Qualitative Research in Education in Canada

The new traditions that seek to broaden the focus of work with teachers ranges from life history and biographical studies (Goodson 1981, 1988 and 1992; Goodson and Walker, 1991) to collaborative biography (Butt, 1982) to teacher’s professional and micropolitical knowledge (Russell and Munby, 1992, Goodson and Cole, 1994). All of these traditions seek to broaden the focus of teacher education and development to include the social and the political, the contextual and the collective.

Let me, by way of exemplification, look at some of the work on life histories that is emerging to show how these broaden the focus of work with teachers. This work takes the “teacher as researcher” and “action research” modes as valuable entry points to work with teachers but moves to broaden the immediate focus on practice and on individual classrooms.

Life history work is par excellence qualitative work. Since the pioneering work of Thomas and Znaniecki (1927) and the other proponents at the Chicago School in the 1920s and 1930s. Thus qualitative legacy has been clear. Subsequent work notably by Dollard (1949) and Klockars (1975) has continued the tradition of American scholarship. In Britain, the work of Paul Thompson (1978), most recently his use of life histories to study ageing has continued to develop and rehabilitate the life history tradition.

In teacher education and teacher development much pioneering work has been undertaken. The work of Woods, Sykes and Measor (1985) is helpful in developing our understanding of teachers careers, as is the study Teachers Lives and Careers which I put together with Stephen Ball (1985). The excellent study by Kathleen Casey of women teachers (1992) sits alongside Sue Middleton’s recent work (1992) as exemplary feminist life history work with teachers. Some of this work is brought together in Studying Teachers’ Lives (1992).

Two factors in the new work use life history methods might be distinguished: the focus and the form of collaboration. The intention of broadening the focus of our work with teachers can be illustrated by pointing to some of the kinds of issues and foci which emerge in life history work. Perhaps most significant is the emergent focus on the teachers career: career stages, development, decisions and perhaps most important of all strategies.

The focus on careers links to the important issue of the life cycle as it relates to teaching. I have argued elsewhere the teachers are uniquely vulnerable to aging: this is because they face each year a new ageless cohort. Each year whilst they age, their classes do not. Therefore they experience ageing in a dual sense - a kind of professional “double whammy”. Teachers therefore are fairly attentive to the life cycle and our work should reflect this, particularly as a context to understand stability and change the classroom practice, to understand resistance and resentment in the face of mandated reform and change. In our work in teacher education and development discussion and study on careers and life cycles provide some vital insight into the distinctive characteristics of teaching.

The teacher’s life style both in and outside school, his/her latent identities and cultures, also impact on views of teaching and on practice. Becker and Geer’s (1971) work on latent identities and cultures provide a valuable theoretical basis (p. 56-60). Life style is of course often a characteristic element in certain cohorts; for instance, work on the generation of sixties teachers would be of great value.

Moreover, the new work on teachers’ lifestyle and careers points to the fact that there are critical incidents in teachers' lives and specifically in their work which may crucially affect perception and practice. Certainly work on beginning teachers has pointed to the importance of certain incidents in moulding teachers’ styles and practices. Lacey’s (1977) work has pointed to the effects on teachers’ strategies and the wide work ranging of Woods, Pollard, Hargreaves and Knowles has further elucidated the relationship to evolving teacher strategies.

Other work on critical incidents in teachers’ lives can confront important themes contextualized within a full life perspective. For instance, Kathleen Casey (1988, 1989) has employed ‘life history narratives’ to understand the phenomenon of teacher drop-out, specifically female and activist teacher drop-out. Her work is exceptionally illuminating of this phenomenon which is currently receiving a great deal of essentially uncritical attention given the problem of teacher shortages. Yet few of the countries at the hard edge of teacher shortages have bothered to fund serious study of teachers’ lives to examine and extend our understanding of the phenomenon of teacher drop-outs. Only such an approach affords the possibility of extending our qualitative understanding.