1 Background

In-service teachers (I-STs) engaging in postgraduate studies as part of mid-career professional development enter their studies with various views of educational research. Typically, they see themselves as readers and users of research. In the context of Australia, there has been a significant shift toward a reliance by policymakers on a “what works” agenda. An emphasis from policymakers to fund large-scale meta-analysis studies that translate research into specific classroom implementation strategies has resulted in funding for research being funnelled into establishing independent bodies to translate research into measurable classroom practices. The Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) is a recent example of an organisation established to undertake this work. The organisation aims to generate and present to practitioners and policymakers evidence for implementation. The standards of evidence chosen guide the focus on a narrow interpretation of what constitutes research evidence and emphasise the technical role of research. While there is an acknowledgment of the need for teacher reflection, AERO’s reflection guide begins with the narrow research base identified rather than including the practitioner’s evidence (Australian Education Research Organisation, 2021). Hence, there is no evidence of space for the cultural role of research and practitioner knowledge. This chapter explores the evidence of applying the Research Skills Development (RSD) framework (Willison & O’Regan, 2007) within the publications of I-STs (n = 8) at an Australian regional university. The analysis of the published work of the enrolled I-STs identified their reflexivity at the commencement of a postgraduate program of study to understand the value of the RSD framework to support I-ST empowerment as researchers of classroom practice. As a Teacher Educator (TE), I start with a vignette to bring to life my context, practice, and engagement with I-STs and the RSD Framework and the opportunity for responsive teaching to emerge.

2 Vignette: Master’s Zoom Class

What a difference a semester makes in the life of an I-ST undertaking a postgraduate Master of Education. As I joined my online zoom class for the beginning of semester 2, I found the group discussing publication progress, sharing links and congratulating each other on recent acceptances of published work, and discussing ways to engage with publishers or readers. This scene is a stark contrast to the beginning of semester 1 when the group of I-STs commenced their study. The group are now reflecting on how their initial narrow view of the connection between teaching, practice and research in education expanded as the semester progressed. It is wonderful to take a moment to see the exhilaration and joy as these I-STs engage in these deep and respectful discussions providing support to one another and reflecting on how their engagement and contribution to education discussions make a difference. I have been drawn to the work of Santoro (2019), who challenges the contemporary emphasis in the media on teachers leaving or not being attracted to the profession because they are burnt out. She counters this argument with the view that these teachers are not so much burnt out as frustrated and disillusioned with contemporary education policy and practices. The I-STs in my zoom classroom are the anthesis of these images. They are basking in the exhilaration of engaging in something challenging, staying with it and then sharing their new knowledge with those who might be able to do something about it on Monday. The emphasis in the course is on returning many teachers to why they joined the profession in the first place and their concerns about social justice and making a difference in the lives of young people. We explored the purposes of education (Biesta, 2015) and engaged with the opportunity to explore an educational issue that “focuses on the value of education as part of what it is to live a good life” (Griffiths, 2012, p. 655). The two initial cohorts completing this semester 1 course had expanded their horizons, examined their world and work from different perspectives and often ended up in places that none of us imagined when the semester began.

3 Why RSD in Postgraduate Study

Most I-STs returning to study at the postgraduate level are familiar with undergraduate education that require students to engage with specific readings and complete a range of short-term tasks and assessments on a wide range of topics for each course. The shift in postgraduate level education courses to selecting your area of interest and engaging in a sustained investigation on one topic across various assessment tasks is somewhat unfamiliar. The RSD framework offered a lens to consider the key facets that the course should cover identifying the topic, different ways to find information, developing ways to be reflexive about what and how that information is found, managing the volume of information available on a topic, redefining the topic as understandings emerge, finding a range of different viewpoints synthesising, analysing and evaluating. The RSD facets (Willison, 2018) were helpful as the course learning outcomes and the assessment was designed. Table 4.1 illustrates how course learning outcomes and RSD facets align. The three assessment tasks, explained further in Sect. 4.5, were designed to support my work as a TE to continually divert I-ST attention back to the world and their topic of interest as a means to engage with responsive teaching.

