Wallach, Lesh, Chabot, Shosh, and McNiff

Turning Conflicting Values Into Virtues When Conducting Action Research in an Urban Pennsylvania School System

Michelle Wallach, Mark Lesh, and Sandra Chabot, Bethlehem Area School District, PA, USA; Dr. Joseph Shosh, Morvian College, PA, USA; Dr. Jean McNiff, York St John University, York, England

Abstract

Teachers conducting action research within Moravian College’s graduate education program draft a researcher stance statement in which they articulate their epistemological and ontological beliefs before gathering and analyzing data to improve teaching and learning in their classrooms. Through the evolving understanding of professional practice, cherished personal values may come into direct conflict with the values sanctioned by various school reform agendas. In this symposium, we’ll explore how and why values conflicts lead to important new learning and more virtuous classroom actions as teachers examine how their analysis of data through Deweyan, Freirean, Vygotskian, and other lenses helped them to transform classroom practice. Participants in the seminar will share key examples of values conflicts within their teacher action research studies and will respond in real-time to digital video clips of themselves discussing their own awareness of values conflicts and how these conflicts both supported and hindered their new understandings. Jean McNiff will serve as discussant, exploring how new knowledge emerged through value conflicts.

Keywords

Values; Urban Education; Community; Inquiry; Dialogic Approaches