May 24…On Labaree’s Scholar-Practitioner Tension
Note something from this article
with which you disagree (note: I assume that reading this paper was a different
experience for those with P-12 experience and those without. That said, he made a sufficient number of
bold claims so I’m sure everyone can disagree with something he said). Why do
you disagree with it? Did Labaree give
words to any tensions that you feel as you head down the road of the
educational researcher? If so, explain.
Also, feel free to weigh I on what, if anything, Mutter and Bryk relate to
Labaree.
Jen G.
ReplyDeleteNot coming from a k-12 teaching background, I can still very much relate to a lot of what Labaree was alluding in referencing the clash of views in the transition from a practitioner to a researcher. As a practitioner working as a coach and academic advisor in higher education it was easy for me to find many commonalities in his article than disagreements. However, something from the article in which I did find to disagree with was when he stated, “It is not enough to be good at a particular mode of research and to be satisfied with a career of applying this approach in a series of studies. When the terrain that needs mapping is this complex, researchers need to bring an equally complex variety of research methods to the task if they want to be able to view the subject in its many forms”. Trying to be great at too many things can dilute our ability to be great at anything is something I believe. As researchers, I think we should own a craft and work in those strengths of methodological approaches. This allows others who have mastered a different methodological approach to build off those strengths. This however, is not without saying that we should not be proficient in learning and accepting many ways to conduct research. We should be collaborating with other methodologists if we believe another approach can help advance and add to the existing body of knowledge.
Again, I took away a lot from this article and really felt it was beneficial for me personally, making this transition from practitioner to researcher. Something that I had struggled with in my first year of classes was removing my "hat" as the practitioner. I have fought to try and bring in my real-life examples and read journal articles through this lens. In reference to researchers Labaree stated, “…they have the time and space to focus their attention on what to do and how to do it”. It was helpful to hear his stance in understanding researchers must first learn how to explain a problem and make it generalizable in context before beginning to tackle how to fix it. It also was reassuring when he put into context how we should not be feel guilty of taking ourselves out of the personable interactions and moving to that of an outsider.
Two things stood out for me in this article. The first was how Labaree seems to be saying that the role of the scholar (researcher) and the practitioner (teacher) is mutually exclusive. Coming from a background in higher education, this has not typically been the case, at least in what I do (mostly graduate advising and admissions). There is an expectation that I must have an understanding of the complexities involved in the admissions process, graduate student struggles, trends, etc. I have often relied on existing literature for resource and as guidance. I am curious if anyone has the same experience (both higher ed and P-12)?
ReplyDeleteSecond, Labaree describes how teachers who enter doctoral programs in education feel like they need to abandon teacher culture and embrace an academic culture. Some of the more meaningful and interesting discussions I’ve participated in have been a result of being able to draw on our professional experiences. In that sense, I am not sure if there is necessarily a requirement to abandon one culture for the other. In most cases, my experience has been more aligned with what Mutter says about being a scholar-practitioner, being able to combine academic research into practice.
In my somewhat limited experience, my sense is that most doctoral programs have an emphasis on the idea of a scholar practitioner, which seems like an emerging trend. Is this the case for other doctoral programs in the country?
Shannon N.
ReplyDeleteI had a unique, very gradual, transition from practitioner to researcher that likely gives me a different perspective from other P-12 educators. I left the classroom two years before I started this program to work as a research assistant and be sure this was something I wanted to take on. Though I was still teaching two online classes, the shift to researcher started well before I officially began classes in the doctoral program. Labaree touched on some of the feelings I’ve had in trading my practitioner lenses for researcher goggles. The article also helped me understand tensions I’ve felt in classroom discussions, not only between those with/without teaching experience, but between different points in transition from practitioner to researcher.
Though I agree with most of his argument, I think there’s a little to pick apart here: “The mission of the educational researcher is to make sense of the way schools work and the way they don’t. The object of a particular foray into research, as a piece of scholarship, is not to fix a problem of educational practice but to understand more fully the nature of this problem.” When thinking about some of the community engaged research coming out of VCU’s School of Education alone, that statement is a pretty sweeping generalization about the goals of educational research.
As a counselor education and supervision student, and understanding the expectation of research as part of my professional growth, I disagree with the idea that education has a "lowly" status and that intellectual work is not respected. I imagine that in my own bubble, I have missed out on the general opinion of research in K-12 education and its purpose; the literature I read and conferences I attend are focused exclusively on the counseling profession. Since the (counselor education) department is housed in the school of education, I have wondered whether this is the most convenient school in which the education of professional counselors fits; I haven't decided. I should note, and not related to this article, that counselors differ from psychologists in that counselors practice from a wellness/developmental model and psychologists practice within a medical model - I note this because the education of a counselor would not, therefore, be housed in the school of psychology.
