Doing research or being researched? Conceptual and organisational barriers to practice-based research by teachers in the Further, Adult and Vocational Education (FAVE) sector

This paper has emerged from discussions between teacher educators about a recent special section of the British Educational Research Journal on the meaning and merits of ‘close to practice’ educational research, and it aims to contribute to these ongoing debates. It makes use of two personal narrative accounts of practice-based research activities initiated and carried out by teachers within the FAVE sector, to illustrate and exemplify both the benefits and challenges of practice-based research, from the specific perspective of a highly diverse and differentiated sector of education, largely unregulated in relation to teacher certification and teacher development since 2014. The paper’s starting point is Stenhouse’s definition of research as 'systematic self-critical enquiry’, encompassing what Dewey describes as ‘intelligent‘ action, and Schön’s notions of ‘reflective practice’ and ‘artistry’ in the work of professional practitioners. We argue with Stenhouse that there are no reasons in principle why teacher-researchers cannot produce high-quality research; that researchers need to justify themselves to practitioners rather than the reverse; and that worries about ‘bias’ apply just as much to professional researchers as to professional practitioners, especially in the context of regulatory regimes for research such as the Research Excellence Framework. We suggest that this approach constitutes an alternative conception of ‘high-quality’ practice-focused research, far removed from technocratic conceptions which require educational research to be detached from practice and reduced to finding out ‘what works’; and in which the role of teachers is simply to ‘deliver’ the application of its findings. We find support for these arguments in particular from the literature on organisational development and professional learning, which emphasise the continual collective renewal of practice through the development and sharing of expertise, judgement and new knowledge within communicative teams in contexts of trust and respect. We conclude by highlighting key issues faced by contemporary FAVE practitioners working independently of the HE-based research community. These include different perspectives on the purposes of research and the value of research outputs, on what constitutes ‘impact’; and on the highly differentiated frameworks for supporting and rewarding research activity in the HE and the FAVE sectors.