Practitioner Research

Convenor

Brian Wakeman

brianwakeman@yahoo.co.uk

Description

This SIG focuses upon issues arising from carrying out, supporting others in carrying out, and theorising about, practitioner research.

§§ It will have a role in promoting the publication and dissemination of practitioner research studies and studies about methodological approaches to practitioner research.

§§ It will bring together those with a special interest in all those (closely related) methodologies in which research is an integral part of practice: e.g. action research, teacher research, evidence-based practice, research into personal and professional change, and research in the developmental / critical paradigm.

Practice is very broadly defined as any form of professional work or community activity or individual endeavour in which action is informed by values, beliefs and experience.

Research in this context is defined as any form of systematic enquiry whose design, methods, analysis and interpretation are open to peer review.

Aims of the SIG:

1. To contribute to the generation of theory, knowledge and expertise about practitioner research and the exploration of different purposes and conceptualisations of 'practitioner research'.

2. To provide 'critical friendship' to BERA members and others engaged in practitioner research with the intention, inter alia, of establishing broadly agreed 'fitness for purpose' quality criteria for such research.

3. To promote the principle of a spectrum of educational research that will enable stronger links to be established and sustained between small-scale practitioner research, larger-scale academic research and local and national decision-making.

4. To play a role in the development of national policies for practitioner research through active engagement with policy makers and agencies leading this work in teaching and other professions. (For example in the UK. the General Teaching Councils of England and Scotland and the National College for School Leadership.)

5. To establish links with the Collaborative Action Research Network, the National Teacher Research Panel, the Royal College of Nursing Research Society and other regional, national and international bodies that have a leadership role in practitioner research.

6. To give prominence to practitioner research within BERA's activities, through contributing articles etc to Research Intelligence and BERJ, and leading symposia at the annual conference.

Convenor

Bridget Somekh, Institute of Education, Manchester Metropolitan University, 799 Wilmslow Road, Didsburv, Manchester M20 2RR < b.somekh@mmu.ac.uk>