Eight home economics teachers and I took up the invitation of Coulter (1993) to
explore the work of Mikhail Bakhtin as a way of making us more "wide awake" (Greene,
1978) and "answerable" (Clark & Holquist, 1984) for our teaching and researching
practices. The study involved learning from our own experiences inquiring into global
home economics education. We met as a group once a month, and I met periodically with
each teacher, for one semester. Using action research, conceptualized as grounded ethical
practice, the research methods were primarily dialogues as conversational inquiry, whereby
greater emphasis was given to listening and hearing than ocularcentric methods of gathering
data. The three research questions that guided the study related to learning from experience
in: the substantive area, in this case developing curriculum for a global perspective in home
economics; the action research process, in this case as a process to effect a specific
educational change; and the self or personal growth, in this case primarily professional
development (Reinharz, 1992).
This research report includes narrative and reflective accounts from three forms of
action research within the study: teachers cooperating with an outside researcher where the
researcher defines the topic and purpose of the research; teachers collaborating with a
researcher where the research is seen as mutually beneficial and the topics and purposes are
jointly defined; and teachers defining and conducting their own research independently or
in collaboration with one another. It captures the diversity and complexity of the teachers'
and the researcher's experiences and explores some of the struggles, the tensions, and the
inner turmoil associated with action research for educational change.
As a result of this research, we have become more consciously intentional in our
practices and more thoughtful and reflective of their consequences. The phrase theorizing
practice/practicing theorizing captures this notion as the teachers and I turned/retumed to the
ethical questions that hold us in education. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/6192 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Smith, Mary Gale |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 12619354 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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