms of and approaches to research and social justice

has been of considerable interest in recent years. Most recently, for

instance, McLaren (1997) has explored the notion of postmodern

ethnographer as flaneur and, drawing upon the work of Frisby (1994)

analyses the function, the activity of the researcher as both

"consuming and producing texts detachedly and actively" (p 83). Frisby

(1994) expands the conception of the activity of the researcher seen

from the perspective of the flaneur , "the strolling sightseer", as

being comprised of :

activities of observation (including listening), reading (of

metropolitan life and of texts) and producing texts. Flanerie, in

other words, can be associated with a form of looking, observing (of

people, social types, social contexts and constellations); a form of

reading the city and its population (its spatial images, its

architecture, its human configurations); and a form of reading written

texts....The flaneur, and the activity of flanerie, is also

associated...not merely with observation and reading but also with

production - the production of distinctive kinds of texts. The flaneur

may therefore not merely be an observer or even a decipherer, the

flaneur can also be a producer. (pp 82-83).

In recognizing the complexity of the positionality of the observer, the

ethnographer, the researcher, McLaren asks the critical questions of

the function of research in a postmodern milieu:

...is the best that we can do merely to accept the incommensurability

of discourses and reject the search for some "interdiscursive form"

that can help us adjudicate among the wild plurality of discourses that

we find...? Must we accept the fact that all truths are contingent and

that we can judge based only upon the social effects of such truths ?"

(1997, p 101)

In keeping with his long-espoused political commitments to those

oppressed by extant social practices, McLaren responds to these

questions by asserting the importance of retaining a firm hold on the

epistemic reflexivity promoted by Bourdieu in order to emphasize that

the "critical rationality that guides our practice as critical

ethnographers of contemporary social texts and that assists us in

engaging the narratives of those who have been marginalised and

excluded must reject the historical logic in which their exclusion and

marginality is inevitable" (1997, p 102). In other words, the

researcher must be continually guarding against the subjugation of her

or his work to the ends of furthering rather than resisting the

leaching of justice from the social landscape. In McLaren's view, "we

can never be sure who is really served by our words, or whom we fortify

with our criticisms", and thus researchers must recognize "the

arrogance of speaking for others, and also the presumptuousness that

feeds the notion that men and women can speak for themselves" (1997, p

111). The link between research, self-knowledge and social justice is

clear: "We begin speaking for ourselves only when we step outside of

ourselves - only by becoming other. It is in recognizing ourselves in

the suffering of others that we become ourselves" (1997, pp 111-112).

Smith (1996) addresses the problem of many approaches to educational

research: "[r]ather than empowering teachers to reflect and change,

educational research, in the main, serves other interests and other

ends."(p 73). In trying to encapsulate a gradation of purpose and form

in educational research, Smith identified a particular classification

of research that he called "criticalist", and split this broad

classification further into critical and post-structural. For the

purposes of this paper, it is the critical form of research that

captures the intention of the university-based researchers to not only

find out about the enactment of socially-just practices in educational

settings, but to do so in ways that were, in themselves, socially-just.

It is worth exploring Smith's notion of critical research from this

perspective. The purposes of such forms of research are emancipatory -

that is, the aim is to engage the social world through an epistemology

that recognizes the distortion of perceptions of reality in the

interests of hegemonic forces while at the same time exposing the

obfuscations of and hindrances to more authentic forms of equity.

Emancipatory-oriented research aims to "[uncover] and [change] what

constrains equity and supports hegemony" (p.75). The "overt political

intent of criticalist research...consciously orientates researchers to

strive to connect their research methodologies to social justice goals"

(p.75, emphasis added).

On a similar tack, Thomas (1993), argues that social research must

serve a purpose, that it must grasp the opportunity resident within its

scope for engaging critically with the world of the apparent so as to

apply "a subversive worldview to the conventional logic of cultural

inquiry" (vii). Using ethnography as an example, Thomas argues for a

form of research that is not content with describing what is, insisting

instead upon pursuing the question of what could be:

Conventional ethnographers study culture for the purpose of describing

it; critical ethnographers do so to change it. Conventional

ethnographers recognize the impossibility, even undesirability, of

research free of normative and other biases, but believe that these

biases are to be repressed. Critical ethnographers instead celebrate

their normative and political position as a means of invoking social

consciousness and societal change (1993, p 4).

For Thomas, the only genuinely justice-oriented forms of research are

those that are imbued with the spirit of collaboration and

participation. In this form of endeavour, the pursuit of both "truth"

and social problem-solving are merged:

participant researchers opt for relevance and identify closely with the

needs and concerns of their subjects, using diverse perspectives that

attempt to reconcile action with inquiry (Thomas, 1993, p 26, emphasis

added)

The intention in this approach to research is, in Thomas' view, to

remove the artificial barriers separating the researcher and the

researched in order to draw upon the knowledge, the passion and the

commitment to change of those most enveloped in the substance of the

inquiry. Participatory approaches to research, then, offer ways to

"redirect attention from those who wield power to those who bear its

consequences" (Thomas, 1993, p 27)

In sum, then, the approach to research that was adopted and developed

in the course of this inquiry into the illumination of meanings of

social justice in educational settings set out to deliberately alter

the more frequently encountered relationship between researcher and

researched in much educational research - what Reinharz (1979) has

called "rape research"1 -so as to live what the university-based

researchers were attempting to come to understand. In part, and with

hindsight, this methodological concern to engage in socially-just

practice in and through research might be seen as a journey on similar

paths to those trodden by Patti Lather when she explored "what it means

to do empirical research in an unjust world" (1986, p 257).

At the very least, the essence of a more acceptable form of research

practice, would seem to involve notions of collaboration between

university-based researchers and school-based researchers.

Collaboration, education and inquiry

Collaborative inquiry is a relatively recent feature of educational

research. Catelli (1995)( locates its origin in forms of action

research emerging during the 1940s and 1950s, its appearance coming

about as

a reaction to the inadequacies of the traditional experimental research

paradigm and procedures pursued by the scientific community. The

inadequacies included: (1) The long time lag between research conducted

at the university and the implementation of its findings in school

settings, (2) the lack of relevance to classroom concerns and

realities, and (3) the artificial features of experimental procedures

imposed on practitioners. (p 27)

Schaefer (1967) exhorted teachers to look to themselves as sources of

inquiry into their professional activity and encouraged collaborative

research as means for "examining critically their craft and as a vital

avenue for ensuring school improvement and renewal" (Catelli, 1995,

27).

Sirotnik (1988) extended the notion of educational research

collaboration to the school-university partnership, where he viewed

that partnership as a "complex, long-term, evolving, social experiment

directed at social action, institutional and interinstitutional change

and educational improvement" (p 169). Espousing a social activist view

of the purpose of educational research akin in many ways to the

critical perspectives currently found residing in the ideas of Kemmis,

McTaggart and Fals Borda, Sirotnik conceptualized collaborative inquiry

as :

a process of self-study - of generating and acting upon knowledge, in

context, by and for the people who use it. (P 169, emphasis added).

Catelli (1995) summarizes this view of the nature and purpose of

collaborative inquiry as action-oriented and "therefore essentially and

fundamentally 'evaluative' - but not defined by or subject to the

traditional theories and practices of program evaluation. Nor is the

research necessarily committed to employing traditional research

designs . (p 28, emphasis added)

Margaret Threadgold (1985) identifies a feature of distrust common to

many contemporary workplaces: that of the gap between theory and

practice. This feature derives from "suspicion on the part of

practitioners that theorists are out of touch with the everyday reality

of a situation and an assumption on the part of theorists that the

practitioners are incapable of seeing general trends and patterns while

immersed in the detail of specific events"(p 251). Whether seen from a

neo-marxist perspective as being one of the inescapable outcomes of the

process of increasingly narrow division of labour attendant upon late

industrialist and early post-industrialist capitalism or from the

economies of scale and expertise perspective of the neo-rationalists,

this phenomenon attaches to the mind-body binarism within which the

production process is largely viewed, whether that duality is expressed

in terms of management-worker, designer-maker, or

theoretician-practitioner, the important effect from the point of

interest of this paper is that of a forced, artificial separation of

conception from execution in the pursuit of the educative role of

teachers.