Table 4.1 RSD embedded in course learning outcomes
Full size table

The developmental focus of the RSD’s levels of autonomy across the range from supervisor prescribed research to unbounded research provided in the format of a rubric was counter to my own understanding and experiences of research as cyclic and, at times, two steps forward and three steps back. The levels of autonomy did not help assist me in diverting I-STs attention back to consider what the world they live in might be asking of them as they explored their topic. This aligns with Biesta’s (2017) concern about how temporal developmental scales generate a linear view of education. Hence, my focus is on the facets and their descriptions rather than the levels of autonomy (see McLeod Chap. 7 for a detailed use of levels of autonomy). The RSD framework was embedded in the course structure, and approach only shared in full later in the course when the I-ST had more of an understanding of the cyclic rather than linear nature of education research as part of my own responsive teaching pedagogy. For additional examples of applications of RSD frameworks in the context of postgraduate study see Brown et al., Chap. 3 in this book.

4 Theoretical Framing of Research Thinking

As a university TE working in higher education, one of the challenges I face in my work is considering how postgraduate study by I-STs achieves the purposes of education. It is useful to be guided in my work by the work of Biesta (2017) who suggests that we need to take up the role of teacher and consider both what should be learned and the reason for the learning. Reframing teaching in this way identifies the UE’s central role and rejects the contemporary focus on learners as objects and educational time as linear and developmental. Reframing teaching in this way has also changed my orientation to practice and allowed me to explore the three purposes of education in the first-semester course. Biesta (2020b) suggests the key functions of education include qualifications, socialisation, and subjectification. Qualifications are focussed on knowledge and skills about how the world works, and socialisation examines how cultural practices and traditions influence the (re)presented knowledge and skills. The third function, subjectification, explains the way education restricts or enhances students as individuals. As I wrote the course, I considered carefully how the course might be an opportunity for I-STs to encounter the world and education research and the breadth of the functions of education. Postgraduate I-STs engage in a Master of Education to achieve a qualification they can add to their curriculum vitae. However, I was interested in reflecting on the possibilities of engaging with the course, with me as a teacher and the collective group of I-STs. There could be space for deep engagement with research thinking and even for the possibilities of the socialisation and subjectification functions of education to be encountered. Can teachers in this in-service Master’s in Education context engage more publicly as intellectuals in their work? (Heck, 2022).

Subjectification was the most challenging of these three aspects to consider as the UE. Can I create a context where postgraduate I-STs have the freedom to deeply consider something they are curious about in the world of education? Biesta (2022, p. 91) recently summed up the idea that students might ask, “what the world is asking from me?” When designing this course in 2019, I considered this question by reflecting on my own professional trajectory and the way I had not imagined where I would end up and what I would be doing in the world as a teacher. I reflected on what I might have needed from my TE that would allow me to engage in the world in ways I could not imagine? I now realise I was considering the notion of providing an opportunity for I-STs to ask what the world is asking of them as an educator. An opportunity for I-ST to explore what it means to engage with research as a core part of their work. Teachers who engage with research as part of their postgraduate study have confidence in their research literacy and ability to make critical judgements and decisions as professionals (Woore et al., 2020). What emerges is a different view of professionalism based on the expertise of teacher judgements that I feel underpins responsive teaching.

The challenge as a TE comes as I navigate the disjuncture between my views of education research and teacher professionalism with contemporary policy and practice. The world of schools and teaching has become increasingly focused on a quality and effectiveness agenda privileging research that uses randomised controlled trials. This “what works” agenda has been criticised for bypassing teachers as professionals, at a time when policymakers adopt evidence from selected research for implementation in schools (Krejsler, 2017). My role as the TE is to continue taking up the challenge from Biesta (2022) to be the teacher who re-directs and refocuses the I-STs attention back to their topic and what the world might be asking of them. This included problematising the “what works” agenda and identifying the need to focus more on how we might go about teaching students (Siegel & Biesta, 2021). Hence, it is helpful to consider research in terms of how it might be used or provide meaning for educational practice. Biesta (2016) suggests that research can undertake both a technical and cultural role. Most I-STs are familiar with education research’s technical role in generating knowledge for educational practice. However, educational research’s cultural role in making sense of the world in different ways is a very new concept. Exploring the cultural role means embracing the lack of clarity offered by research as an opportunity to explore different ways to engage with and understand educational practices that underpin responsive teaching.