ReplyDeleteI noted that the article was written in 2003 and with the tremendous growth over the last decade, I am curious whether Larabee's writing is considered dated within the school of education. As Melissa noted, it appears that most doctoral programs emphasize scholarly writing and I agree. On the other hand, I have also listened to scholars (Holland) propose and advocate for the resurrection of practical and collaborative learning, and that publication should not be the decisive factor for university faculty tenure.
As the article would suggest, learning trends and research change constantly. I cannot speak from the school teacher perspective, but my limited interaction with doctoral students in the program would suggest there is not as much tension between practitioner and scholar as Larabee suggests.
To preface: I'm not a P-12 teacher; I have a social work background and all of my professional experience has been in community non-profits and university settings. I also zeroed in on the passage that Shannon mentioned on p. 17, "The object of a particular foray into research, as a piece of scholarship, is not to fix a problem of educational practice but to understand more fully the nature of this problem....Their primary responsibility as scholars, however, is to work through the intellectual component of educational problems..." While I think that practitioners and researchers might come at the same problem from a different scope and perspective, I do not think that means researchers should not feel a moral imperative to fix educational problems. The more removed researchers are from the impact of their research and the lived experiences of those involved in the research, the less grounded and meaningful their research will be. To me, viewpoints like Labaree's are what has kept researchers/university faculty in the ivory tower (which, ironically, they are often criticized for being in). From a higher ed and violence prevention lens, the very best research findings currently out there are from projects where researchers and practitioners work together on research teams to design, implement, and disseminate findings related to the research projects. I wonder if VCU is more progressive than other institutions when it comes to community engaged research, or if the P-12 world is that much different than the higher education world.
ReplyDeleteAshlee Lester
ReplyDeleteWhile Labree (2003) makes many efforts to qualify his statements, the underlying claim that I walk away with is that doctoral programs "push teachers to drop practice for a new career in theory" (p. 21). My interpretation of this article is vastly different from that of a k-12 teacher because according to Labree's definition I do not qualify as a "grownup" as I began the program directly out of my bachelors degree. That being said, I am sure you can imagine that I do not necessarily agree with all facets of his statement on the maturity of educational doctoral students. I agree that with age comes additional experiences that provide more opportunity to build off of. However, I think that in this discussion he fails to acknowledge the perspective that a younger student may add to a group.
Additionally, I think Shannon highlights a large weakness in Labree's work. The field of educational research seems to be steadily growing and slowly welcoming new methodologies with this growth. While Labree discusses the role of action research as a new(er) and different direction for educational research, his definition fails to encompass community engaged research. In my experience conducting community engaged research with MERC, I would claim that the goal of this research is not only to "understand more fully the nature of this problem," but also seek potential solutions to the problem. That is the reason why this form of research benefits from having both educational researchers and educational practitioners deeply involved. I believe that good research must be derived from various perspectives as a means to reduce individual bias in analysis and interpretation. Thus, the power of community engaged research is that it does just that.
Finally, Labree comments on the need for doctoral students to be able to engage in a variety of methods in order for their research to approach the complex questions in the field of education. Throughout this year I have gradually learned the importance of this statement and my own need to learn more about mixed methods approaches to research.
Virginia here.
ReplyDeleteI entered this program straight from the P12 world where I taught K & 1st for seven years. So, I read this article from a teacher perspective. I am fully aware of the shift from practitioner to scholar in a doctoral program in education, as that is something I have grappled with this past year. I agree that teachers and scholars approach problems differently and likely have opposing worldviews. However, I must disagree with the majority of Labaree’s rant on the difficulty of the transition. Coming into the program I knew what I was getting myself into. I entered this program because I was ready and eager to become a scholar. Reflecting on our conversation the first day of why we are here and in this program. I heard most people say they want to satisfy their intellectual curiosity by asking questions and discovering answers. This was also one of my reasons for enrolling. I realized I was confined in my classroom and wanted the opportunity to look at the educational system as a whole to better understand the problems I faced as a classroom teacher. I certainly cannot speak for all educational research programs, but so far my professors at VCU value the work of teachers and have been upfront about the realities of the world of academia. Instead of focusing entirely on the divide between practitioners and researchers, I prefer Bryk’s suggestion that “calls on both to work together as ‘improvers’” (p. 475). Bryk closely examines the problem and offers a way to move forward with his “Improvement Paradigm” unlike Labaree who instead spends much of his article discussing the chasm between the two.
Cassandra
ReplyDeleteFor the most part, I agree with Labaree. As a 20+ year educator, I absolutely live in the two worlds and often refer to my career as my past life as besides my last week with MERC, I have not found that my career has been valuable to the doctoral program even though I still have to remain licensed and credentialed for work outside of the University. I think that doctoral scholarship requires normative thinking that can be a challenge for students recently out of the field as this time last year I was overseeing a testing program and closing down school for the year. I find that it is not so much the thought processes, but the lack of action towards problems identified which Laberee mentions in the article.