Troyna and Foster (1988), in an attempt to provide a "salutary reminder

to those researchers and theorists intent on self-flagellation because

of their failure to influence or change the routinised practices and

processes of educational institutions and teachers" (p 289), discuss a

number of factors which have both caused and exacerbated what they term

the trend towards sectionalism within the education community. Amongst

these factors is a perceived "over-reliance on quantitative methods and

input and output characteristics with a concomitant neglect of

qualitative accounts or processes and interactions within classrooms"(p

289). While this imbalance has been righted to a large measure since

the publication of their article, Troyna and Foster's point here is

that research on schools, teaching and teachers has been largely

conducted for the consumption of parties other than those involved

directly in the educative process. The relative absence, until

recently, of respected qualitative accounts of life in schools has,

inter alia, contributed to the rejection of research and policy based

upon largely meaningless reductions of complex social environments to

sterile statistical shells.

Further adding to the almost derision with which the work of education

researchers has been received by school and classroom-based educators

is the trend Troyna and Foster describe as "the obfuscatory and elitist

style in which research reports are often written and disseminated".

Frequently couched in concepts and language accessible to a smallish

percentage of the education profession, what for many teachers is

describable, of necessity, in "everyday" language becomes something of

a foreign landscape separated from the reality of classroom experience

as many teachers know it through the intercession of a density of

language.

A final contributing factor in this descent into sectionalism is that

of the "asymmetrical relationship between researchers and practitioners

in which the former both construct and conduct the inquiry and the

latter constitute no more than the object of that enquiry." (289-290)

Perhaps reflecting the masculinist power of the positivist research

paradigm, such positioning of parties within the inquiry process

perpetuates a series binarisms - researcher-researched, theory -

practice, and so on - that Patti Lather (1986)( links to hierarchical

forms of professional engagement wherein the potentially influential

and powerful role practitioners might play in the formulation and

validation of the research process is largely dismissed. This is also

a form of inquiry that is predicated upon an idea of research function

as that of prediction and control, with models of representation and

location containing serious issues of imposition and authority that

more democratic forms of inquiry might more readily address.

Before leaving Troyna and Foster's article, it is important to raise a

further point: that is, that the "gulf between researchers and

practitioners is often paralleled by a gap between the imperatives of

policy-makers and practitioners" (p 290). Based on their experience

with policy and in-service / professional development work in the areas

of multiculturalism and anti-racist pedagogy, Troyna and Foster

identify a dismissal by teachers of in-service programs generated and

conducted by those seen to be "theorists" or "policy-makers" similar to

that given to the work of researchers: "[m]ost frequently, this arises

from a perceived lack of relevance to the classroom" (p 291) In other

words, it is possible to view the so-called "theory-practice divide"

as one with school- and classroom-based education workers securing one

side of the professional credibility chasm with "the Rest" establishing

their base on the other.

(As a side note, it is illuminating to analyze the language which those

who decry this separation, such as Troyna and Foster, use to locate

respective parties. The use of descriptors such as "practitioner",

"theorist" and the like clearly maintain and perpetuate this schism in

the process of lamenting its existence.)

Collaborative activity in the pursuit of educational aims and

objectives - and the social and political project and agendas attaching

to these - is one means whereby this credibility gap might be bridged,

and the respective strengths of all parties involved incorporated into

a common or shared vision of something better or more desirable. In

terms of collaborative inquiry, it is necessary to identify both the

nature and purpose of such activity, and it is to these questions that

this paper now turns.

Collaboration implies a sense of commonality, mutuality and sharedness

in endeavour. In the context of this paper, it is the mutuality of

activity between those educators based in schools - whether as

classroom-based teachers or as other school-based professionals - and

university-based educators that forms the specificity of focus.

However, valuable insights into collaborative activity in general might

be gained here, and might be applied broadly across the multiple

possibilities for border-crossing partnerships in the area of

education.

Collaborative research, from the perspective of this paper, is that

approach to inquiry into the conduct of education with teachers that

would partially and, in the first place, "address their concerns,

involve them in the research process and be aimed, at least in part, at

improving classroom practices" (Troyna and Foster, 1988, p 291).

However, such a view of the determining role and influence of teachers

in the conceptualization of inquiry is perhaps not exhaustive of the

intentions of the university-based participants in this study. As will

be explored in more detail below, issues of power and authority pervade

the collaborative research process, and it is not sufficient to merely

reverse the tables of influence typical of "traditional" research

projects and abdicate the moral responsibility of any party to such a

research process to inject her or his perspectives, views and passions.

That is, the view of collaborative research that, at least in the

beginning, sustained the energy and determination to explore

alternative ways of sharing the process of coming to know with those

frequently (typically?) marginalised in the research endeavour was not

one that necessarily asserted and respected the primacy or exclusivity

of the needs of those "from the field". Rather, there was a

consideration of what it was that all participants might bring to the

inquiry process: skills, knowledge, experience and the like, certainly,

but as importantly, the vision and the hopes that resided within each

individual participant. That is, collaborative research was seen as

being, ideally, driven by genuinely dialogic forms of engagement.

Janet Miller (1992)(, in an autobiographical piece, explores some of

the dimensions of power and authority in collaborative research from

the perspective of a university-based researcher working with a group

of school-based researchers. In this article, she makes a number of

extremely important points about the collaborative process. One of

these is the observation that there is nothing necessarily inherent in

the nature of collaborative, qualitative research that does away with

the need to be vigilant against the intrusion of power and authority

issues that might work to the detriment of the project. Her point is

that one needs to view the presence of power in interpretive as well as

in relational ways in qualitative research. That is, in the more

"objective" forms of data collection and analysis typical of

quantitative research, issues of interpretation are far less likely to

arise than in the highly (and, in some cases, openly and proudly)

"subjective" forms of qualitative research process. It is in this area

that power and authority seep in more insidious ways than in the more

overt relational aspects of the hierarchy of research. In the latter,

the positioning of researcher and researched creates and locates both

dominance and docility in such ways as to render one powerful and

authoritative while at the same time creating Other. Further, within

the location of researcher, gradations of authority occur (principal

researcher, research assistant, and the like) that again represent

visible relations of power. Miller's concern is to address the more

subtle aspects of authority that reside within the interpretive part of

the inquiry process.

While obviously not intending to suggest that the two manifestations of

power - interpretive and relational -are able to be separated or act

independently of each other, Miller offers an autobiographical account

of aspects of her journey through a five-year old collaborative

research process as an example of some of the issues that arise in this

form of endeavour.

