10.00

Coffee

10.20

Welcome and introduction to the Day - Fran Payne
Introduction to ‘Parking lot’ activity  - Dean Robson

10.30-12.00

Keynote address and group-related activity

‘Teasing out Terminology: paradigms, epistemologies, methodology and all that’

Professor Morwenna Griffiths, University of Edinburgh

12.00-12.45

Lunch

12.45-13.30

Staff presentations

Panel 1 (15 minutes ‘presentation’ + questions and discussion)

Karen McArdle

Laura Colucci-Gray

Facilitator: Professor Martyn Rouse

13.30-13.45

Break

13.45-14.45

Staff presentations

Panel 2 (15 minutes ‘presentation’ + questions and discussion)

Graeme Nixon 

Edward Sosu

Miriama Young

Facilitator:  Professor Martyn Rouse

14.45-15.00

Summing up and review of ‘parking lot’ activity

Karen McArdle

Critically Reflexive Action Research in a post-positivist paradigm

Today I shall be talking about research I conduct in a post-positivist paradigm.  I use the term positivist in a broad sense to cover traditional approaches to social science in a way that is derived from the natural sciences.

My research is based on assumptions:
Research is commonly associated with CPD in professions; research in any form does not appear to be associated with lower status (other) occupations;

Perhaps other occupations have different ideas about how practice knowledge is best developed; perhaps these ideas are relevant to CPD in the profession I work with;
OR
Perhaps, if inquiry is not represented perhaps it could or should be; perhaps we should question its inclusion for professions.  I am concerned about the POWER base in relation to the Researcher and the Researched.  Poor people never research poverty.  My choices about research that are linked to power dimensions are:
Engage people as co-inquirers;
I give as well as take – dynamic dialogues;
I do not sample – each person is an individual;
Different quality criteria;
Reflexivity is important;

I am passionate about my research as it is founded on my values.  As action research is blends the boundaries between my research practice and my teaching.

Laura Colucci-Gray

Moving from research methods, to methodologies and paradigms by embedding reflection in the research process: the experience of doing inquiry through role-play in the classroom

This talk is about the process of progressive formulation of a paradigm through personal reflection undertaken through the research process.  The research involved the trialling of a role-play learning and teaching unit in a secondary science classroom in England.

The experience led me to conclude that paradigms are not out there to be picked and chosen, but the research activity and paradigm are mutually constructed in a recursive process of thinking and reflection. By means of reflection I began to become increasingly aware of the thought processes, personal values, ways of looking at the students and the classroom context.  The formulation of the paradigm occurred alongside an increasing awareness of the classroom as a complex and dynamic interplay of developing identities, relationships and discourses and I grasped the significance of doing role-playing as opposed to other activities.

Two implications followed. First, I became increasingly aware of how role-play could be more than just a teaching method to encapsulate a methodology, a way of understanding the classroom and reading its dynamics. Second, the research methods could be used strategically and creatively to reveal aspects of the unfolding process of learning.  

Hence in the context of the research I came across the evolutionary dimension of the paradigm as something which is rooted into an experience and develops in increasing layers of complexity over time, as new theories and reflections are brought together to shed light on observations and experiences. 

Graeme Nixon

Finding a way through the paradigm maze

In this presentation I hope to outline the evolution of my research and possibly identify dominant paradigms that apply to it. My PHD concerns the emergence of Philosophy and Philosophical approaches within Scottish secondary school Religious Education. As a recent teacher of Religious Education I commenced this research (and indeed my career at the University) very much as “passionate participant” (Toma 2000), seeking public recognition for the worth and currency of Philosophical over theological and confessional approaches. This mission, rather than any conscious commitment to a research paradigm, has been the primary driver in my research. In this respect the identification of research paradigms has been somewhat retrospective. This picture is further complicated by the fact that my research is itself about tension between paradigms and an ontological conflict between faith and reason in the classroom.

No one paradigm can be identified as dominating my research. Aspects of positivist, interpretivist, transformative and pragmatic paradigms are all present in my methods and approaches. In the presentation I hope to show how such a multiplicity sits within the research project, using examples from data gathered to date, as well as analysis of documents and interviews conducted.

At this stage I wish (rather tentatively!) to propose a paradigm that may accommodate such multiplicity as can loosely be described as ‘Buddhist’. A Buddhist paradigm reconciles many of the apparent dichotomies between paradigms. It can have elements of positivism and interpretivism; it is emancipatory; it is pluralistic; it is pragmatic in that it is problem rather than truth centred; it reconciles determinism and free will, and is consonant with science.

Edward Sosu

Understanding teachers’ commitment: A social psychological perspective

This study investigated the social psychological factors that determine why some teachers are more committed to teaching certain subjects (in this case environmental education) than others. Although a mixed methods approach was used in the entire study, the presentation will focus on the elements influenced by the so called positivist research paradigm. An attempt will be made to trace the significant influences that shaped the formulation of research questions, methodological considerations and subsequent conclusions drawn from the findings. The advantages and possible pitfalls of the approach will also be elucidated. In the quantitative phase, a revised model of environmental education commitment (MEEC; Shuman & Ham, 1997) which is largely based on the theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1991) was explored using structural equation modelling techniques. The hypothesised model was tested to identify the significant determinants of commitment, relationship between these determinants and the utility of the model in explaining teachers’ commitment to environmental education.

Miriama Young

Singing the Body Electric: The Recorded Voice, the Mediated Body

My recently completed Ph.D. dissertation examined the human voice, the body, and the sound of its transformation through technology. The text visits works from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in which the voice is transformed by the machine - including the sampled, mechanical, and the technologically modified voice, as well as instances of human mimicry of the machine.

This presentation will focus on all stages of the process of conducting the research and writing for the dissertation, and the current process by which the dissertation is being transformed into a manuscript for publication.