I do however disagree with his assertion that former teachers find the scholarly approach to education cold and impersonal and that they frequently hang back from embracing the intellectual skills that they need in order to become educational scholars. One of the articles referred to teachers as referring back to their own experiences without research. This is a point where I would question the researcher on this which he adds is his own experience. Educators are oftentimes lifelong learners as reflected in Labaree's article referring many times to teachers who are in doctoral programs in the evening after school. I think Mutter did a better job by saying that it is the transition between personal, normative, and experiential thinking to an intellectual, analytical and theoretical approach. This definition embraces both types of thinking whereas Laberee appeared to value one type of thinking more than the other. It is simply a different way of looking at an issue and understanding not just the problem and solution, but understanding the background and theory of the problem as well as the pervasiveness of the problem. This thought pattern implies that you can take a problem you noticed as a teacher and dig deeper into it as opposed to abandoning your thought processes once you begin the doctoral program.
Josh here:
ReplyDeleteLabaree presents teacher-practitioner and educational researcher as dichotomy between the normative and the analytical. Both he and Richardson pose the challenge of education Ph.D. programs role in transforming students’ practical knowledge into formal knowledge. However, there is a fatal flaw is Labaree’s logic in the argument that teachers are by nature normative in their professional perspectives, to which he draws a contrast with not only academics, but also lawyers, doctors, and accountants. He argues that while the work of the latter are shaped by the desires of their clients, students have no volition in choosing either the outcomes or methods of the services they receive. Labaree states, “but teachers are in the business of instilling behaviors and skills and knowledge in students who do not ask for this intervention in their lives and who are considered too young to make that kind of choice anyway” (p. 17). However, his analysis of teacher draws from an antiquated pre-accountability model of education. Currently, teachers have no more liberty to bend content, curriculum, and (increasingly) methods of their craft toward their own normative viewpoints than a brain surgeon would to perform an ad hoc lobotomy to a patient under anesthesia. Of course, this is not to deny the existence of a definitive normative framework pervading public education. However, the mechanism of norming itself (at least until the Trump/Devos administration have their way) is not in the hands of teacher-practitioners.
Melissa Cuba
ReplyDeleteI enjoy reading Labaree’s work, especially his ideas around the purpose of education. However, I have to push back on his claims that challenge the legitimacy of teacher training and also the idea that teachers are not researchers. You can have both, a teacher researcher depending on their role and interests. Action research is research and so are many other forms of data collection that teachers need to document, record, and analyze. I took a role that did not require me to delve into special education research and psychological assessments, but I did and I was trained in using some of them because I wanted to understand them and how they were biased towards English learners. Generalizing groups made me question Labaree’s own professional experience, none of which I found involved teaching in the K-12 setting. I do agree that there are differences in worldviews about practice and research, and how we must learn to straddle both to be effective educational researchers.
Morgan L. DeBusk-Lane
ReplyDeleteLabaree’s article presents what appears to be two roles that, like Melissa explained, are mutually exclusive. Statements that push to explicitly expose disparities or differences between researchers and practitioners seem logical, but only up to the point that they are actually used. That is, why not value everyone for their differences or what they may, supposing their background, bring to the fight for a better education system or area of research? I, personally, see no harm in having both full researchers mixed with teachers that can, in a collective sense, work together to explain phenomenon. Perhaps I’m naive, but to be in an educational doctoral program suggests that you care and suggests that you are, like most, working towards something that matters, something more pragmatic, useful, and something that can change lives.
Although I believe there is often a “clash” between teachers and non-teachers in education doctoral programs, the clash is often one that is mutually respected. In other words, teachers bring a lot to the table in the form of experience, whereas non-teachers may bring various other useful attributes.
I highly value the teachers for whom I’m worked closely with and are presently in my cohort. I also struggle, somewhat in reverse to Labaree, to be more teacher minded, because I do not have K-12 experience. Studying education, at least in my view, demands acknowledging the classroom, teachers, and whole student experience. Although I study primarily cognition, it is often nothing to explaining it without understanding what teachers have seen and understand intuitively. On the flip side, I believe that to be a researcher (not just an educational researcher) entails many basic research skills that should be ubiquitous in doctoral programs. Regardless, mixing the two, skills and teacher experience, is what makes research teams powerful. As Labaree stated, "...carrying out credible research in education is particularly difficult."
I do, however, agree that much can be lost in or desired in preparing educational researchers. I can see, even from my infantile perspective, that it is extremely easy to miss the mark, focus only on skills, or context, in the making of educational researchers. That is not to say institutions much choose, but that they have to be markedly tactful and strategic to mesh both types of student into someone that can respect others' opinions and acquire the needed skills to best conduct research.