McTaggart, Henry and Johnson (1997)(, reporting on follow-up research

on the effects on teachers, both personal and professional, of having

been engaged in collaborative professional activity in the form of a

school review, are worth quoting at length on some of these outcomes:

Here we see teachers utilizing a modest attempt to articulate and

improve their professional lives. They change the nature of the School

Review, they change the curriculum, they change the politics of their

relationships with children, with their colleagues, with their

principal, and with a visiting professor. They change their view of

their own agency, they become more reflective, and they change their

professional biographies. In their own words and terms of reference,

they contest the death of agency, the death of progress and the death

of science. (P 137, emphasis added)

The Reform in Education Project

The Reform in Education Project commenced in 1996. It had evolved from

a 1995 pilot study report based on two Focus Group workshops. The

workshops brought together University researchers, teachers from

several schools and members of a School Advisory Council to discuss

notions of social justice and to work towards the development of a

collaborative approach to inquiry into the topic. Four schools, two

secondary and two primary, participated in the Reform in Education

Project, the aim of which was to elucidate various meanings and

practices of social justice in formal school settings.

Research in each of the four discrete sites led to specific points of

focus and activity as the inquiry process developed. As part of the

commitment to collaborative activity, the participants worked within a

framework of a broad concern to interrogate the notion of social

justice, but always with a view to informing an improved form of

practice in the school settings. The four separate foci of the

research activity became:

¥ school-based policy making - student and community perceptions of

the influence of a School Advisory Council on socially just practices.

teacher networking - manifestations of social justice in different

forms of school-based networking.

school-community relationships in a small, rural setting - the role of

the principal in creating socially just school practice.

curriculum development in an 'intentional' independent school

community - the impact of "social vision" on teachers' professional

practices.

The project team adopted a set of principles to guide the next stage of

the research, namely, that the research would aim to be:

Mutualistic, building trusting, collaborative relationships between

university-based and school-based researcher / participants;

Evolutionary, with allowance for changes to research questions and

procedures;

Exploratory, rather than scientific;

Values-based, with researcher / participants expected to use their

experience with the research to enhance social justice in education;

Broadly focused, enabling researcher / participants to pursue

individual research goals within the context of a common purpose.

As the Reform in Education project neared completion, it became

apparent to the University researchers that the goal of achieving

truly collaborative inquiry was a difficult and long process. Each of

the four sites presented particular difficulties with regard to the

development of genuinely collaborative inquiry, as well as containing

spaces for the emergence of understandings and small gains towards the

collaborative goal. The research process at one site seemed to move

furthest towards this goal.

Networking and Professional Learning: Highton School

In this particular study, an invitation came from the principal of

Highton school (a pseudonym) for a research team to work with the

school in investigating the processes of professional networking within

the school. An initial meeting was held to clarify the purposes of the

proposed project, and the feasibility of a shared and mutually

beneficial collaborative project was confirmed.

Highton school is a large state government school in a provincial city

in Queensland. It is generally perceived as a traditional school, and

many of the staff have been working there for in excess of ten years.

The current management team consists of the principal (male) and two

deputy principals (one female, one male). The principal has been in

the position for eight years and in pursuing his interest in

collaborative management structures, has been instrumental in trying to

instigate momentum for a collegial approach to the professional tasks

that school personnel undertake as part of their work. This project

aimed to provide for the school personnel, a picture of professional

networking at Highton school. It was expected that this would be

beneficial to the school in future planning and decision making.

Three of the original university research team (of seven) decided to

pursue the invitation by Highton school, while others pursued projects

which resulted from invitations from other schools.

The principal of Highton school reported that a number of networks,

both informal and formal, which varied in size, composition and

purpose, existed at Highton school. In early discussions it was

decided that the purpose of the research would be to illuminate the

networking process at Highton school mainly by accessing the

perceptions of staff through interview. A tentative research problem

and associated questions centring on the operations, forms, dynamics,

goals, effects, challenges, and successes of networking were

formulated, but in keeping with the evolutionary nature of the research

it was expected that specific foci and associated questions would

emerge and possibly change over time.

Phase 1

The first phase of the study focused on the experiences of a group of

seven staff members who, according to the principal, were explicitly

and actively involved in professional networking within the school.

The intention of the research was to portray the experiences of these

people and to illuminate the ways in which membership of and

participation in these professional networks contributed to their

professional learning. The principal approached individual staff

members he had identified as 'networkers' and asked them to participate

in the study. Along with the principal, six others agreed to be

involved: the principal (male), a deputy principal (female), three

classroom teachers (one male, two females - one of which worked

permanent part time), a pre-school teacher (female), and a learning

support teacher (female).

A meeting was held at the school with all the participants and the

university team to further clarify the purposes of the study, and to

negotiate and achieve consensual agreement for a set of Principles of

Procedure to govern the project. Timelines for data collection were

also discussed and agreed upon. It was decided that each participant

would be interviewed (40-45 minutes) by a member of the university

team. The aim of this round of interviews was to develop for each

participant a description of the networking in which s/he was involved.

The audiotaped interviews were analyzed and trends which emerged from

the data were organized into statements about networking under three

broad headings which the research team agreed were explicitly resident

within the data:

i) Networking - What is it? What does it mean?

ii) Why people engage in it? and iii) How does it happen?

These statements were taken back to the participants for confirmation,

discussion and response. The discussion confirmed these initial

analysis outcomes, and the group was asked to consider a direction for

the project: a focus (or foci) that seemed to be emerging and how that

focus might be pursued. They indicated that they wanted to further

investigate networking at Highton school in relation to school based

management, and also in relation to individual professional growth,

practice and confidence, particularly in times of increasing change and

devolution, and system accountability. They agreed that networking was

a desirable thing, and in providing an ongoing direction for the

project which would be valuable for the school, they expressed a desire

to investigate how networking might be encouraged and how it might

operate efficiently for the benefit of the school community. More

specifically they directed the focus towards finding out how some staff

could be stimulated to become 'networkers'.

In keeping with the ethos of the project that in the main the school

and the interests of school personnel direct the project, it was agreed

that the role of the university research team would be to gather

additional data which could be used by the school to inform their

future planning decisions, and to inform ongoing action research

directions within the school. It was decided that the university team

would interview a broader range of school personnel (approximately

12-15) to capture their responses and perceptions about networking.

Phase 2

As described above, the intention of the second phase of the study was

to broaden the base from which perceptions about networking at Highton

could be canvassed. Since the Phase 1 participants had been selected

because they were perceived by the principal as networkers, it followed

that they shared a view that networking was something that should be

both promoted to and developed within the broader school community,

making personal and professional life more satisfying and exciting.

This group did acknowledge though that they represented only a section

of the total school staff and that if networking was to be promoted and

developed within the broader school community, it would be appropriate

to investigate wider perspectives on activities of 'networkers' and

networking within the school in order to compile a more inclusive list

of the roles, functions and purposes, such that valid decisions about

future directions could be made. The principal agreed to help identify

an expanded sample which would include some staff members who could be

considered non-networkers or reluctant networkers. The university's

role in this phase was to gather data for the purposes requested,

provide preliminary analysis and critique, and then provide a final

report for use by the school in their future planning and decision

making.

As part of an ongoing interest in and commitment to collegiality in the

workplace and the importance of the concept of collaborative

individualism, the principal had been active in promoting team

structures within the school. Therefore as well as a focus on

illuminating the practical meanings of networking by this increased

sample, phase 2 also aimed to position these meanings within the school

context, particularly in relation to the principal's initiatives in

encouraging a team approach to working.

The principal identified and approached a number of staff members for

phase 2 of the project. Twelve classroom teachers agreed to be

interviewed by members of the university team - nine females and three

males. Each of the three members of the university research team

conducted four interviews of 45 minutes and participants were asked for

their permission to audiotape the interviews. One participant asked

not to be audiotaped, but agreed to the interviewer taking notes during

the interview. Each interviewer listened to the audiotapes of the

interviews s/he had personally conducted, and a research assistant

listened to all the interviews and prepared written interview summaries

which included specific statements (verbatim) that were made in each

interview as well as major points made or views offered (in summary).

