Going global with action research

Congratulations to Kate Giles (teacher in Pymble’s Junior School) who has been selected as a GARC Fellow 2023/24. The Global Action Research Collaborative Fellowship (GARC) is an initiative of the  International Coalition of Girls’ Schools and Kate is Pymble‘s second Fellow.

Kate’s action research project, under the theme: Engaging the power of many voices: leveraging girls’ collaborative spirit towards courageous and joyful learning, will explore how to create environments both at school and at home for students to be able to collaborate and work in partnership with their families and educators. This prestigious 18-month research project represents an investment in our staff and in the wider girls’ schools commitment to lifting girls’ educational experiences.

Kate writes:

In my research for the GARC fellowship, I have been learning about action research and how I can improve my own practice and influence the practice of the teachers I work with, particularly around collaboration and partnership with parents. I am passionate about authentic three-way collaboration between parents, students and teachers and interested to investigate how to best do this in the context of Pymble.

Kate’s work is based in the following areas of literature which reflect her starting point. But, as action researchers will know, projects develop through time and so we look forward to further updates along the way.

Insights into literature:

Griffiths, A.-J., Alsip, J., Hart, S. R., Round, R. L., & Brady, J. (2021). Together We Can Do So Much: A Systematic Review and Conceptual Framework of Collaboration in Schools. Canadian Journal of School Psychology, 36(1), 59–85. https://doi.org/10.1177/0829573520915368

This article defines and explores collaboration, particularly collaboration between schools and parents, as an important part of ensuring equal educational opportunities for all students. It discusses the benefits of collaboration, including more effective communication, more sustainable relationships and goals being reached. The authors also conducted a review of research literature, which they stated was necessary given ‘collaboration between schools and families can lead to positive learning outcomes for students’ (p.60), referencing authors such as Joyce Epstein (2001), a pre-eminent researcher in this area. Of note, the article goes on to explore how this collaboration is not a simple process and can be challenging in the complex setting that is a school with the most difficult being the definition of collaboration. This is important in a school context and it will be essential to my research to first ensure that there is agreement between parents and the school about how collaboration is defined and what it does and does not include.

When thinking about my research, I realise how the eight constructs identified in this article as leading to collaboration (open communication, trust, mutual respect, shared goals, common understanding, shared responsibility, active participation and shared decision making) will need to be explicitly defined when analysing any three-way collaboration between teacher, students and their parents. However, the authors actually encourage caution when interpreting their own review given the inconsistencies of terminology used across the research articles they reviewed. The authors created a collaboration checklist (figure 3) to aid school teams which may be useful when exploring how best to facilitate collaboration between various stakeholders. This may be something I could seek to use to create my own checklist when investigating teacher-student-parent-collaboration further.

A final question that the article raised for me was around the measurement of collaboration (and its impact) and how this is most effectively done. This is something that will need further exploration and review in my research.

Solone, C.J., Thornton, B.E., Chiappe, J.C., Perez, C., Rearick, M.K., & Falvey, M.A. (2020). Creating Collaborative Schools in the United States: A Review of Best Practices. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 12, 283-292.

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1242461.pdf

Similar to the above article, the authors of this article also seek to define and explore how collaboration is essential for the creation of inclusive and effective schools where teachers and parents work together to achieve common goals or a shared vision for students with disabilities. Interestingly, when defining collaboration, the authors indicated that it does not mean avoiding confrontation, but instead provides a vehicle for discussion of differences and difficult concepts and building upon these different perspectives. This resonated with me as often in schools, parent- teacher-student partnerships have tried to reach consensus and essentially avoid any disagreement, where here, the authors were indicating that collaboration meant it was necessary to face and address any disagreements and difficulties together.

In this article, the characteristics of collaboration were also defined, where at a minimum it is people working together to reach a common goal- in the case of education to support and educate students. The authors define similar characteristics as the above article (parity, mutual goals, shared responsibility) but also included shared resources, where sharing time, knowledge and materials enhance collaboration; and synergy, where the group working together is more impactful than any of the individuals alone. The article discusses different collaboration within an educational setting, including collaboration between students (both with and without disabilities) and collaboration between schools and parents and carers.

I was particularly interested in reading about parent and teacher collaboration which is the intended focus of my research. Here the authors discuss the best practice for family-educator collaboration, specifically communication, equity, trust and respect (p.287). I was interested to see the importance of equity, where all voices and opinions are valued, as in my experience this is not always the case.