As a practising teacher in arts-based education with more than one extracurricular desk to attend to for students and for staff, it is of great importance to me to find a method of research that is a good fit for the work ahead. A primary concern in pursuing a Master of Education is that the research informs my teaching and is reflected to me in my students’ capacity to take relevance, realization, and learning to next level. Research, as Dr. Jennifer Thom suggests, should take the researcher deeper into their own practice so that their understanding broadens and informs on a continuum of professional growth. This understanding of the research process might be a good general descriptor of action research methodology.

Chapter Two of Sage Publications’ Action Research in Education written by Mary McAteer is aptly titled “Getting to Grips with Perspectives and Models” (McAteer, 2014). The chapter is a treatise of sorts, laying the foundation for the purpose, shape, and function of action research methodology. But first, a little about the writer behind the ideas to be presented.

Mary McAteer cut her teeth in the realm of education as a teacher in her homeland of Ireland. She attained a Bachelor of Education degree and a Master of Science to later gain employment at the University of Ulster. A Doctorate in Philosophy and a Professional Grade Certification in Research Certification capped her formal education and she is presently holding a Senior Lecturer position in Professional Learning in the Faculty of Education at Edgehill University in Ormskirk, Lancashire, in the United Kingdom (https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/education/about/staff/mary-mcateer/).  Her online presence is highly professional, and her name provided by the university appears fourth down the list of Google search results. Her Twitter handle is @MaryMcAteer57 (joined in January 2012) she has 1,389 followers, has tweeted some 7,238 times (https://twitter.com/MaryMcAteer57). She has created 5 lists which reveal that some of her interests include music, news and politics, Derry news (in her family of locale in Ireland), General Education, and “Interesting Maths Stuff”. She also tweets as @CARN­_Intl (Collaborative Action Research Network) which exists to “encourage & support action research projects (personal, local, national & international), accessible accounts of action research projects, and contributions to the theory and methodology of action research.” (https://www.carn.org.uk/about/) where she is one of 13 co-ordinating group members committed to supporting action researchers. Her last contribution to her WordPress account titled “Just Thinking About Stuff” (https://marymcateer.wordpress.com/ ) was May 9, 2017 about a visit to a primary school on the coast of South Africa in the previous November.  A Facebook search reveals that she keeps her settings private, although she has travelled recently to the US/Mexico border, and Columbia, SA, but has not provided any updates since February of this year (https://www.facebook.com/mary.mcateer.7). It is a delightful comfort to know that someone who seems as busy as Dr. Mary McAteer affords herself lapses in keeping up her online social network accounts. This may be due to the unseen online professional work she conducts through her university and CARN International. Teaching two Master of Arts programs (Educational Inquiry & Professional Learning and Specialist Primary Mathematics Practice) as well as PhD Supervision duties is onerous.

A strong and outspoken supporter of action research methodologies, Dr. McAteer describes the tenants of action research with a heavy philosophical underpinning, since later, she admits that the look of action research takes several forms and is perhaps as fluid as any process of self-exploration and self-improvement (McAteer, 2014). The main idea that distinguishes action research from other methodologies is that it puts the researcher at the centre of the research and elicits a philosophy or theory that is then tested by being put into practice. It is the reflexive act of praxis re-informing itself on a personal level that sets action research apart from such a methodology as autoethnography since the latter is not explicitly a process of testing a personal education theory through action. As she states herself “Praxis thus is understood as a form of process, through which the end is realised through interpretation in context.” (McAteer, 2014, p. 22). What is meant here, using more strict scientific terms, is that the data analysis on which the research relies for its findings and conclusions cannot be separated from philosophical leanings, conditions and circumstances of the researcher who collects, interprets, and makes summary findings about it. It is on this premise that the methodological approach to action research rests.

McAteer (2014) takes an affinity to fellow researcher Carr by making several references to his epistemological ideas about the shape or method that action research should take:

As Carr (2005) suggests, in his keymore address to the CARN conference the fundamental function of such research is to keep the conversation going.