In research team meetings held after the individual analyses had been

completed by each interviewer and the research assistant, six concepts

were agreed upon as capturing the range of comments made in the

interviews: empowerment; networking; autonomy; social justice;

responding to change; and the Highton community.

By way of an ongoing verification, and prior to further analysis and

conjecture, these themes were taken back to the participants for

validation and discussion. This was done by presenting for each theme

a selection of statements from the interviews which were seen by the

research team as representative of the views contained in the interview

data. At a group meeting, the participants agreed that the themes

emerging from the preliminary analysis were valid and these were then

used to guide further in-depth analysis of the data. Upon completion

of this analysis, a comprehensive report was prepared and copies

forwarded to all participants. At the time of writing the school is

considering the findings and the implications for the ways in which

they plan to work in the future. A fuller report on the emerging

understandings from and outcomes of this project have been reported

elsewhere. See Mayer et.al. (1997).

From the experience with this particular study, and in league with a

concern of the whole of the group of university-based researchers that

methodological reflection and development be accorded importance in the

deliberations over what our work was showing, the project team

authorized a further study of the nature of the experience of the

research process itself.

Collaborative Research: Methodology

The focus on collaborative inquiry was a qualitative study based upon

the selection and interviewing of key informants who had been

participants in at least one of the four research projects comprising

the Reform in Education series of studies described above. Five

members of the University based research team were interviewed along

with seven participants from the four research sites. The research

team decided to interview all available university-based participants

(N=5) and the principals of each of the four school sites involved in

the Reform in Education project. Three additional school-based

informants were selected on the basis of the recommendation of the

university-based participants. These recommendations were made on the

perceived likelihood of the informant having sufficient experience with

the project to be able to discuss the points of interest. Three such

additional school-based informants were identified.

The interviews were conducted by a research assistant over a two week

period.. Each interview was conducted in person and on-site, and lasted

approximately 45 minutes. The interviewer used a schedule of questions

intended to assist informants to, firstly, recall their experience with

the research projects and then to evaluate the collaborative nature of

the project. The intention was to gather perspectives about

university-field collaborative activity with a view to identifying

those factors that either inhibited or facilitated genuinely

collaborative inquiry. Informants were then asked to suggest changes to

the research process for the further development of mutualistic

inquiry. A copy of the research schedule is attached (see Appendix 1).

All participants agreed to have the interviews audiotape recorded and

for the information to be used for the preparation of this report.

(iii) Each audiotaped interview was transcribed and analyzed using the

NUD¥IST 4 qualitative data analysis program. The purpose of the

analysis was to identify trends in both the reported experiences of the

informants regarding the extent of collaboration in the conduct of the

research projects and in suggestions for changes that would enhance the

collaborative ethos in future research. The transcripts were not

returned to informants for checking. The data was anonymized to

minimize the likelihood of identification of informants and / or

research sites.

What is collaborative research ?

Most informants were able to articulate some idea of the determining

features of collaborative research in its ideal or desirable form,

although one member of the university team expressed uncertainty about

this:

I didn't have at all a clear concept of what was meant by collaborative

on my part.(university 5, text unit 27)

Perhaps the most commonly identified feature of collaborative research

was that of a shared or mutual interest in the topic of inquiry:

Where the researcher and the subjects of research have a mutual

interest in researching and discovering information and where a good

working relationship is developed between people in that process.

(Field 1, text unit 40)

Common purpose but outcomes looking for different, different way of

using the outcomes. Common purpose and commitment to outcomes (Field

2, text units 66-67)

Really about addressing a problem in which all participants have a

stake. (Field 4, text unit 43)

It is people with shared interests or common interests trying to find

out more about those things. People who see problems in the world as

it is trying to resolve and understand those problems where each

participant brings different things, different but not necessarily

better or worse. (university 1, text units 115-116)

But if you are doing truly collaborative and mutualistic everyone has

to be involved.( university 2, text unit 115)

Another important feature was that of difference within commonality.

This was expressed either as difference in input or as difference in

expectation of outcomes. In relation to the former of these, it would

seem that informants here considered it essential that different

qualities, skills and the like be recognized and respected for what

they could bring to the project, acknowledging the complexity of the

research process and the importance of all participants working towards

a common end. Illustrative of this point is the following extract:

So teachers will bring intimate knowledge of the context, kids and

setting which we can't hope to know but which are essential elements in

any inquiry. We bring maybe a greater sense of the bigger picture for

some of these things because that is supposedly how we work. We bring

some research techniques, strategies and skill and more importantly

some time that teachers don't get necessarily to do stuff. We bring

physical resources, access to machines and data bases that maybe

schools don't have so while it's different they are equally important

so that all of that stuff merges to pursue an inquiry. . (university 1,

text units 117-120)

The second aspect of accepting and respecting difference within the

common project relates to the anticipated outcomes of the project:

Shared purpose but with different outcomes.(Field 2, text unit 63)

Presumably, the point here refers to change in the school setting

(leading to improved pedagogical practice, enhanced educative outcomes

for students, and the like) and accretions to the academic work of the

university personnel (academic papers, conference presentations,

incorporation of the research into teaching and the like).

Importantly, the point was made that the expectations of all parties

need to be clearly established for the collaborative process to work:

It's a joint exercise where both parties know exactly and clearly what

is expected of them.(university 3, text unit 38).

A further defining characteristic of collaborative research identified

by the participants in this study was that of two-way communication

flows. For the collaborative nature of research projects to work, it

would seem that there is a need for an understanding and expectation of

dialogic modes of engagement. While one informant saw the matter quite

differently:

[Collaborative research is a] group of people collecting evidence and

then people who are experts drawing out of it relevant truths. (Field

6, text unit 12),

most other informants clearly emphasized the two-way flow dimension:

It's a two way process and there is a lot more to be said for it in

that respect. There is give and take involved. (Field 1, Text units

61-62)

Information seeking, information giving between relevant parties

working on the same project. (Field 3, text unit 17)

Tackling an issue as a group of people from a variety of angles and

then coming together to thrash it out.(Field 7, text unit 47)

A sense of security and encouragement to engage in conjecture was also

touted as a defining characteristic of genuinely collaborative

research. It would seem that the protection offered to individuals

engaged in the collaborative process is a significant spur to

wonderment:

It is, or in this instance was a loose set of guiding principles in

which people were able to give opinions and ideas to test those

principles.( Field 5, text unit 41)

A final point about the nature of collaborative research was made in

something of a caveat regarding any assumption that collaborative

research of necessity implied a commitment to action or change:

Collaborative research in itself doesn't necessarily carry with it that

action bit. You could engage in collaborative research with a school

very effectively and have nothing change. It could just be a matter of

finding out what is it that we currently do. (university 1, text

units 135- 137)

In summary, it would seem from the experience of the informants in this

project that for research to be considered genuinely collaborative, it

must be constructed around shared ideas of the topic to be addressed

and the outcomes expected from the process. It should be conducted on

the grounds of mutual respect among all research parties involved, with

dialogic forms of communication and engagement being essential.

How far was collaboration in the research process achieved?

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the acknowledged diversity of views of

the nature of collaborative research, informants differed in their

perceptions of whether the goal of collaboration had been achieved. It

is important to note that none of the informants questioned the nature

of the activity undertaken or engaged in -it was clearly research. No

one disputed the idea that the particular methodologies themselves

constituted forms of inquiry into selected practical aspects of the

sites involved. The point of divergence, however, resided in the

collaborative nature of the process.

