Reflecting Where the Action Is Book

Acknowledgements     x
Introduction     1
The school-based curriculum development movement     1
Curriculum development as a pedagogical experiment     2
Holding teachers to account     4
Paradigms of educational research     6
Conceptions of teaching as an evidence-based profession     7
Resolving the dualism of 'theory and practice'     9
Concluding remarks     10
Curriculum development as a pedagogical experiment     13
A curriculum for the study of human affairs: the contribution of Lawrence Stenhouse     15
The humanities in the innovatory secondary modern school     15
Curricula as praxiologies     18
Towards a vernacular humanism: the humanities project     20
Developing hypotheses about classrooms from teachers' practical constructs: an account of the work of the Ford Teaching Project     30
The context of the project     30
The organizational framework of the project     31
The project's design as classroom action research     32
Teachers' theories of teaching     36
Criteria for testing practical theories of inquiry/discovery teaching     40
Triangulation as a method of initiating self-monitoring     42
Developing hypotheses from classroom data     50
Developing self-monitoring ability: some hypotheses     56
Ford Teaching Project     60
Holding teachers to account     63
Preparing teachers for classroom accountability     65
Towards a genuine and fair model of classroom accountability     65
Developing self-monitoring capabilities     69
Theory and preparation for accountability     77
Acknowledgements     79
Self-evaluation and teacher competence     81
Self-evaluation and methodological competence     82
Conclusion     86
Paradigms of educational research     89
Classroom research: science or commonsense?     91
Concept and purpose     91
Two types of concept     91
Commonsense theorizing     93
Implications for educational research in classrooms     95
Educational theory, practical philosophy and action research     99
The demolition of the disciplines in the development of educational theory     99
Do the disciplines have any role at all?     102
Gadamer on 'understanding and practice'     105
Educational action-research, case study, and the disciplines      108
The Habermas-Gadamer debate     110
Implications of classroom research for professional development     113
Introduction     113
Process-product studies     113
Educational action research     117
Conceptions of teaching as an evidence-based profession     129
Making evidence-based practice educational     131
Redirecting educational research in the service of outcomes-based education     131
The policy context of educational research     134
The concept of education and the role of educational research     137
Stenhouse on research-based teaching     141
Concluding remarks     146
Using research to improve practice: the notion of evidence-based practice     149
Introduction     149
Engaging teachers in and with research: the experience of NASC     152
Rethinking pedagogy as the aesthetic ordering of learning experiences     169
Pedagogy as 'classroom management': the transition from chaos to cosmos     169
Pedagogy and education     170
The learning environment as a complex, aesthetic order     174
Rethinking the pedagogical role of the teacher as the creator of aesthetic order     176
Resolving the dualism of theory and practice      183
Doing action research - doing practical philosophy: what the academy does with an antagonistic view of educational enquiry?     185
The discourse surrounding the idea of educational action research: distortions and subversions     185
Alaisdair MacIntyre and versions of moral enquiry     191
The genealogist's paradox within the post-modern critique of action research     194
The 'absent presence' in the contemporary academy     195
Educational enquiry from the standpoint of tradition     197
Towards a reconstruction of contemporary discourse about the nature of educational enquiry     200
The struggle to redefine the relationship between 'knowledge' and 'action' in the academy: some reflections on action research     203
Action research and the theory-practice relationship     203
The post-structuralist challenge and the theory-practice relationship     205
Hannah Arendt and the philosophy of action     207
Theorising from the standpoint of action     210
Concluding remarks     212
Index     215