I grappled with how I would work as a TE to redirect attention to different ways of thinking about education research and considered providing a focus for I-STs that connects back to the core values that drew them to the profession contributing to human good through either social justice or sustainability lens. My re-direction role was taking shape in the form of researcher reflexivity. I found it helpful to consider how I could work with I-STs to understand how their perspectives changed over time (Gerstl-Pepin & Patrizio, 2009). My ongoing work as a TE is to continue the dialogue in the classroom by engaging in questions and redirecting, which underpins my own practice as a responsive teacher. My redirection is often framed by the three considerations suggested by Biesta (2020a), reminding us to consider that education is not certain and continues to be an experiment, that education does have a purpose, and is not focussed only on producing objects but also contributing to human good.

5 Making the Shift to Postgraduate Research

Designing assessment tasks is a requirement for the qualifications component of education to meet university accreditation requirements. Another challenge was the multiple aspects of the university systems that return us as educators to a linear notion of time and a developmental notion of learning, including such rudimentary notions as specified start and finish dates and assessment submission deadlines. A nested assessment design was generated to allow I-STs to cycle back and revisit their research thinking. The final task as a draft publication was generated so that I-STs could review the feedback and then take the work into the world beyond the bounds of the course. An overview of the formative and summative aspects of the three assessment tasks and their connection to the RSD framework provide the context for analysing the final submitted publications analysed in this chapter.

Task 1 focussed on each I-ST thinking about a topic connected to social justice or sustainability in their practice. A formative first assessment item allowed all in the group to discuss and collectively refine the topics for investigation. At this stage of the semester, the work was focused on embarking and clarifying the issues to be investigated, finding information, deciding what would be useful and then managing the arrangement of often a large volume of material. Many I-STs began with a big idea and developed their understandings of a specific topic based on their practice, reading from academic literature, professional readings, policy, and curriculum documents. The summative assessment item for this task was a written description of the contemporary issue and an explanation of the reflexive process used to identify this topic and how the topic connected to social justice or sustainability and education theory.

Task 2 invited I-STs to explore the breadth of research available via university library databases that are often not accessible to I-STs. Building on the work in task 1, I-STs then examine the different types of scholarship and explore additional ways to find, analyse, evaluate, and assess educational research. An annotated bibliography format was selected for this task because it allowed for ongoing and continual refinement of the assessment piece facilitating an iterative rather than a sequential approach. The shift here was to enable I-STs to continue finding and removing items from the annotated list and replacing them quickly. The assessment task was also concerned with developing ways to manage, organise, and evaluate ideas as a researcher when deeply examining a topic. Unlike much undergraduate study, I-STs in this context needed to understand the importance of revisiting and rereading research as a crucial aspect of being a reflexive researcher. The task provided an opportunity for I-ST to rearticulate their refined understanding of the educational issue or topic and how it connected with social justice or sustainability before selecting ten research papers to create an annotated bibliography and another opportunity to define the contemporary issue and its relevance to social justice or sustainability in education.

Task 3 invites I-STs to share their new understandings with an appropriate audience. The professional writing portfolio asked I-STs to consider an audience, a message, and a public way to engage and share their message in the form of a lead or feature article in a professional journal or magazine. The portfolio included both the manuscript and a detailed description of the choice of journal and audience for the message. The published work of the I-STs forms the data set for analysis of the RSD framework in this chapter.

6 Methodology

A qualitative interpretive research design was adopted in this study to explore how the facets of the RSD were evidenced in I-ST professional scholarship. The published work of the 2020 and 2021 I-STs undertaking the Researching Education course was analysed to identify the ways each facet of the RSD was evidenced in the nine published papers. A total of 18 IS-Ts participated in two-course offerings in the first semester of 2020 and 2021, nine I-STs each year. In 2020, 2 I-STs achieved three publications, while in 2021, six I-STs published their work. The nine published papers form the data set for analysis of how the published work evidenced the RSD Framework.

