Developing a Research Culture: a Case Study from Iceland

M. Allyson Macdonald Contradictions in educational research:
NERA, March 2004 a case study from teacher education in Iceland

Traditions and transitions in teacher education

Contradictions in educational research:

a case study from teacher education in Iceland

M. Allyson Macdonald

Iceland University of Education

March 2004

A paper presented at the 32nd NERA Annual Congress

Held in Reykjavík, Iceland

11th – 13th March 2004

Research Institute

Iceland University of Education

Reykjavík, Iceland

OVERVIEW

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION

Theoretical approach

Research culture

Activity theory

Sources and perspectives

THE ACTIVITY SYSTEM

Analysis of an activity system

Necessary conditions for using activity theory

Summary of the IUE activity system

SOME CONTRADICTIONS

The context for learning and research

The mediation of knowledge – what counts as learning and research

Research status or monthly income as motivating contextual factors

Objects and outcomes – what counts as research

Agency and collegiality in the community

The influence of external context: national policy and competition for resources

EMERGING ISSUES

Contextual issues

Strategic issues

conclusions

REFERENCES

NOTES

Contradictions in educational research:

a case study from teacher education in Iceland

M. Allyson Macdonald

March 2004

ABSTRACT

Cultural-historical activity theory will be used to identify primary and more particularly secondary contradictions in the evolving research culture in a teacher education university. Contradictions will be explored in components of the activity system such as the roles in which university staff engage, the rules by which research is carried out and the mediating tools used in research. The analysis will consider changes over the last four to five years within the Icelandic context. Three issues are identified as being important to the evolution of the culture: the nature of the support given to academic staff within the university environment, the value attributed to research in education by academic staff, policy-makers and the government, and the influence of the increasingly competitive environment for research in Iceland, both internally and externally.

INTRODUCTION

For many working in teacher education the right or the responsibility to carry out research is still in its infancy as teacher education programs are upgraded to university status. The evolution of the research culture within some institutions of teacher education have been explored recently in a multinational project on Transitions and Traditions in Teacher Education. Among the purposes listed by Acker (2000: 143) are:

• To describe and compare effects on faculty of institutional transitions in teacher education from 1940 to the present …..
• To detail these transitions through case studies of selected institutions
• To trace the policy trajectory of the development of a research culture in each site.

The 2003 (3/4) issue of the Journal of Research in Teacher Education published by Umeå University presents a set of papers from the project.[a]

This paper considers the contradictions that have arisen in the evolution of the research culture within an institution largely devoted to teacher education and within the context of changing research environments in the Icelandic university sector.

The case study is built on developments at the Iceland University of Education (IUE) since 1998. In January 1998 four institutions working in education and development underwent a merger following the new law, only one of which, the University College of Education (UCE) had previously operated at university level. Considerable emphasis has been placed on research development within the IUE since 1998, to some extent the consequence of internal policy and to some extent the result of changes in the external environment for research in Iceland. The management of research and attempts to motivate staff and relate quality of research to funding allocations have been receiving increasing attention within universities in different parts of the world (Pratt, Margaritis and Coy 1999, Harman 2000, Strathern 2000) and Iceland is no exception (M. Allyson Macdonald 2002).

The paper draws on a wide range of documentary evidence, but also builds on the reflections of the author who has been both audience and player in the slowly unfolding sociocultural drama of how research is developing at the IUE. Many of the ideas here have been discussed in a variety of settings over the last few years and their meaning has been constructed in cultural situations.

The theoretical approach is introduced in the next section. A concept of culture is delineated, drawing on ideas from sociocultural perspectives and activity theory (see for example Minnis and John-Steiner 2001). The sources of information and recent lived experiences available to the author are then listed. Characteristics of the activity system are discussed briefly according to a scheme used by Jonassen and Rohrer-Murphy (1999). Contradictions that emerge through the lens of activity theory are explored and then issues to be addressed in the evolving culture at the IUE are identified. The paper finishes with a short discussion and some conclusions.

Theoretical approach

Research culture

In seeking to describe and understand the evolution of the research culture within the IUE, a definition of culture within the organization is needed.

It is tempting to look at the evolution of the research culture at the IUE in terms of organizational theories. Several options are available. For example it would be possible to look at the issue through the work of Senge (1990) on learning organizations. A paper by Ribbens (1997) develops the idea of organizational learning styles where it is proposed that a link between strategy and organizational learning can be based on a two-dimensional framework of the ways in which information is acquired, distributed, interpreted and stored, and the nature of the information itself, one dimension being abstract-concrete and the other random-sequential. Four types of archetypal organizations emerge: abstract-random, abstract-sequential, concrete-random and concrete-sequential, though these may be affected by leadership style and traditions, the demands of the environment and the growth of the organizations.

