Research and the Early Years Practitioner-Researcher

This paper challenges the approach that we traditionally take to research (in the realm of Early Childhood) within our colleges and universities. It asks why we have obediently adopted an outmoded and entirely inappropriate approach to research which disempowers and alienates the practitioners that we are working with. This paper calls for Early Childhood tutors to challenge existing regimes in order to introduce students to research that is both meaningful and purposeful for their practice. It embeds purpose and ethicality at the heart of practitioner research

Unfolding the dance of team learning: a metaphorical investigation of collective learning

This article engages with the ongoing debate surrounding the validity of collective learning methodologies found in the popular management literature, such as team learning. It explores some of the alleged lacunae in these dialogic methodologies by exploring the metaphors invoked by their proponents. This exploration employs a metaphorical framework, which then takes one of these metaphors (dance) and unfolds it as a more substantive `model' metaphor—rather than apply it in a superficial way, as appears to be the case currently. This development, in turn, permits the integration of an alternative sociocultural view of collective learning. Consequently, dialogue in collective learning becomes represented as divergent and multifarious, rather than merely as convergent upon simplistic outcomes. The potentials of the dance metaphor are examined, alongside a brief discussion of the methodological approaches that could facilitate further exploration, making it possible to highlight aspects for consideration in further research

Dual Vision: Capturing the Learning Journey of Pre-Service Early Childhood Teachers of Science.

Teacher educators are consistently challenged with the problem of how to construct more meaningful and relevant experiences within their science methods courses. The research presented in this paper addressed this problem on two levels. On a pedagogical level, the aim of the research was to capture the salient details about how one pre‐service early childhood teacher interpreted her journey about learning science and how to teach science over a 10‐week science methods course. On a methodological level, the aim of this research was to describe, trial and evaluate a new, qualitative research method called ‘dual vision’ that enables critical incidents to be constructed and interpreted through the combined lenses of the pre‐service teacher and the researcher. This exploratory research embraced a constructivist‐interpretive research paradigm and was informed by the literature on critical incidents. The dual vision methodological process provided the researcher with an opportunity to move into the reality of the pre‐service teacher, allowed both voices to be heard and, as a consequence, provided rich images of the pre‐service teacher’s experiences that are not accessible through other methods. Moreover, the dual vision method demonstrated rigorous advantages that are presented in this paper through an examination of three sets of criteria for legitimatio