The piece that jumped out to me is where there is discussion about maturity of education doc students. My initial thoughts were that maybe that is regional... Potentially in certain areas of the country, people are older - or in certain programs older students are recruited. (For example the Ed.D program I referenced in my other post)
ReplyDeleteIn his argument, Labaree says that in our realm, students, in general, are older as they spend time in the P12 setting before they go into the graduate program. I believe he said the average age is 35. Being close to that, I feel that a lot of the people I work with are in a younger age group and I am in a cohort with people from nine different universities across the country. Other disciplines do go more directly from undergrad, but I don't feel there is as much of the time spend in practice as he claims.
Hannah Sions
ReplyDeleteWhat I primarily disagreed with in the article is the language that Labaree used to create the distinction between practitioners (teachers) and academics. At the end of the article, he concludes that the two must work together to best serve education, but his language is not supportive of such a relationship. The way he creates a binary between the two sections perpetuates a hierarchy which values the perspective of the academic versus the classroom teacher. Moreover, I do not think that he necessarily valued the personal narratives of educators and oversimplified the personal perspective as bias instead of recognizing that personal narratives help provide a more complete picture of the challenges that everyday educators face.
I do agree with Labaree that educators and academics must work together to attempt to tackle the shortcomings in education, but to do so, we must respect the voices of all in the group: educators, academics *and* students. To do so, our language that we use is imperative as it sets the tone for how we value our peers as well as what we believe our role is in the team.
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DeleteI agree with Hannah about the importance of the use of language and the consequences of language usage. Labaree (2003) writes:
DeleteA university faculty position gives professors the time and space to do research, sets expectations for the frequency and quality of research output, and enforces these expectations with pay and promotion incentives. None of these conditions is present in the position of the classroom teacher. The job is to teach the required curriculum to the assigned students at an appropriate level of effectiveness, and this leaves no time for carrying out research. Under these circumstances, teachers can do research only if they add it on top of their existing work, which would place an unfair burden on them because of the heavy load they already bear, or if they do research at the expense of their teaching duties, which would unfairly deprive their students educationally. Realistically, then, moral and occupational constraints limit the time and intellectual effort that teachers can devote to research (18).
These claims may not hold as strongly in the field of art education. A classroom art teacher can play a significant role in art educational research. Many of the presentations at the National Art Education Association (NAEA) and Virginia Art Education Association (VAEA) conferences were demonstrations of practice, the presenters modeled a classroom artmaking activity and the attendees left with a physical art object. One might claim that research and experimentation occurred during these professional development sessions resulting in an art education research product. All of the sessions at the Central Region (CRVAEA) conference held here in Richmond at Franklin Terrace were instructional modeling or otherwise creative demonstrations. Classroom art teachers can realistically have their students work authentically to the point that their actions are in many ways indistinguishable from professional artists. Students can do studio work, create an art object, and then display it in a show, located at the school or another public place such as a library or gallery. This work can accomplish multiple goals simultaneously such as student interdisciplinary content acquisition, and social critique by or political empowerment of participants, in addition to an art spectacle.
University faculty, particularly those working in some disciplines specific to art education, such as arts-based educational research (ABER) could find that their professional responsibilities inhibit their research goals. Success with a tenure track position will likely require numerous publications which will require a significant amount of writing. Researchers may find that they are forced to work in methodologies contrary to their research goals in order to have success with publication, for example when a journal favors empirical observation and quantitative data. I don’t think this is an insurmountable obstacle; one might publish a book on instructional methodology with documentation of student work, or a research article concerning case studies. If one is a practicing artist, administrative responsibilities or bureaucratic hoops to jump through might be a source of constant irritation. One might be provoked to pursue work as a professor in an art studio department if one feels sufficiently inhibited, even though these positions, also rare, supposedly or apparently require an M.F.A. as a terminal degree. So, there are counterarguments to be made here.
Michael Here:
ReplyDeleteI know I am late in posting, but I figured I chime in about the last thing we didn’t get to discuss in class which was the difference between “hard and soft” and “pure and applied”. On first blush, the descriptors denote a negative connotation as educational research is described as being soft and applied. Linguistically using ‘weak’ descriptive words for educational research ties it to ‘weak’ connotation; it also creates a binary system where if educational research than what is hard or pure, also the opposite of pure is something negative. All this is of course implicit, but it influences the way in which we view the importance of educational research within society.
Moving away from the simple linguistic implications of “soft” and “applied”, I would also like to point to the fact Labaree never sees educational research as rigorous, or offers ways in which it could be rigorous. In class, Morgan rightly, I believe, to the importance and rigor of mixed methodological research as a way to fill in the gaps both qualitative and quantitative research produce. The fact a PhD in education allows for a student to look broadly at educational institutions is a strength, and is not weakness. We are afforded multiple lens while many other disciplines are confined to a few specific.