Coming From Different Angles With Different Agendas: How Do We Change Our Perceptions Whilst Holding Firm To Our Beliefs?

Pat D’Arcy

University of Bath, Bath, UK

Paper presented at the International Conference,

Self-Study in Teacher Education: Empowering our Future,

Herstmonceux Castle, East Sussex, England August 5-8, 1996

 

Coming From Different Angles With Different Agendas: How Do We Change Our Perceptions Whilst Holding Firm To Our Beliefs?

Introduction

When I began my enquiry into what can be said to constitute a meaningful personal response to stories written by pupils between the ages of 8-16, compared to the evaluations which they commonly receive, I naively took the view that it would be a ‘self-study. I knew that I needed to develop my own perceptions about the nature of such a response, building on my own experiences as a teacher and as a story reader. However, I was keen to involve teachers - and some of their pupils - in trying out my Guidelines for meaningful response as these developed. Indeed, development was not possible without their collaboration. At the same time, I enrolled at the University of Bath as a doctoral student, intending that my thesis would give an account of my enquiry and its outcomes. Thus, without fully realising it at the time, I had enlisted a cast of additional characters who were going to speak with their own voices according to their own agendas as they commented on aspects of my investigation. I discovered that these agendas which teachers, university tutors and fellow researchers brought to our conversations were differently angled in relation to their own concerns, experiences and values. There were occasions, therefore, when we found ourselves thinking differently:

 

· about the similarities or differences between pupils’ stories and published stories, when it came to making a response that teachers could regard as meaningful;

· about the ‘educational’ nature of my research and whether I could validate the claims I was making;

· about the categories of response that I was formulating;

· about the form in which I was presenting my findings.

 

I want those voices to be heard, because they raise issues which I imagine confront other self-study researchers, unless I am being exceptionally pig-headed! To what extent should I be willing to hold fast or let go of my own ideas? Conversely, to what extent is it justifiable for me to try and change the perceptions or the practice of others? Is it more helpful to be involved in a dialectical debate or a discursive dialogue? Surely all learning is about reaching for further understanding - but who is the learner and who decides? Because my research is about stories, I have chosen in this paper to be the narrator who will provide both context and commentary for a few of these more challenging moments in the conversations which have played a crucial role in the journey that my research has taken to date. Please read and listen to our voices as you mull over the issues which I have just raised. And then I very much hope that your voices will contribute yet a further dimension as you bring your agendas and experiences into the discussion.

 

Example One - from a discussion with secondary teachers

Context

This was the first time that secondary teachers who had expressed an interest in my research came together. They read a short story by Katherine Mansfield and spent 15 minutes writing down, in accordance with my Guidelines, what I had typified as an engaged response: ‘When you make an engaged response, your attention is focused on the story itself - not on the writer behind the story. On what you are ‘making’ of the story inside your head - whatever feelings, thoughts, images come to mind.

 

Daniela: The whole engagement thing was a real problem for me... I wasn’t engaged... I don’t like this style...

Dawn: We don’t know Katherine Mansfield but we know the pupils whose stories we read - and then you’re engaged with the person who’s written it.

Erica: When I read stories for myself, my response is very different. It has nothing to do with the way I respond to children’s writing.

Andy: I always have a kind of image of the kid in mind, as I’m reading through what they’ve written... There’s an element of lit crit creeps in but it’s because I actually want the kids to get better at writing stories. I’m not bothered about Katherine Mansfield getting better as a story writer...

Kevin: I’m wondering whether when we respond as teachers in an educational way, we go easy on engagement because by and large kids’ stories are not engaging because they’re not professional writers... they are sort of rehearsing their repertoires.

 

Commentary:

For a variety of reasons, not one of these teachers seemed willing to relinquish their role as teacher in order to become, however briefly, a story reader of their pupils’ work. They could only regard a ‘meaningful’ response as one which involved suggestions for improvement. They also seemed to regard stories written by pupils as being different in kind from those written by published authors. Should I therefore abandon my belief that children’s stories deserve the same thoughtful attention to the meanings they offer as do those of professional writers? Or should I look for ways of explaining what I was after that would make more sense to my teacher colleagues?