The study generated narrative descriptions of how the I-STs used the six facets of the RSD Framework (Willison & O’Regan, 2018) in their publications. This analysis was achieved through the application of Miles et al. (2020) first and second cycle coding to describe how the publications evidenced I-STs reference or use of the RSD facets. First cycle coding involved identifying the key topics evidenced in the text based on the RSD facets. While the second cycle coding drew together the pattern evidenced across the publications in the form of a narrative description of each RSD facet using evidence from the data to support the emerging patterns and themes identified.

7 Results and Discussion: Researcher Skills in I-ST Publications

The findings and discussion illuminate the evidence of the six facets of the RSD framework using examples from the I-ST publications. I begin with communicating and applying because the data analysed are the published work of the first two cohorts completing the Researching Education course. It is essential to note the iterative, cyclical and overlapping nature of the facets that can be lost in their sequential presentations as findings.

7.1 Communicate and Apply

The nine published papers developed by the cohort of 18 I-STs, who completed the course of study, evidence these teachers’ ability to communicate and apply research that concerns them as classroom teachers. It is helpful to begin with this aspect of research skill development because the papers generated by I-STs form the data set used in this study. These papers represent each I-ST’s ability to communicate with a particular audience about an educational issue or problem. Two groups of issues or problems were the focus of inquiry and publication by the cohort. The first was curriculum and pedagogy, including topics such as access and use of information and communication technology in schools (Cochrane, 2020), mathematics anxiety and pedagogy (Anson, 2021), special education curriculum (Burke, 2021) and student engagement with nature (Poeder, 2021). The second group of topics were focused on teacher wellbeing and support. These contributions examined topics such as teacher resilience and self-efficacy (Greensill, 2020a; Smith, 2021), teacher job satisfaction and work-life balance (Greensill, 2020b; Miller, 2021) and the development of teacher induction programs for alternative school contexts (Andrews, 2021).

There were submissions to three categories of publication: professional association journals, online not for profit newsletters and online commercial publisher newsletters or journals. Each author identified and aligned their message with the audience, the publication aims and their key messages. All publication options did not require authors to pay fees or charges to publish their work. Three of the publications were submitted to professional associations journals. For example: the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia publishes the journal Independence (Andrews, 2021). The Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers launched in 2019 a new journal Australian Mathematics Education Journal (AMEJ) (Anson, 2021). Australian Council for Computers in Education published the Australian Education Computing journal (Cochrane, 2020) (journal publication is currently paused). Typically, these publications are made available to members in print or online and are only accessible via a subscription. Academics edit the mathematics and computing journals as part of their role in teacher professional associations, and the papers in these journals were blind peer-reviewed before publication. These three papers targeted a specific audience, leaders in independent school settings and in the case of mathematics and computing, the target audience of educators and leaders in schools as well as TEs and teacher education students. The evidence provided supported these educators’ decision-making in their day-to-day work deciding on classroom pedagogy, school information and communication policy and developing teacher induction programs.

Three of the publications appear in Teacher Magazine, an online publication produced by the not-for-profit Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). ACER is funded through commissioned services, including educational research, professional development and assessments (Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), 2022). Teacher Magazine has a specific wellbeing section of the online journal; two articles were published in this section of the website (Miller, 2021; Smith, 2021). The third article published in Teacher Magazine was submitted as a reader submission (Poeder, 2021), providing space for teachers and educators to share their work. The Teacher magazine website provides a mechanism for teachers to sign up to receive a teacher bulletin to keep up to date with website content. Information on this website is searchable and freely available. The target audience for these papers was practitioners in the field who are working as teachers to provide support for their reflections on their work-life balance and their classroom pedagogy.

Two different commercial publishers published the final three articles. Two were published as a series of articles on teacher job satisfaction in Education Today published by Minnis journal in a section on school management (Greensill, 2020a, 2020b). The third paper in this group was positioned as an opinion piece in the K-12 version of The Educator Australia, an online publication produced by Mumbrella Publishing (Burke, 2021). Most of these publications are freely available and searchable on the publisher’s website. The publications targeted leaders and those with the option to influence the development of policy and practice concerning special education curriculum and those with the ability to create space for and support teacher satisfaction.