I find myself agreeing with Carr’s questions in relation to methodology and believe that, rather than getting tangled in discussion and debate about approaches to and forms of research, our primary focus should be the need to ensure that whatever approach we take to action research, it should be a conversation rather than an operational one. For the novice researcher, however, some sort of schematic representation that supports such a conversational approach is vital. (p. 23)

Further to this, action research does not rest in normal pattern of research followed by inaction as an process that is often not sustained, rather that action research emphasizes the intention of making the research public within the process to provoke continued action even after the formal phase of the research is over. This is particularly appealing to me as my intention for going deep into the examination and research of my teaching practice is to bring forward a continued and sustained cycle of self-improvement. As much as I feel fortunate to have had five years of formal practical training and experience in my special field of teaching, I am also very motivated to re-affirm, re-examine, deepen, expand, and broaden my skill sets, knowledge, and pedagogy as a practising teacher.

In searching for research literature in the field of arts-based education, I have found that the bulk of methodologies used to explore this branch of learning and instruction have been of the more philosophical, qualitative, and personal ilk. Action research methodologies, therefore, seem to fit the mould of the predominant literature on arts-based education.

One qualitative study reflected the inescapable notion of “researcher as researched” in what laid between the lines of the article. Debra McLauchlan attempted to objectively look at secondary school drama/theatre teachers’ resiliency, but managed to include only four subjects from one nearby school district from whom to collect data, three of whom were either students of hers or had attended a workshop that she put on. Her focus centred on “teacher retention and career satisfaction” (and was rooted in answering the question) “”What factors promote resilience in secondary drama/theatre teachers?”” (McLauchlan, 2014, p.171). Further analysis of her methods of data collection revealed some startling admissions (McLauchlan, 2014):

My acquaintance with three of the study’s teachers was tempered by the fact that a school board administrator, and not myself, had suggested them as participants. (p. 172)

[and]

Held in my home, the first focus group was intended as a social gathering to thank the teachers for contributing to the study. However, as they fervently discussed school-based issues, I gained permission to record their conversation. At the evening’s end, they asked to re-convene in a few months. For this second meeting, I prepared discussion topics to record. As “member checking” (Creswell 2012, 259), teachers edited their transcripts and focus group notes. (p. 173)

The research must have adhered to the guidelines of qualitative study and that is not the argument I am proposing to make, rather, had the author seen the implicit personal connection to the subjects of her research and made self-reflective use of the data, a very interesting study may have come about more on the ethnographic side perhaps than the action research side. It would have provided the reader with a perspective more in line with the closeness that she described to her subjects.

McAteer makes a good argument for the use of action research and its tendency to push beyond the walls of academia (McAteer, 2014). This is not to say that scholarly rigour is more loosely applied to this method, but as a novice researcher myself, I would be drawn toward developing a framework of action research that ensures its rightful place in the academic field but also, and just as importantly, has the potential to inform the broader community of educators and build upon the positive ways we teach. Arts-based disciplines of study often involve a great deal of self-reflection and a building awareness of the ways in which we process our own experiences (Meskin & van der Walt, 2018). Action research may prove to be a good fit under the spotlight of teaching the fine arts of creative expression and self-development.

 

References

McAteer, M. (2014). Getting to Grips With Perspectives and Models. Action Research in Education,                   Chapter 2, 22-42. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781473913967

McLauchlan, D. (2016). Factors of resilience in secondary school drama/theatre teachers, Youth Theatre        Journal, 30(2), 171-183. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/08929092.2016.1225610

Meskin, T. & van der Walt, T. (2018) Knowing in our bones: interrogating embodies practice in theatre-           teaching through self-study. South African Theatre Journal, 31(1), 36-57. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2017.1413951

Presentation Slideshow: Google Slideshow – Getting to Grips with Mary McAteer