Field-based informants perhaps saw the activity as coming closer to the

collaborative end of the scale than did the university-based

informants. Illustrative comments here include:

One had that feeling all the way through that it was 'our project' -

collaborative.(Field 3, text unit 35)

It was collaborative in that it was a loose inquiry framework and the

school community did have some input into which way the inquiry would

proceed. And then with the little bit at the beginning of this year,

asking from input from interviews was collaborative as well, but

basically only one person can write the paper. In so doing, is the end

result a product of collaboration? (Field 5, text units 42-44)

Of the field-based informants, only one expressed a view that the

collaboration was not all that it could or should have been:

[The collaborative research project worked ] very well in terms of

reflection, discussion and interaction of ideas.(Field 1, text unit 43)

Quite useful in enhancing the reflectivity element but it was probably

more useful for the team studying the school than the school itself for

the reasons I mentioned before (Field 1, text unit 37)

Despite these seeming reservations, the informant indicated that there

was still a sense of shared engagement in the activity:

We got the sense that we were working together on something that was of

mutual interest. (Field 1, text unit 54)

The university-based informants, though, were far more critical of the

way in which the intention of developing collaborative forms of

professional engagement with school-based colleagues panned out. In a

sense, this might be explained by the underlying motivations of the

university-based participants in joining the project in the first

place.

I don't believe it was a collaborative project by the way. It was us

coming in and doing things with people down there collaborating to the

extent that they made the opportunities available for us or to us to

get the information that we felt we needed. (university 1, text units

22-23)

Our view was: we will do what they want to do, but we are still doing

it to them basically. (university 2, text unit 60)

Statements on the educative role that might have been played by the

university participants in developing a more collaborative project are

important. One informant in particular saw this as a necessarily major

facet of the university contribution:

In the final analysis it would appear that we failed dismally to get

across to some of the participants the collegial nature of the research

(university 4, text unit 15)

It is important to view this statement critically, since it is possible

that the sentiment contained within it, while obviously hitting at the

crucial input - whether it be theoretical, interpersonal or practical -

required in this project, might well be seen as sustaining the

superiority and ascendancy of university-theory over school-practice.

This aspect of the views of the respective participant groups bears

further exploration. A further comment from the same informant perhaps

reinforces a view of the university-school relationship that sits

uneasily across a divide separating mentoring from patronism:

They may not have understood completely what we were doing but I'm sure

that they felt as if they were part of the project (university 4, text

unit 28)

For some of the university-based informants, at least, the opportunity

to explore and develop collaborative or mutualistic forms of research

was as strong an attraction as was the social justice focus of the

proposed research:

When I first started off I think all of us were keen to have our

research described as collaborative, mutualistic, evolving all of those

sorts of things, driven by the school, I think we, or particularly me,

were particular naive in thinking Yes, because it's coming from the

school and they were identifying what we might look at and they were

identifying who might be involved that it was collaborative, that it

was driven by them. The reason I'm not sure what name to give to it

anymore is neither Uni party or the school party really knew what our

roles were. For example, [the school principal] would ring me and say

"what are we doing next", and I would say "what do you want to do" and

we would go backwards and forwards like that. It took a lot of playing

around to actually get to where we are now. It's more collaborative

but the different parties still not sure of our roles, of how we

contribute. I'm not sure that it is collaborative, it's perhaps shared.

(university 2, text units 18- 23)

We did set out to develop genuinely collaborative forms of inquiry -

inquiry aimed at change or action with participants from school sites.

I think to a small extent, and I don't know what happened in [the

other] projects, but in the [project] I was involved with I don't

believe we did very much of that. So in terms of achieving

collaborative research I don't think we have but we certainly learned a

lot, well I learned a lot about how we might work more effectively in

achieving that collaborative relationship in future times. It has not

achieved the specific goal but it has taken us some way towards

understanding why we didn't achieve it and how we might be able to do

something next time. (university 1, text units 37-41)

Further dialogue between the university- and school-based participants

on the nature of the research process itself might well go some way

towards the development of a critical collaborative research praxis:

that is, a recursive form of practice that is both informed by while at

the same time informing and changing theory. The dynamics of this

process would be interesting to observe.

This dialogic process would not, obviously, clearly divide into school

- university sections. There would appear to be sufficiently

wide-ranging views about the design and conduct of collaborative

research within, for example, the university participants for there to

be educative engagement to occur on a smaller scale. For instance, the

following comment from one of the university participants would clearly

spark intense debate and interrogation and, in all likelihood, lead to

the development of deeper understandings on the part of the university

personnel:

What has been missing is someone who went along with us as an impartial

observer and then thought about it and collaborated with us. Needed

someone non committal who can oversee it. (university 3, text units 74

- 75)

What are the advantages of working collaboratively?

The informants identified a number of positive experiences and outcomes

of having participated in the research projects. The field-based

participants clearly recognized the positive contribution made by the

university-based participants to the processes of inquiry, reflection

and change:

That outside perspective - makes us reflect on our own practice. (Field

4, Text units 62-63)

One participant described how the relationship of trust and closeness

between the university-based research members and the field-based

participants enabled the inquiry process to deepen for both parties:

It reinforced the reflection process. When you are asked questions

about a vision and you have to articulate how it translates into

practice that requires you to think it through yourselves. And I think

particularly for the group that was most involved ,that is the profile

group for teachers, I think some of the questions they were asked were

things they had not yet considered. I know to a certain extent the

[university research] group was just observing but they were sometimes

active observers because they would throw in a question because of

something that surprised them in the discussion or the direction that

the discussion took...So it challenged people to reflect on our own

practice, our own thinking (Field 1, Text units 14-19)

The same informant, however, qualified this very positive view of the

relationship:

Quite useful in enhancing the reflectivity element but it was probably

more useful for the team studying the school than the school

itself.(Field 1, text unit 37)

Another field-based informant reinforced the positive effect on

reflection and self-critique provided by the collaborative nature of

the inquiry:

Terrific to get some outside perspectives. [One of the university

personnel] bought along some articles, and [another member] sat in on

discussions and gave some very helpful feedback about the differences

that he has found in approaches between schools.(Field 7, text units

22-23)

Another aspect of the attempt at collaboration was the accretion to

self-image and confidence on the part of those participants who, in

more "traditional" forms of research design would have been relegated

to object instead of subject:

I think that the people who were involved felt that it was worthwhile

for their community but were also pleased to have been asked and to

have their opinions valued. (Field 5, text unit 16)

Importantly, this previous statement highlights a crucial aspect in the

development of genuinely collaborative research - that of integrity and

honesty. The informant here indicates that there must be an

opportunity for the raising of multiple voices, but at the same time,

that those voices must be truly heard and valued.

A further point of interest was the view of the attachment or

commitment of the university-based researchers to the results and

outcomes of the research:

[T]he outcomes either way for the researchers wouldn't matter but to

the school the outcomes were very important (Field 2, text unit 65)

This comment would seem to indicate that the sense of collaboration

underlying the intentions of the university-based researchers was not

shared by at least some of the field participants. In other words,

this type of comment can be read to imply a continuation of

traditionalist approaches to research with its belief in the

impartiality of the researcher. While this point was not put to the

university-based researchers, it is highly probable that they would

express strong disagreement with the sentiments contained here. The

attachment, both professional and personal, to the focus and purpose of

inquiry on the part of university-based researchers in collaborative

inquiry would be an interesting aspect for further investigation.