7.2 Embark and Clarify

One of the biggest challenges for the I-STs was identifying and refining a topic of study. The freedom to choose a topic of their interest was a double-edged sword as the I-STs began exploring the literature. The selection of social justice or sustainability in education as a lens to anchor the purpose of the exploration was an essential pedagogical move. Educators as practitioners are problem solvers, and often their immediate response is solution focused. However, in embarking and clarifying a contemporary issue in education we sought to examine and explore a topic and consider what research had to say about it from different angles, perspectives, and worldviews. Hence, the need to move away from our immediate solution focussed response. As an example, an I-ST was concerned about the role of mathematics anxiety and disengagement in her secondary mathematics classroom. The resulting publication identifies the clarified topic she embarked upon as “my learning journey through the literature as I tried to understand mathematics anxiety and related disengagement, and find some suggestions for what I could change in my teaching to support these students so that I could re-engage them with mathematics” (Anson, 2021, p. 12). Miller (2021, p. 2) was concerned about why she and other teachers were “drowning in paperwork” and found “it had never occurred to me how the history of the political influence in education affected us.” These examples illustrate the iterative nature of the embarking and clarifying research thinking as evidenced in the published work and provide a context for the ongoing use by the TE to return the I-STs to the three key questions of education being uncertain, purposeful and contributing to human good (Biesta, 2020a).

7.3 Find and Generate

Finding out rather than moving towards a solution and sitting with the uncertainty was something most I-ST found novel, as their day-to-day work practices do not allow for time for this longer-term engagement. Sitting with the one issue for an extended period of the semester provided these I-ST with the opportunity to reflect on various voices and viewpoints. The sources of material used in the nine publications identified that finding out what to use was drawn from practice and literature. Several publications used stories of personal or classroom practice. For example, Poeder (2021) shared a classroom moment to illuminate and connect classroom practice with the need for young people to connect with nature. These moments were then also connected to policy and academic literature. In contrast, the academic publications used education theory as a frame to examine a topic and then connect this with practice. For example, Cochrane (2020, p. 2) identified the paper “will investigate the digital divide and domains of capital (Bourdieu, 2002) and discuss how these contribute to impact student access to and use of ICT.”

7.4 Evaluate and Reflect

Generating ways and means of evaluating levels of trust and weighing up ideas across the range of perspectives from practice and the literature was a challenge for I-STs as they negotiated the different types of publication options. In the context of the newsletter style commercial publications with limited or no options for referencing required careful consideration. Burke’s (2021) publication in a commercial newsletter was positioned as an opinion piece focussed on the question “what curriculum is appropriate for students at Special School” (p. 2). To evidence the approach used for evaluating and reflecting on this topic, a problem-solving process was articulated. One of the challenges faced for this publication, where no reference list was included, was providing the structure of the argument and incorporating the evidence used during the reflection. This was typically achieved by referring to key authors by name and institution to explain who has been trusted and why in the text. For example: “… Bruce Knight from Central Queensland University considers the onerous task for teachers and schools to implement and differentiate outcomes” (Burke, 2021, p. 4). This contrasted with the opportunity provided in the journal publications to evidence evaluating the literature in more depth with a focus on identifying both the complexity and limitations of research often evidenced by comparison and contrast. For example, “Research identifies a positive impact on academic achievement for disadvantaged students afforded ubiquitous access to appropriate digital technology at home over a period of time. In contrast, advantaged students who already have access to digital technology at home demonstrate a negligible or even negative impact on academic achievement when provided with additional access to digital technology” (Cochrane, 2020, p. 1).

7.5 Organise and Manage

The I-STs began with more short-term notions of engaging with a topic and relied heavily on remembering what they had read recently to generate their responses. Longer term engagement with a topic required a different skill set. Most I-STs were unfamiliar with some of the contemporary electronic tools that can be used to store and manage literature. In our case we used the university supported tool of Endnote to explore how technology could support our management and organisation of what we read and connect it easily to what we write using cite as you write tools. As we progressed throughout the semester our dialogue often shifted to sharing ideas and experiences of what was working and what else might be useful to organise and manage our research thinking. For example, mind mapping of ideas and then generating groups of papers in Endnote on specific topics allowed I-STs to consider the patterns that were emerging in the literature they were reading. This example of pattern identification is evident in the work of Smith (2021) whose literature analysis identified four components of teacher resilience. The four pillars provided the organisational structure for the publication. Similarly, the organisation of a series of publications by Greensill (2020a, 2020b) indicates the ability to group ideas into components to communicate them to the audience of school leaders.

