Who Pays the Piper? Agendas, Priorities and Accountabilities

In Chapter 2 we raised the proliferation over the past decade of the employment of teacher research or practitioner inquiry as a tool of policy implementation, in the UK and Australia in particular, as an issue of concern. In this chapter we build upon these observations and consider the impact of agendas, priorities and accountabilities upon the ways in which teacher professional learning is constructed, and particularly the implementation and outcomes of inquiry-based approaches to teacher professional learning within schools.

Atkinson, in the quotation reproduced above, as well as elsewhere in her recent writing, argues vehemently against the compliance agenda within education, which she sees manifest in examples where particular policy agendas (such as those of efficiency and effectiveness in particular) guide educational practice, rather than sound educational practice and knowledge about education established through research informing and forming educational policy. While for Atkinson the simulacrum of educational practice remains separate from that of research (despite their obvious links), for us the simulacra converge in the context of practitioner research. Furthermore, considering the “epidemic of quality” (Clarke and Newman 1997) which has characterised the past decade and its impact upon education as discussed at length in Chapter 6, the issue of the nature, purpose and conduct of (practitioner) research has a “quality” dimension to it as well. As we have argued elsewhere (Groundwater-Smith and Mockler 2006, 2008), however, and will continue to do here, measures of “quality” in the context of practitioner inquiry are distinct from those which relate to research emanating from the academy.

In this chapter we focus upon issues of purpose, evidence, effect and ethics in relation to inquiry-based professional learning. We aim to extend issues raised in Chapter 2 relating to the “legitimacy” and validity of practitioner inquiry and those raised in Chapter 6 relating to “quality” dimensions of teacher research to examine the confluence of these four areas and their implications for professional learning and education more broadly. Some years ago, one of us, writing with Judyth Sachs, posed a range of critical questions regarding the purpose, processes and outcomes of action research, which speak to the required conditions for good, valid and authentic practitioner inquiry. It was argued that questions of purpose and intent, evidence and process and action and effect could provide a lever for the kinds of accountability and validity structures which would support such practitioner inquiry. The questions posed then were as listed below.