A response to Marshall & Newton (2000)

This article sets up a binary opposition between “conventional” research and design research, but it does so by identifying conventional research with scientific inquiry. If scientific means systematic, that is okay – but surely design research can be systematic too. Instead I suspect that “scientific” as used by Marshall and Newton refers mainly to positivist methodologies. The authors use these words and terms to refer to conventional or scientific research: “explicit knowledge”, “abstract theories”, “generalised”, “tested”, “objective”, “detached”. I think many researchers working in the qualitative tradition would have difficulty accepting some or all of these as applicable to their work. As one moves to interpretive, narrative, feminist and post-structuralist approaches, these terms apply less and less. Of course, these are not all yet considered “conventional”, but they are also not uncommon or unusual and they have taken up occupancy within the academy. While the design scholarship described by Marshall and Newton does create a new way of looking at all types of research, it is equally useful to look at other traditions of research in terms of what they can offer design research and practice-based research.

What good research “looks like” (Yates 2001) becomes an issue for practice-based research. Alternative dissertation forms, which could be generally described as (something) plus exegesis, allow for the artefact or “piece of practice” to remain as it is and not be “devalued” – an exegesis is not merely a “context paper” and in most cases could not sensibly stand alone from the practice-piece/artefact.

Yates, L. 2001, What does good educational research look like? (Be careful - it’s a trick question!), Paper presented to University of Tasmania Faculty of Education Research Conference, 14 July 2001.

Some responses to the discussion questions at Mapping the Territory: Practice as Research in Teaching and Learning

How useful is it to make distinctions between practice and research? Perhaps thinking about this is useful because it forces us to unpack terms with which we have become so familiar that we unquestioningly assume their (shared) meaning. For example, the academy tends to hold “research” as more valuable than “practice”. Research is a search for new knowledge and theory, while practical work (application) is often seen as the outcome of research – as an outcome it is useful because it helps justify the research itself. Standing alone, separate from research, it is seen to have less value.

Practice can, clearly, exist without research. This would be typical anytime something is done in a routine or formulaic way. But the instant a practitioner questions an aspect of practice, or reflects on practice, a research process, an inquiry, begins. It continues if the practitioner then acts on this reflection, searching for improvement, or even testing the worth or usefulness of current practice.

Taking Stenhouse as a reference – viewing research as systematic inquiry made public – for practice to be research the practitioner’s reflection process must be systematic in some way and then documented for publication (and examination). Thus, the practice outcome needs to be accompanied by this extra layer for “practice as research” to be research.

I’m just starting an online module on practice-led research, to explore alternative thesis forms (including different types of narrative writing) and to look at ways of using audio-visual content/practice as research – both process and product.

I have to do some writing activities as part of the module. I’m going to put them here, because this blog was intended to be for writing and research. And it just seems like a good idea right now.