Generally, then, field-based researchers indicated that the effects of

working collaboratively with university personnel has led to positive

concrete results for their particular school. This point is

illustrated by the following comments:

That project gave the S.A.C the direction that it was desperately

seeking at the time. In a sense, it was a the catalyst that bought the

S.A.C into being as a management structure within the school with

integrity and purpose and so on.(Field 3, text units 36-37)

Report confirms some things we believed about [the topic of inquiry]

but it also makes some very important statements about things we

weren't aware of.(Field 4, text unit 96)

The university-based researchers similarly saw the outcomes of the

process in generally positive terms, and, again, largely from the point

of view of contributing to the professional growth and understanding of

the field-based researchers rather than in terms of their own. The

position of one university-based researcher clearly contains the view

that the process outcomes were heavily oriented towards the development

of the field-based researchers, that the university personnel's role

was one of assisting in this process and applauding the efforts:

Then stuff that we are coming out with, even if we haven't finalized

the report it's been a growth process, involved people having to come

to a position on things. They have had to look at their attitudes and

values. Maybe not analyze them in any great depth and I think that a

lot of them have gone away and thought about stuff further because the

interpretations we got back go a little further.(university 4, text

units 88-90)

This view, obviously, presents the risk of perpetuating the divide

between researcher and practitioner insofar as it admits of little

likelihood that the university-based researchers might come to learn

something from their partners in collaboration. The elevation of the

"collaborative" university-based researcher to a position of primacy in

the process of knowing is something that warrants further

investigation.

There was, though, some sense of two-way learning contained within the

university-based researchers' experiences with the collaborative

approach to research:

The... project highlight was getting inside an organization to see how

somebody ....was able to again put into practice an ideal.(university

1, text unit 21)

Personal highlights- really interesting to have people elucidate their

side of the story, their perception of how things were.(university 4,

text unit 34)

From the point of view of the way in which the research was both

designed ad conducted, there are a number of important points to be

raised. Firstly, it would appear that one of the most valued aspects

of the process from the field-based researchers' point of view was the

commitment to according them certain "rights" and responsibilities

within the formal research process, in particular their right to veto

or modify aspects of the process as they saw fit. Similarly, the

process of negotiating the terms of the research through to the use and

control of any data emanating from the research seemed to instill a

feeling of trust into the whole engagement. The following comment is

illustrative:

Things explained clearly i.e. ownership of data etc. We had some

discussions about that at the beginning and I think that was spelt out

very clearly. We raised the concerns that we had and we received

assurances and re-assurances about those concerns and we explored them

thoroughly before we started.(Field 1, text units 70-72)

The same informant stressed the importance for successful collaborative

research for commitments made at the beginning of the project to be

adhered to throughout:

Collaboratively developed and a respectful approach was taken towards

the concerns we expressed. Nothing happened in the project that I

would feel uncomfortable about or that I felt breached those agreements

at the beginning of the process.(Field 1, text units 75-76)

On-going interactions and referrals between and across the various

parties to the projects was another aspect of the research project that

informants viewed very positively:

At one time in the project we had an interim report and had some

intensive discussion with [one of the university-based researchers].

There was a confusion between [two terms used]. With the interactive

process we were able to say outcomes have to be written[one way and not

the other] as there is no current legislation for [the term first

used]. If there wasn't an interactive process then that one term

could've skewed the whole report.(Field 2, text units 71-74)

A further essential element in the conduct of successful collaborative

research would seem to be existing familiarity between and concomitant

trust of specific individuals to be involved in the project. This

aspect was mentioned more frequently by the field-based researchers,

and its relative absence in the views of the university-based

researchers might well reflect a heritage of university personnel

entering educational sites as strangers on a more frequent basis than

the field-based personnel. That is, the degree of previous experience

with potential collaborators might not figure as prominently in the

minds of university-based researchers because, particularly those

researchers from the area of teacher education are often in schools in

a number of capacities - practicum supervision, professional

development work, and the like - and, presumably, are accustomed to

working from scratch with field-based professionals.

Illustrative comments here include:

The relationship with [one of the university-based researchers] was

there and when he suggested the project the informal linkages had been

set up and we trust this fellow.(Field 2, text unit 21)

Getting back to the question of linkages, I think it's that informal,

trust linkage and working with somebody who has worked with the school

before (Field 2, text unit 23)

At [this school] we have had quite a lot of contact with university and

minor research projects with other Universities. .It is not something

that teachers here are unaccustomed to. (Field 3, text units 14-15)

A similar view of this was expressed by one university-based

participant:

None of us except [one member] had anything to do with the schools

before we went so we were strangers in lots of ways and so we were

outsiders. We weren't even marginalised insiders, people who are

familiar faces on the school site. Apart from [that one member of the

university-based researchers] and [that person] was only known to

probably the administrative people in the schools. So there needs to

be a greater familiarity, so we know who the people are. I didn't have

a clue who half the people were in [that site]. I spoke to them once

and we were out of there. (university 1, text units 50-55)

University-based informants agreed on the contribution of positive

relationships based on trust and familiarity. Certainly the idea of

more regular, long-term connection to schools was a clearly articulated

one:

We need to be in the schools on a regular basis identifying with their

concerns and helping them such that they feel comfortable to come to us

and say we want to do some stuff on this topic, will you help us.

(university 1, text unit 49).

More regular contact with and presence in schools may well go some way

towards overcoming potential points for suspicion and distrust to

hinder the inquiry process. Two comments from university-based

researchers exemplify this:

At [one of the school sites] in particular we were seen as agents of

the principal so from the staff the relationship was one of probably a

little bit of suspicion, a lot of guardedness and hesitancy because

they weren't sure what was going to be reported back (university 1,

text unit 87)

[The university-school site relationship was] changeable because of how

the aspects of people's roles in other dimensions impacted. So, at

times the project stalled while we dealt with those issues individually

and in pairs. From an outsider's point of view I felt at times that we

were getting nowhere. With the benefit of hindsight and the more

distance we have from that time I think that was part of the whole

process. (university 2, text units 72-75).

The effect of this variable nature of working relationship has led, in

this informant's opinion to the perpetuation of traditional

researcher-researched relationship:

I'm sure they still see us as a group of academics that came out

sometime last year. (university 2, text unit 109)

The importance of establishing an appropriate relationship between the

university and the field from the very beginning on a personal basis

was suggested as a crucial aspect ensuring genuinely collaborative

inquiry takes root:

Perhaps we should have gone out personally and met them face to face

rather then do it with written material. People out there have a

misconception of researchers as people [who] come in and do studies on

them instead of with, and once again I don't think we were very clear.

We mentioned collaborative research but we didn't clearly spell out

what we intended their role to be and that was one of the limitations

of our research. (university 3, text units 28 - 33)

The value of face-to-face meetings, tough, might result in a number of

unanticipated effects. As one university-based informant stated:

Some members of the community were ....some of the people who came to

talk to them were not what they expected academics to look like.(Field

5, text unit 27).

This point was also raised by another of the field-based informants,

and further emphasizes the importance of time being spent in

establishing relationships based on comfort, ease, and personability:

In the [teacher research group],there may have some people who had been

working in this institution for many years and have not had a lot to do

with researchers for sometime, maybe 10 years, I think they may have

found it strange in the first session but I think the way the first

session was conducted, and the personalities of the people involved and

the way they put people at their ease and I think from then on it was a

fairly relaxed atmosphere (Field 1, text unit 57)

Herein might well lay a positive effect in overcoming stereotypical

images of what it means to engage in research, to be positioned as a

researcher or researched, and the form of relationships that the

"traditional" research discourse calls up.

What were some of the limitations of the collaborative research

process?

While the experience of the informants in the four Reform in Education

projects was reportedly quite positive, there were a number of problems

and limitations of the collaborative process identified. Many of these

concerns attach to disappointments over expectations of the outcomes.

