Formación de indicaciones

Contributions to new knowledge and the implications of my research fall into three areas. The first is

that my research has revealed teachers’ thinking on how they teach reading, and that there is an

explicit partitioning between policy and provision. All the teachers believed that more needed to be

done on the teaching of reading and felt as part of their role that it was necessary to fill the gaps they

perceived to have been created by policy. The second is the impact of my study on the participants

and to some extent myself. Finally, the research approach taken could be an alternative way of

conducting continuous professional development for teachers, in that it is an inclusive approach to

research that facilitates professional development through opportunities to discuss and explore

different perspectives through reflection on practice.

Firstly, my research has contributed to the developing knowledge on what we know about

how teachers teach reading. The understandings shared by Emily, Flo, Nancy and Ruby all revealed

how there is now a clear partitioning in their thinking between policy and provision, for example

when they spoke about phonics as something that is taught separately. They all felt that part of their

role was to fill in the gaps left behind by policy, and as such viewed themselves as agents mediating

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curriculum were given higher priority by the school. The result of some areas of reading having a

higher priority is that other areas have fallen by the wayside, for example reading for pleasure and

enriching children’s experience. The approach taken by the teachers in my study was reflective of

meeting the expectations of the National Curriculum and Year 1 Screening Check, yet the teachers

were trying to make sense of the fragmented approach to teaching reading, and they all talked about

what they did to support the children’s reading. Each of the teachers was drawing on their much

wider knowledge to make the process of learning to read coherent for the children. I think Ruby

captured the perspectives of all the participants with her closing statement in the interview by saying:

When you see all these statements together it makes you realise how fragmented we now think of reading, rather than a holistic activity. I am not sure how we’ve got here, but it features in all of our staff meetings and all the conversations we have as a phase group. It’s difficult to resolve, as we are under such pressure to perform all the time, and that can give you a very different focus.

Emily, Flo, Nancy and Ruby were all intensely interested in the child and placed children at the centre

of their teaching provision and saw learning to read as holistic and based on the child’s self-belief. At

times the expectations of the school policy conflicted with their ideas, yet the teachers tried to

provide a rich experience for the children based on their understandings of teaching reading.

Secondly, my study appears to have had an impact on the research participants beyond their

involvement in the data collection. There has been regular contact between myself and two of the

participants, Ruby and Emily. Although the first contact after the meetings was made by me to thank

the participants for their time and to share with them a copy of the transcript for their agreement,

there has been further contact from Ruby and Emily. The emails (Appendix 11) have developed into a

regular discourse about their reflections on practice, things they are doing in their classrooms, books

they are reading, courses they have enrolled in to pursue their continuous professional development

opportunities, and small groups they have set up, which emulate my data collection process. I have

been invited to join the small groups but as yet not managed to attend the meetings. The content of

the emails appears to be illustrative of Ruby and Emily reforming their understandings and evidence

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With the teachers in my study continuing to share their understandings on the teaching of reading

through emails, it is interesting to consider how willing the teachers are to collaborate and share

thinking and understandings, which potentially could be left unsaid. The teachers continue to reveal

their understandings which prior to the research they would possibly have not been aware of, as

Emily said in a recent email:

You know, I don’t think I have thought this deeply about what I know about teaching reading before. I am enjoying my teaching of reading at the moment, and the kids are getting so much out of the lessons. I think it is my rekindled or new way of thinking.

Reviewing the research undertaken with Appleberry School and the staff has heightened my

awareness of the importance of teacher contributions to research and leads into my final point on

how the research approach taken could be an alternative for continuous professional development

(CPD).

Finally, the data collection methods used in my research were employed initially to capture

the voices of the teachers so that they shared their understandings, but the collaborative

opportunities in the study have extended further than I originally envisaged. My research, in its

collaborative approach, has provided opportunities for the research participants to have the chance

to not only participate in but to be an active part of the research process. By an active part, I mean

that the research process actively encouraged the participants to engage professionally in sharing

their understandings and also invited the teachers to challenge and re-evaluate their practice. The use

of concept mapping encouraged the participants to not only consider the statements generated by

their peers but also to reveal their thinking. The teachers were not just answering questions or

responding to set tasks; there was fluidity in the task that required the teachers to decide how to

respond with regards to their practice. The voices recorded were evidence of them thinking out loud,

as they were not responding directly to research questions but actively steering the direction of the

interview based on their understandings and their practice. The work of Cliff-Hodges (2016) suggests

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understandings as they reflect on their work and consider future possibilities. The active participation

of the teachers in this research has seemingly had a similar outcome, in that the inclusive approach to

my research deepened the teachers’ understandings. The data indicates that their responses were

genuinely challenging their thinking and contributing to their professional development. The use of

concept mapping and the statement set generated by the whole school gave the participants

ownership of the data and their responses were more natural. In some sense, it appears to be a more

ethical approach to educational research and perhaps a research approach more in line with Reed’s

(2016) thoughts that researchers need to have a greater awareness of the research participants and

look for ways their research can be more inclusive. The impact of my study is a contribution to

academic research, but equally, I feel it has had an impact on deepening the teachers’ understandings

and their professional development, as the social constructivist paradigm adopted for this study

would predict, and as I hoped from the outset would be the case.

The use of Baxter-Magolda’s (1996) continuum also emerged as a flexible approach that was

able to draw out the teachers’ understandings. In a combination of Baxter-Magolda’s continuum for

analysis together with the open-ended task of concept mapping and non-directive interviews, the

teachers revealed their understandings and perceptions. When presented with the opportunity to

discuss their practice, the teachers revealed multiple understandings on the teaching of reading and

called on many ways of knowing before arriving at a position. The approach taken in my research

recognised that teachers’ professional development occurs at different stages, different introductory

points and different levels of knowledge. Although the teachers were working with the same

information (the statement set), they engaged with the concept mapping activity at different levels,

providing them with a mechanism for individual development. In each of the transcripts, the

participants could be heard challenging and setting objectives for themselves that were directly

related to their practice. Although Baxter-Magolda’s (2004) continuum of contextual knowing is

regarded as being hierarchical, within this study, the participants demonstrated that their

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revealed that they moved through multiple levels of the continuum to form responses and

constructed their knowledge in a dynamic process of re-evaluation and reflection. For example,

although Ruby presented herself as a contextual knower, during her interview Ruby’s thinking

demonstrated aspects of transitional and independent knowing as she contemplated her teaching

practice. As such, within this study Baxter-Magolda’s (2004) continuum was not used as a tool to

assess where the teachers sat on the continuum but naturally developed into a means of revealing

the complexities of the teachers’ understandings and how they were formed.