The trials and tribulations of teacher-research: an ethnographic study of the research culture in an English secondary school

Marsden, R and Peiser, G ORCID: 0000-0003-4166-1393 The trials and tribulations of teacher-research: an ethnographic study of the research culture in an English secondary school. Journal of Organizational Ethnography. ISSN 2046-6749 (Accepted)

Text The trials and tribulations of teacher research an ethnographic study of the research culture in an English secondary school .pdf - Accepted Version Access Restricted Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (536kB)

Abstract

Purpose - This paper explores the tensions in the field of teacher-research when teachers in one school value disparate research approaches. Ethnographic methods were utilised to study teachers’ research practices in an English secondary school where ‘controlled research trials’ were privileged, but disputed by some teacher-researchers preferring qualitative over quantitative data.
Design/ methodology/ approach – The authors draw upon fieldnotes from observations of staff meetings and research training sessions for teachers, as well as semi-structured interviews with key actors. The 21 hours of contact resulted in 41 pages of qualitative data that were analyzed thematically.
Findings – The findings reveal that some of the teacher-researchers recognized the challenges of, and took issue with, the positivist research paradigm promoted by the organization, and acknowledged the benefits of qualitative approaches to teacher-research, including those from the ethnographic tradition.
Originality – A new way of theorizing teacher-research is proposed, which the authors coin ‘re-search’. Taking the notion of ‘research’ as literally ‘re-searching’ a phenomenon, it is argued that teachers systematically ‘looking again’ at their practice, perhaps utilizing auto-ethnography, would be a desirable foil to the positivist hegemony currently found in the field of teacher-research.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	1503 Business and Management; 1601 Anthropology; 1608 Sociology; 3505 Human resources and industrial relations; 3507 Strategy, management and organisational behaviour; 4410 Sociology
Subjects:	L Education > LB Theory and practice of education L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB1603 Secondary Education. High schools
Divisions:	Education
Publisher:	Emerald
Date of acceptance:	9 January 2026
Date Deposited:	12 Jan 2026 14:35
Last Modified:	12 Jan 2026 14:35
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/27896

View Item