For example,

I felt that we really only scratched the surface. (Field 1, text unit

25)

I was hoping some more practical techniques that people could take away

and really would use to enhance the function of those [aspects of the

school life] and I'm not sure that that got followed through to the

extent that it could've. (Field 1, text unit 28)

Another aspect of disappointment related to the entrenching of the

collaborative process itself

We spent quite a bit of time, a couple of sessions, at [the school

site] talking to participants before hand about how this was something

we were not going to do on them. We went and spoke to the Principal

first of all to establish a research project that she thought would be

beneficial to the school. Spoke to participants at that stage about

what they thought about research, what they thought it to be, how they

felt about it, what the process might involve. Prior to each interview

we made it clear to the interviewees that this was not about doing

something on them it was doing something with them in a co-operative

manner, and that we would bring back to them whatever we collected and

collated and we would seek their opinions, not just come back to them

with our opinions and interpretations. Finalizing the feedback on the

interviews, one participant was upset that the interview information

that had sent them, he/she felt misquoted and the whole exercise was a

waste of time and money. I interpret that to mean we hadn't done our

job sufficiently well to enable that person to feel part of it.

(university 3, text units 16-21)

This point was reiterated by another university-based researcher :

One of the restraints was that people have a perception of research

that was not our perception of what we were doing. Many of the

participants despite efforts to explain the process and demonstrate the

collegiality of the stuff we were doing people still felt / perceived

that research was still something that should be done upon them, not in

conjunction with them. I think that stems from a feeling of not being

qualified to do it, and if you become part of a research project as a

lay person it somehow demystifies it and becomes somehow not real

research. (university 4, text units 41-43).

This comment also carries a perception of the views of a field-based

participant of what research is. This is a point that should be

further interrogated, insofar as it presents as a potentially major

impediment to the development of "new" roles in the research process.

Another limitation or problem with the collaborative research process

attaches to the situation of the reluctant collaborator. It seems that

within any research group, there is a range of commitment to and

involvement in collaboration. Some field-based participants in the

projects were, apparently, less willing to be involved than might be

considered desirable for any thought of genuine collaboration:

One person that I interviewed was not interested in being interviewed,

it was an interruption but she had to be there, she was told she had to

be there at this interview time.(university 1, text unit 85)

Then there were the teachers in the school that brought their role of

following what the principal said into the project. They were asked,

or directed (I think it was asked) to take part so that they bought

that into it as well "the principal told me I should come and talk to

you but I'm not sure why I'm talking to you." (university 2, text units

40-44)

The obvious diversity of views and concerns within a research group

becomes significantly magnified when the scope of the group positioned

as "researcher" is widened as happened in these attempts at

collaborative inquiry. Inevitably, there will be conflict, clashes and

impasses reached. While this phenomenon might well be productive in

some settings, it also has the potential for tearing collaborative

relationships apart:

A lot of fingers in the pot. Each of us comes to any research or any

project with a cemented set of values, expectations, attitudes and it's

very, very difficult to leave those out. I don't think you can leave

it out, all of those values, attitudes those things you have yourself

based on experience, based on philosophy based on a lot of things, and

therefore perhaps the communication is not always good in that it is a

bit like speaking to someone who has poor English. Communication among

a wide variety of people from a wide variety of backgrounds will always

pose a problem of interpretation and as a limitation I guess that

happens in everything and I guess it gets back to what I was saying

before about someone else looking in. (Field 5, text units 19 - 22)

Another problem that emerged from the research was the perceived need

on the part of some university-based researchers to present data and

interpretations of that data in an "acceptable" way tot he field-based

participants. This difficulty, alluded to in the following comment,

indicates that a definite role separation was maintained within much of

the Reform in Education research:

It probably occurred that the interview data had to be sanitized

because we couldn't afford to have to many names and identifiers in the

hard data that was sent back. The interviews were sanitized to make

them as objective as possible and to remove any direct references to

individuals. (university 3, text units 22-23)

That is, while attempts at opening up the research process to

involvement, influence and possibly control by field-based researchers

were genuine in their orientation, there seems to have been a retrieval

of "traditional" research roles when the time came for data analysis

and interpretation in a number of the studies. It is likely that this

rather more political part of the research process is a crucial point

for the testing of the commitment to collaborative inquiry, for it is

here that the field-based researchers should have at least equivalent

input to the university-based researchers.

The field-based researchers did have considerable influence in the data

gathering part of the process, and it is likely that this influence cut

across the assumed expertise of university-based researchers in

research design:

Some data gathering techniques were viewed as inappropriate, don't

record this interview, don't take notes, don't even ask to record it,

which is probably important stuff and was probably to save the project

and keep it alive rather than have it ship wrecked on rocky shores of

politics and whatever down there. (university 1, text unit 82)

Another difficulty in the conduct of collaborative inquiry related to

the positioning of individuals as information and power sources in the

projects. This occurred with both members of the field-based

researcher groups and the university-based researchers

I was never certain of what was being communicated to schools by the

project co-ordinator, and I don't mean that in a critical way - I was

just never certain of that because we would then talk to them and they

would have a different idea of what was going to happen on a number of

occasions. (university 1, text unit 100)

As the principal he has ultimate responsibility [in the school] but

that role came into the project. Similarly from this end, [the project

co-ordinator] the first name on the research project, as the lecturer

supervising [the principal] on another project so he bought all of that

in. I feel that it created uncertainty.(university 2, text units

40-42)

What changes might make future research more collaborative ?

Most informants indicated their commitment to continuing to develop

collaborative links between university and school, indeed, one

participant went so far as to indicate that, in the emerging political

and professional climate, such collaboration will be crucial:

I'd be happy to continue the relationship. It's essential for both our

institutions that that does happen. Need to go with new model of

school governance that we need to work with, as we move into a district

model which we will soon, we need to find better ways of organizing and

managing schools and there is a role for universities there. (Field 4,

text units 102-104)

If we continue with the research it would get better and better over

time in the sense of being collaborative. The same site and a lot of

work with the participants.(university 2, text units 79-80)

One of the university-based researchers disagreed with the perceived

value of continuing to develop collaborative research relationships

between the university and the schools:

I used to think it was a good idea but now I'm not so sure. It could

skew the results. If people are aware of what you are doing they could

change it to suit their own ends. Collaborative within the university

and within faculties is a good idea. Collaborating with colleagues on

research ideas and techniques probably more effective than involving

the recipients.(university 3, text units 45-49)

Based on their experience with this attempt to engage in collaborative

research, participants made a number of suggestions for change in the

way in which the process worked out this time. Perhaps unsurprisingly,

most of the suggestions go some way towards addressing the problem of

encouraging greater influence and input from field-based researchers.

Some informants suggested a process of developing a professional

relationship between the university and the schools in the hope that

the schools might well take more of the initiative in instigating

collaborative activity:

Firstly, we would need to wait for schools to identify a problem that

they want some help with. We have gone in and said we want to do some

stuff on social justice are you interested and they've said yes. Doing

it the other way, having schools saying we want to do some work on this

topic are you interested, to us, I suppose it is only just swapping

roles but it seems to me that when the school site genuinely wants

something done and they come to us for help that is when we will have a

greater chance for collaborative work because the conception of

research in schools is that it is something that gets done on them or

two them or about them by people like us.(university 1, text units

44-46)

Another suggestion was that the university-based researchers be more

assertive in emphasizing their commitment to "democratizing" the

research process. This could involve an educative function:

And we have a view of what research is; so there is a long getting to

know you, educative period about what is research, what does it mean to

do research. (university 2, text unit 51)

Maybe more tangible outcomes for them if it is a truly educative

process where they are learning research skills and we could give them

recognition. (university 2, text unit 69)

It is important to stress that this educative process is not one

necessarily to be confined to the field-based researchers, but, of

necessity, needs to be engaged in by all participants:

Even among the Uni based people we had different views about what

research was and if we are going to have all different views than the

people in schools are also going to have different views. Maybe that's

the first step. It's a long process involved and everyone has a

similar understanding(university 2 ,text units 52-53)

As a basic stating point, one field-based informant emphasized the

importance of locating the research endeavour clearly in the areas of

interest and relevance to those they believed to be most affected by

the outcomes of inquiry: the classroom teachers:

Try to ask teachers what their concerns are before they start the

research. (Field 6, text unit 32)

A similar emphasis on the classroom-based participants, but for

different reasons, was articulated by members of the university-based

research team:

I think that we should work with grassroots people more than people in

positions of authority because the agendas of people in the broad,

unwashed masses of the school are probably less personally oriented

than maybe the agendas of principals and administrators. Probably a

greater likelihood that we would get honest feedback or unfiltered

feedback from teachers as co-ordinators of projects than from

principals who may be trying to soften the blow and maintain the

relationship with the University and so on.(university 1, text units

67-68)

All decisions have to be made and agreed to by everyone in the project.