The IUE could be probably characterized as an abstract-random organization with its “highly developed web of informal communications” (Ribbens 1997). Strategy is changeable and individuals can advance strong arguments for new approaches. Ragnarsson (2001) has pointed out how difficult university management is with new groups of academic staff being appointed to middle management, perhaps at two- or three-year intervals, each group bringing with it individuals with new priorities. Add to that the international experiences and graduate training on different sides of the Atlantic Ocean of many IUE staff and we have all the potential for a conflict in cultures.

In accordance with Ratner (2000) we are looking for a construction of the emerging research culture that is coherent and comprehensive, which defines the essential nature of the cultural phenomena and which should enable kinds of phenomena and their interrelationship to be identified. In a discussion directed at cross-cultural psychologists Ratner proposed that a culture can be defined in terms of cultural-historical activity drawing on the work of Vygotsky and others.[b]

Ratner suggests that we focus our attention on three facets of culture:

• cultural phenomena, that can be viewed as socially constructed artifacts but Ratner reminds us that these are not necessarily democratically constructed and that small groups can have a powerful influence on the form that cultural phenomena take.
• further, that there are five main kinds of cultural phenomena:

-cultural activities, including the ways in which individuals interact with objects, people and oneself,

-cultural values, schemas, meanings, concepts,

-physical artifacts, which are collectively constructed,

-psychological phenomena, including emotions, motivation, imagination, language and personality

-agency through which phenomena are constructed and reconstructed and which is influenced by the phenomena listed above.

• finally, that these five phenomena are “interdependent and interlocking as well as distinctive. None of them is reducible to others yet neither does any of them stand alone outside the others” (Ratner 2000).

I choose thus to use ideas arising from applications of sociocultural theory, which offers perhaps a more dynamic approach than organisational theory and invites the consideration of the meanings being constructed through activities.

Activity theory

Activity theory, developed by adherents to the cultural-historical school, builds on the notion of activity that Leont’ev proposed and which has been extended in different ways (see for example, Engeström, Miettinen and Punamaki 1999, reviewed in Minnis and John-Steiner 2001). The theory provides a philosophical framework rather than a method, though some have developed methodologies for the application of the theory (such as Barab et al. 1999 or Jonassen and Rohrer-Murphy 1999). The assumption is that activity occurs in a socio-historical and socio-cultural context and the activity itself changes as a result of our interactions with the context and our consciousness with regards to those actions.

The theory has been used to good effect to analyse activity in different learning or educational contexts, for example by Edwards (2003) to consider the learning which occurs during practice teaching, by Jonassen and Rohrer-Murphy (1999) in the creation of a constructivist learning environment, by Kim, Chaudhury and Rao (2002) to evaluate an information management system, by Livingstone (2001) in a consideration of adult education in Canada and by Barab et al. (1999) to analyse and evaluate an astronomy course which incorporated a virtual reality.

What might the activity of educational research be? What is its purpose? At what levels can we analyse the activity? We can look to Mortimore (2000) who has suggested that educational research has four tasks: to conceptualize, observe and record events and processes to do with learning, to analyze such observations, to publish accounts of research, drawing on existing theory, and to further educational improvement. Key features of the activity theory model are shown in Figure 1 where we can construe that Mortimore’s “tasks” as being the object of different research activities.

• Research activities are designed to lead to an outcome.
• Subjects or agents carry out activities on objects or tasks.
• Research takes place within a community that has distinct social and cultural features.
• Research activities take place according to a set of rules.
• There is a division of labour within the research community, where individuals have different roles.
• Instruments/tools are used to mediate research activities.

Figure 1 The components of the model used in activity theory

An activity system has a purpose which leads to an outcome, and is based in a context. Depending on the case it is possible to emphasise different parts of the system, such as the subject-mediating tool-object triad, where the focus might be on the tools themselves (choice of research method) and their mediating function, or the subject-community-object triad, where the influence of the community might be the focal point. In the case of research culture, it has proved valuable to consider the ways in which the tools-rules-roles triad mediate the research activity (Macdonald 2003). It is also necessary to remember that activities are made up of actions, which in turn are made up of operations. There can also be several layers of activity from the actual act of carrying out research, such as planning, taking, transcribing and analysing an interview, to the management of research at a national level, for example by policy-making or budget-making.

None of the components should ever be considered in isolation nor deemed stable in time or place; an activity system is always dynamic. Part of the power of the theory lies in the consideration of the way that the subject changes the task, and the way that other parts of the system influence the nature of the change. Perhaps even more important though is to consider the primarycontradictions, found within individual components of the system, and the secondarycontradictions which arise between different components (Engeström 1993, quoted by Barab et al..:7).