7.6 Analyse and Synthesise

Critically synthesising and creating new knowledge was a skill set shift for most first-time postgraduate I-STs. The I-STs needed to consider their own emerging view based on their analysis of what the research says about their topic. For example, in a publication targeted at independent school leaders a summary of the minimum requirements for an induction program were identified as “a mentoring program, structured contextualised reflective practices, school culture training policy and procedure induction” (Andrews, 2021, p. 29). The paper goes on to explain and justify the literature in these three areas and concludes with a call to action for all school leaders “so, the question is, what does you induction program look like” (p. 30).

8 Conclusions and Implications

I-STs often find engaging with postgraduate study in their first semester a thought-provoking shift because of their contemporary experience in the field focussed on “what works” and their previous undergraduate experiences of university study. The course offered an opportunity to examine research from different viewpoints and consider what that might mean for different ways of reading, doing, and using research. Being given the freedom to choose in the context of postgraduate study is important for I-STs to connect a topic of importance to them and their practice. Choosing to examine a social justice or sustainability issue meant that I-STs often needed to start to think about their issues in different ways beyond their typical practitioner solution focussed approach. My role as the TE was to challenge examine and question the group and develop their own abilities to engage in these dialogues and engage as a responsive teacher. The group developed the ability to be reflexive and often posed questions and participated in redirection with me as the teacher using Biesta’s (2020a) frames of the experimental nature of education, the purposeful nature of education and the possibilities for contributing to human good rather than production.

At the conclusion of the course all I-STs were encouraged to submit their work for publication and to share with group their experiences of the publication process. Some I-STs did not wish to publish their work. However, others submitted and did not hear any response while others are currently undertaking revisions or redefining their work and audience. This ongoing process of publication, review, and reflection outside of the bounds of the formal course of study has attended to my concerns about the temporal nature of education and its impact on I-ST engagement with the cyclical nature of education research. The final assessment task design as a draft, with feedback provided for response, was left incomplete on purpose and provided I-STs the freedom to choose how they engage with their ongoing research thinking. This attested to the notion that the course sought to position professional scholarly writing as a process of production and communication. A further example of I-ST scholarly publication is provided in this book by Brown et al. (Chap. 3). Further research could examine the ways and means to evidence I-ST engagement with the process of communication as process rather than product in the context of postgraduate study.

The course sought to explore a more balanced means of contributing to Biesta’s three purposes of education qualifications, socialisation, and subjectification. In this context, participation in the course allowed each person to achieve credit for a required course in their program of study. I also contend that there were opportunities to reflexively engage as an I-ST and researcher to examine research as a social practice in the context of education and engage with the socialisation purpose of education. This aspect also included an examination of both the technical and cultural roles of education research and required responsive teaching pedagogy. The subjectification aspect was something that emerged for some members of the group as they found their voice and engaged with the world in a way that allowed them to be the kind of educator they wanted to be, as illustrated in the work of Miller (2021). These are moments not planned or designed but opportunity that emerge with openness. Hence, I resolve those moments of subjectification can emerge, but I doubt they can be created, and provide an opportunity for further educational research and its role in enabling responsive teaching.

The work of using the RSD framework with postgraduate I-STs required further exploration. Further research can examine the way the development of research skills might operate across a range of disciplines. In my own work, as the first cohort of I-ST reaches the conclusions of the postgraduate study I am keen to engage in some further research that explores the way they have used their newly acquired research skills in their work as a teacher both in terms of their practice and their work with students in the classroom. In addition, some further work is required to examine ways to represent the RSD framework in ways to privilege the cyclical nature of research thinking and overcome the temporal and development challenges identified. The application of the RSD framework provides a means for teachers to be reflective and responsive as they engage with the education as a human event that requires research thinking that explores both the technical and cultural aspects of the practice of teaching.