I am not sure that it is possible because of time and the other thing

is if you are working with people in schools

If we were to do it again we need to have more structure and perhaps

have them involved a little more in defining roles and as being part of

it rather than being recipients.(university 3, text unit 35)

Bring everybody together and sit down and look at research as a topic

and what it does, and what we are trying to achieve and if it has a

collegial project people have to be quite clear that they are part and

parcel of it they have a right to criticize, to analyze, to synthesize

the data that has been collected. .(university 4, text unit 53)

The issues of contact people and project management responsibility also

attracted comment from the university-based researchers :

I would not work through administrators or people who are in visible

positions of authority in the school as the contact person.(university

1, text unit 57)

Have to do something about the contact person in the school. If it

can't be everyone and it can't be all the time, you have to have a

contact person on both times. It should probably be a person who

doesn't have power and authority invested in them as a result of their

position in the school that other people recognize already.(university

2, text units 52-57)

We probably needed to set up a management team for the research which

we didn't do which included not just us but people from the field in

our decision making. Maybe that means that decision making isn't

resident here in this office or in the Education conference room but it

means that we go to the site to facilitate the co-ordination of the on

going stuff, and not just as the one off thing but as a regular

management thing.(university 1, text units 70-71)

A crucial element for ensuring the success of future collaborative

research activity was seen by one informant as a determination to

bridge the gap between rhetoric and practice:

We have to show the participants that we want their opinions, we want

them to help us categorize stuff, their own interpretative power. We

have to demonstrate that that is the case in some instances and not

just say it.(university 4, text units 96-97)

A final suggestion was that of the choice of research topic. One

university-based researcher suggested that the topic of inquiry in the

Reform in Education projects was sufficiently complex to detract from

efforts at developing collaborative research methodologies:

Addressing a less complex issue.(university 5, text unit 23)

Recommendations

As a result of the analysis of the data reported on above, it is

possible to identify a number of what might be seen to be critical

indicators of or precursors to collaborative inquiry. These are drawn

from the reported experiences, views and perceptions of the group of

informants involved in this study, and have been placed within

collaborative and mutualistic frameworks of reference.

The following list of critical indicators has been distilled from the

data collected for this project, and indicators have been included on

the basis of the following selection criteria:

To be included in a list of critical indicators of appropriate conduct

of collaborative inquiry, an idea from the data had to be :

1. articulated by one or more people from the informant group;

2. consistent with established conceptualizations of collaborative

inquiry;

3. consistent with established Codes of Ethics, in particular:

the Code of Ethics of the Australian Association of Research in

Education (1993)

and

the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee's Guidelines for Responsible

Practices in Research and Dealing with Problems of research Misconduct

(1990)

4. legitimized by the informant group;

5. accepted by the full Reform in Education team (where possible); and

At the time of writing, points 4 and 5 of the above list of criteria

for inclusion were underway but incomplete. Relevant modifications to

the list of critical indicators to reflect any required changes

emerging from the completion of these steps will be made accordingly.

Critical Indicators of or Precursors to Collaborative Inquiry

Purpose

1.1 site-based problem-solving

The focus of the inquiry is on a problem or phenomenon resident in the

concrete practical experience of site-based participants.

1.2 advancement of practical-theoretical understanding

The purpose of the inquiry is to contribute to understanding of the

praxis of the area of inquiry

1.3 improvement of practice

The aim of the inquiry is to contribute to changes in professional

practice leading to improvements in outcomes.

Initiation

2.1 site-based

The identification of a need for research into a particular problem or

phenomenon arises at the site of the phenomenon.

Design

3.1 emergent

The design of the research changes over the course of the inquiry to

accommodate new ideas, information and problems.

3.2 negotiated

The design of the research is negotiated on an on-going basis by the

participants

3.3 educative

A function of the research design process is to contribute to the

understanding of all research participants of that process and the

nature of inquiry generally.

3.4 informed

Negotiations of the research design are conducted on the basis of

informed discussion by all participants involved.

Project Management

4.1 representative

The research project is managed by a project group that is

representative of the full range of participants.

4.2 collegial

The deliberations and decision-making of the management group are

conducted on a collegial basis, with the aim of utilizing democratic

and inclusive forms of engagement to promote the collaborative basis of

the inquiry underway.

4.3 site-located

The management group convenes at the research site.

4.4 consultative

In reaching decisions, the management group consults with all

participants likely to be effected by any decision, and communicates

its decisions to all participants.

4.5 accountable

The management group is fully accountable to the participants in the

project.

Access to the Field

5.1 informed consent

Access to relevant sources of information and data is gained by

securing the informed consent of all those effected or likely to be

effected by the data gathering process.

5.2 right of refusal / restriction

Informants have a right to deny access or to restrict access to

information.

Data Collection

6.1 negotiated methodology

The process whereby data is collected for the project is negotiated

with those informants or sources of such information

6.2 informant control

Informants have the right to control the release, recording and copying

of information.

Data Analysis

7.1 joint

The analysis process is undertaken by all participants, or

representatives of all groups of participants.

7.2 joint ownership

The outcomes of the analysis process are the property of the project,

not individuals.

Reporting

8.1 negotiated use

Individuals or groups negotiate with the project group for specific use

of project property.

8.2 negotiated release

The release of material related to the project in the form of

conference presentations, publications, site-based reports and the like

is negotiated between those wishing to secure the release and the

project group.

8.3 multiple perspectives

The publication of material related to the research project contains

the differing perspectives of the participants.

8.5 right of notification

Participants are informed of the places of and groups to whom

publication of project-related material is made.

9. Inter-personal communication

9.1 Trust

Individuals involved in the project trust all other participants

insofar as their commitment to the advancement of the aims of the

project are concerned.

9.2 Honesty

Communication between participants is at all times open, honest and

courteous, respectful of diversity and difference of opinion and

perspective

The development of socially-just research practices in the course of

attempting to uncover images of social justices in educational settings

as exemplified in this study has revealed the difficulties of breaking

down the postivistically-based binarisms of researcher - researched.

This process must, of necessity, be on-going and reflective as those

involved continue to develop that personal-professional relationship

necessary for trust and mutual risk to be seen as parts of the dialogue

between school-based and university-based researchers that leads to a

communal sense of empowerment in the project of coming to know and,

more importantly from a social justice perspective, of educational and

social transformation.

1 Reinharz calls "rape research" that form of and approach to research

which " takes rather than gives, describes rather than changes,

transmits rather than transforms" (1979, p 95)

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Collaborative Research and Social Justice. Jon Austin and Di

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