11 Tensions in collaborative research with teachers in the context of language education policy change in Finland
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Karita Mård-Miettinen
Abstract
Schools in Finland faced a major policy change in language education at the beginning of 2020, when the age to start learning the first foreign or second domestic language was lowered from third to first grade in primary school. With the aim of examining how practices are formed in this new situation, we planned a case study with one school. The outbreak of Covid-19 forced us to change our original plans in order to maintain contact with the school, and our perspective on the emerging new practices was broadened by including the language teachers’ collegial network in online interviews. In this chapter, we analyse these interview data. By paying specific attention to the researcher-practitioner collaboration as it was realized in the interviews, we identified different strategies that the teachers and researchers used in points where tensions in the interviews seemed to arise.
Abstract
Schools in Finland faced a major policy change in language education at the beginning of 2020, when the age to start learning the first foreign or second domestic language was lowered from third to first grade in primary school. With the aim of examining how practices are formed in this new situation, we planned a case study with one school. The outbreak of Covid-19 forced us to change our original plans in order to maintain contact with the school, and our perspective on the emerging new practices was broadened by including the language teachers’ collegial network in online interviews. In this chapter, we analyse these interview data. By paying specific attention to the researcher-practitioner collaboration as it was realized in the interviews, we identified different strategies that the teachers and researchers used in points where tensions in the interviews seemed to arise.
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Preface V
- Contents VII
- Introduction 1
-
Part 1: Addressing challenges in the classroom
- 1 Combining theory and practice: Findings from a collaborative project on oral task design 11
- 2 Improving second language education through Intensive German Weeks: An action research collaboration between teachers and researchers 29
- 3 An affordance-focused approach for working with authentic materials: A practice–research initiative 41
-
Part 2: Learners as collaborative agents
- 4 Reciprocity and challenge in researcher–student collaborative labour in a multilingual secondary school 59
- 5 The organic processes of learning in an exploratory collaborative action research (CAR) project 71
- 6 Managing linguistic diversity in an Irish primary school: Reciprocal collaboration in practice and research 85
-
Part 3: Collaborative research in professional development
- 7 Collaboration, reciprocity, and challenges: Professional development-in-practice 101
- 8 Teachers and researchers collaborating to develop effective language education: The project Observing Interlanguage 119
- 9 Learning to become an English teacher: Collaboration, context and the self 133
-
Part 4: Collaborative research and national policy
- 10 From research to a national curriculum: The case of a lexical syllabus 151
- 11 Tensions in collaborative research with teachers in the context of language education policy change in Finland 165
- 12 National graduate schools in language education: Dimensions of collaboration and reciprocity 179
-
Afterword
- 13 An ethical perspective on collaborative research 197
- Contributors 207
- Index 211
Kapitel in diesem Buch
- Frontmatter I
- Preface V
- Contents VII
- Introduction 1
-
Part 1: Addressing challenges in the classroom
- 1 Combining theory and practice: Findings from a collaborative project on oral task design 11
- 2 Improving second language education through Intensive German Weeks: An action research collaboration between teachers and researchers 29
- 3 An affordance-focused approach for working with authentic materials: A practice–research initiative 41
-
Part 2: Learners as collaborative agents
- 4 Reciprocity and challenge in researcher–student collaborative labour in a multilingual secondary school 59
- 5 The organic processes of learning in an exploratory collaborative action research (CAR) project 71
- 6 Managing linguistic diversity in an Irish primary school: Reciprocal collaboration in practice and research 85
-
Part 3: Collaborative research in professional development
- 7 Collaboration, reciprocity, and challenges: Professional development-in-practice 101
- 8 Teachers and researchers collaborating to develop effective language education: The project Observing Interlanguage 119
- 9 Learning to become an English teacher: Collaboration, context and the self 133
-
Part 4: Collaborative research and national policy
- 10 From research to a national curriculum: The case of a lexical syllabus 151
- 11 Tensions in collaborative research with teachers in the context of language education policy change in Finland 165
- 12 National graduate schools in language education: Dimensions of collaboration and reciprocity 179
-
Afterword
- 13 An ethical perspective on collaborative research 197
- Contributors 207
- Index 211
