Doing Classroom-Based Research

This post is about a workshop I facilitated, with my colleague Anita Lämmerer, which focused on helping teachers do their own classroom-based research. I would like to start by explaining why I think that classroom-based research is important. Following that, I will share some more information, and materials from the workshop itself.

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Why do classroom-based research?

In many educational contexts, teachers are ‘consumers’ of information that is generated outside the education system, in places such as Ministries of Education and universities. I find this situation problematic for two reasons.

Firstly, there is a danger that this information and the policies that are derived from it are disconnected from the realities of the classroom. By this, I do not mean that this is poor research (although there are numerous examples of this as well!). I mean that any research produced at this level involves at least some abstraction and some loss of detail. When this research comes back to school, the picture that it paints is monochrome; it lacks the nuance and particularity of the classroom.

A model of education where decisons are centrally made and individuals have neither freedom nor responsibility for their actions is uncomfortably close to totalitarianism

Secondly, such a division of labour reduces teachers to the level of technical practitioners, automata that carry out instructions as dictated by knowledgeable others. The most obvious outcome of this is the deskilling of the teachers, but they are more pernicious. When teachers surrender their authority as experts in their own class, they also abdicate from their decision-making authority. Such a model of education, where decisions are made centrally and individuals have neither freedom nor responsibility for their actions, is uncomfortably close to totalitarianism.

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Can teachers research their own classrooms?

A common counter-argument against classroom-based research is that teachers have neither the time nor the expertise to engage in systematic inquiry. I am very sympathetic to the situation of overworked teachers, who are burdened with a lot of often needless administrative work – in addition to the considerable challenges of teaching. To demand even more unrewarded work from such teachers would hardly be ethical.

In our workshop, at the ELT Connect 2015 conference in Graz, Anita Lämmerer and I made the case for practitioner-led research. We think of this as a way of teaching that has an inquisitive outlook at its core. We argued that this form of praxis, which fuses inquiry and practice, is a driver for professional development.

Benefits of classroom-based research

During the workshop, the participants and we discussed the benefits of classroom-based research. Some of the more important ones are the following:

• It can inform our teaching decisions
• It can help with our professional development
• It can strengthen collaboration with our colleagues
• It generates data-based evidence

Challenging unhelpful assumptions

We also critically examined several assumptions that might inhibit or intimidate teachers who are otherwise curious to try out some form of classroom-based inquiry.

Research Expertise

For example, some teachers might feel that they don’t have sufficient research training. While this is a factually correct statement, it is also misleading. This is an unhelpful attitude because the skillsets that are needed to conduct large-scale academic research and classroom-based inquiry are not the same. Teachers can typically rely on good rapport with their students and extensive and deep knowledge about them. This means that they can often make sense of situations that would either go unnoticed or remain opaque to outside observers.

Grounding in the literature

A second unhelpful assumption is that teachers lack the extensive and in-depth knowledge that academics (claim to) have about education. Again, this is misleading in that the knowledge base of academic and classroom-based research is different. Classroom-based research needs to make sense in the specific context where it happens. If one can connect these findings to broader issues in the literature, and in doing so make them relevant to a broader audience, that is of course great. However, classroom-based research is valuable even when it just generates the kinds of understanding that help teachers in the same school comment intelligently about their classes.

Contributing to knowledge

Some teachers may also feel that there is little value in whatever they might discover. Again, this unhelpful assumption stems from a misunderstanding about the nature of classroom-based research. When evaluating academic work, we judge it in terms of its originality. This is something that individual teachers may aspire to, or maybe not. When it comes to classroom-based research, on the other hand, what matters is its pedagogical utility – whether the findings it generates can help teachers in this particular setting be more effective in their roles.

Resources and time

The last issue that many teachers are apprehensive about, and rightly so, is the question of resources and time. As I said above, the call for more classroom-based research should not be interpreted as a call for more work. Rather, it is a suggestion for integrating into our pedagogical practice, tasks that help us to better understand our learners. For instance, this could involve asking students to write about their preferred activities and taking time to engage with their output. It could mean using systematic observation of interaction patterns in the class to find marginalized or dominant groups. The only limit, apart from ethics, is the teachers’ imagination!

Summary

I have summarised this information in the table below.

Unhelpful assumptions	To do classroom-based research
I don’t know how to do research!	Focus on existing skills that are useful for research
I haven’t read enough…	Focus on the deep knowledge of the local context
I have nothing new to say	Aim for pedagogical utility, rather than originality
I just don’t have the time	Integrate research into teaching

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A handbook for classroom-based research

If you are planning a research project, or if you are supervising or mentoring teachers who have to do such work, you may want a copy of a handout on Classroom-Based Research that we gave out to workshop participants. It is, by necessity, a very brief introduction to a vast topic, but we hope that it might provide some helpful orientation.

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We value your feedback!

We are very keen on reading any feedback you might want to share about the materials. One thing we would also especially love to hear from you is if they have inspired any classroom-based research projects.

If you’d like to get in touch, you can do so by sending me an email at Achillefs.Kostoulas@uni-graz.at . [update: I am no longer at Graz, but feel free to contact me through this page]

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