 

Example Two - from a conversation with Jack Whitehead

Context

I have to confess that six months into my enquiry I felt both irritated and disappointed that Jack did not appear to be interested in what I regarded as my central research question: ‘What constitutes a meaningful personal response to a pupil’s story?’ While my attention was focused on an analysis of the responses which the teachers and I were making to the stories they had chosen, Jack only appeared to be interested, on the one hand, in whether I could demonstrate the educational value of these responses and, on the other, in the nature of the methodology I was employing.

 

Jack: I know that I interpret research in relation to whether or not it answers what I understand as educational research [but] I can make a judgement in terms of ‘Is it coherent?’ ‘Is it internally consistent?’ I can actually do that whether or not I feel that the research itself takes account of education. And it may be that that is the only response that you want.

We’ve got to be very clear about the nature of the claims... can you justify what you are saying... Can that really be backed up? I’m getting these massive claims... You said in your last paragraph, ‘these responses can be shown to have an educational value’ - what is it in terms of these responses that constitutes what is being done as educational?

You say on p.10 ‘It is still my contention that suggestions for improvement are most usefully made while a story is still evolving. Once the story is finished, specific comments for the writer on what has been achieved are equally valuable.’ How do you justify that? That seems to me to be such a clear claim and yet so difficult to justify.

 

Pat: Well, it’s difficult to prove; I don’t think it’s difficult to justify!

 

Commentary

It will be clear that we are not seeing eye-to-eye! Jack wants me to move from an analysis of what constitutes a meaningful personal response, to a consideration of how this ‘evidence’ can be shown to be educational. Because I am not yet moving in territory which he regards as appropriate for educational research, he conscientiously confines himself to selecting for me claims that I am making which will need to be substantiated more convincingly if I am to survive an academic scrutiny.

 

Should I play safe and avoid making any claims at all about my pedagogical beliefs or would I be able to find more convincing ways of demonstrating from the data that these responses are themselves educational - for the teacher who makes them, as well as for the pupil recipients?

 

Example Three - excerpts from a discussion with fellow action researchers

Context

The group were offering their reactions to one of my preliminary Papers in which I set out to analyse the responses of three adults and four pupils to a story called The Knight and the Mushroom which was written by a twelve year-old boy. In the Paper, I group and comment on these responses according to the categories that I am seeking to establish: thoughts, feelings, visual impressions and questions. I was hoping that the group would focus on the nature of the respondents’ comments about the story. Instead, they focus on my form of analysis and accuse me of doing their thinking for them! They move away both from the story and the responses, to comment in no uncertain terms on issues to do with my presentation of the data.

 

Pam: I would like to see those responses without someone telling me which categories I must use in order to make sense of it. I think it’s totally dry and traditional really and yet you’ve probably got data to tell your story in a much more authentic way. It seems a shame that you’re telling it in this way ‘cos it’s turgid.

Ben: What I would have loved to have seen was an example of two of the teachers who would have given their internalised version and have those beside the story and I would have been fascinated by that.

Moira: I find myself interested in the author of the story rather than the story itself... I thought, Where is the educational value of this research? I think that the dialogue and the incipient dialogue are put through the filter of your analysis to the extent that the people in the text are not alive. What I’m interested in is reading things about real people... education is made up of people.

Pam: What you’re doing here is imposing on us your categories.

Peter: As soon as anybody is trying to exercise power and control... impose ideas on me - exercise that form of illicit authority over me, that is when I simply shrink, I’m like a slug that pulls its horns in.

 

Commentary

Should I now abandon any attempt to categorise the nature of the meaningful response that I was trying to develop? Should I rethink how to define the responses that I received more openly but without losing the descriptive details? Should I try to write more like a human being - and if so, how?

 

Footnote

I want you to know that such questions have indeed led to much useful re-thinking on my part, and I am grateful to all my collaborating cast of characters for raising them. But for the purposes of this discussion paper I now want to put them to you!