Educational research activity is often a hybrid of several research traditions. It will also be useful therefore to consider some of the sociocultural perspectives proposed by Lattuca (2002) in her analysis of academic work and learning interdisciplinarity. In this regard she has found it useful to consider person and context, mediated actions and mediational means, and apprenticeship and legitimate peripheral participation, drawing for example on the work of Wertsch (1991) and Lave (1997, quoted in Lattuca).

Finally Lim (2002) has pointed out that activity theory focuses on the activities mediated in the immediate environment and that it is useful and necessary to place these activities in a broader context, which can operate at several levels.

Thus the list of questions over the last year or so about the IUE research culture have included:

• What cultural values and meanings are attached to this research?
• What psychological phenomena, including emotions, motivation, imagination, language and personality, characterize the work of researchers at the IUE?
• Through what agency are phenomena constructed and reconstructed?

• What contribution has context made to the evolution of the culture?
• What notions of apprenticeship and participation in learning communities are emerging?

In this paper I am looking more particularly at the main issues emerging as the research culture develops and the contradictions within and between the components of the activity system. It is in a consideration of the contradictions that the dynamics of the system emerge and points of conflict become opportunities for transformation.

Sources and perspectives

The writer of this paper is the director of the Research Institute at the IUE and has been in that position since 1999. It could be said that I have been a participant observer in activities concerning research and the IUE since 1997.[c] Much of my academic experience is in the area of evaluation and I have tried to keep an academic eye on events while taking part in them so that the events have become part of a “lived experience” and can be used to provide both a personal and a professional perspective of the changes in teacher education and university research in Iceland. I am of course indebted to all my colleagues for the wide range of discussions we have undertaken over the last few years.[d]

Published documentary sources for this study include laws concerning research in Iceland, reports on the status of research published by the Research Council, reports on trends in research in the Nordic countries and Europe and laws on universities in Iceland.

A wide range of unpublished administrative documents are available to me, including minutes of meetings, committee reports, reports from staff about their research activities and numerical data from the assessment of staff, plus all the short notes I have kept in notebooks about meetings which I attend.

Also available are a range of documents from the IUE including annual reports and statements of vision and strategy. Most of these documents have reached my desk because of the activities listed in the endnote [e] or I have taken part in their construction. The range of activities itself is an indication of the evolution of the research culture in Iceland, with increased assessment of institutions and individuals and changes in research policy-making setting their mark on research activity.

THE ACTIVITY SYSTEM

Analysis of an activity system

Jonassen and Rohrer-Murphy (1999) have formalised the analysis of an activity system into six steps which have been adapted for the sake of the present research in the following way:

1. a consideration of the purpose of the research activity and the motives with which the research is carried out.
2. an analysis of the subjects, the community and the object of the research activity.
3. a description of the activity of research i.e. the activity as a whole, the actions which make up the activity and the operations which lead to an action.
4. a consideration of the mediators of the activity: the tools, the rules and the division of labour.
5. the internal context with regard to the subjects and the external context as regards the community.
6. the dynamics of the system, the interrelationships, the degree of formality and the changes with time.

Steps 1-3 were considered in detail in a working paper (in English) prepared in the summer of 2003 and available from the author. Step 4 was the subject of a paper (in Icelandic) in November 2003 at the first conference of the Icelandic Association for Educational Research that will be published shortly in the conference proceedings. This paper considered the primary contradictions which emerged in the considerations of the tools, rules and roles within the system.

It is in steps 5 and 6 that key features of the evolving research culture emerge. Here we can begin to explore the secondary contradictions within the system and look for areas that need attention or where new developments may take place, as suggested by Engeström (1993, quoted by Barab et al..:7).

Necessary conditions for using activity theory

Jonassen and Rohrer-Murphy (1999: 68-69) have suggested that the following conditions should be satisfied when activity theory is used as an analytical tool.

• The activity system should have been in existence long enough in order to understand activities which occur within the system and changes in the activities.
• Activities within the system are comparable to activities in other systems.
• It is necessary to understand patterns and trends within the system before individual aspects are considered.
• A variety of data and opinions exist and the researcher should be willing to understand the system from different viewpoints.

It is my opinion that these conditions have been met in this analysis.

Summary of the IUE activity system

The outcomes for research and the value attached to them have not changed much over since the merger in 1998. We find all types of scholarly activity within the IUE if we follow the categories introduced Boyer (1990). There are those who have an interest in discovery, in research for its own sake, and find value in the contribution they can make to knowledge in their areas of specialization; those who place high value on integration and application and who achieve this by working within schools, in the workplace and other social settings and who still feel constrained by the need to document their work; and those who prioritize their teaching showing little interest in research activity. There may have been some movement between the groups as features of the new culture have emerged, with its pressures of accountability and the chance of an increased income. The distribution of research points at the IUE is skewed towards reports and talks rather than peer-reviewed work.