PRESENTING VOICE IN ACTION RESEARCH

Caitríona McDonagh, University of Limerick, Ireland

Abstract

In investigating the quality of learning experience for pupils with specific learning disabilities, my research aims to generate a form of educational theory which values children's learning abilities rather than focusing on their difficulties. I explain how my search for suitable forms, in which to represent the voice of my research participants, results in the transformation of my practice and also results in helping children to see themselves as knowledge generators. My report has potential significance for others involved in similar work situations by placing reasons and strategies, which focus on children's learning, at the heart of the development of appropriate classroom pedagogies and research practice.

Introduction

This report is part of my classroom-based, self-study research, which aims to generate a form of educational theory that values children’s learning ability rather than focusing on their disabilities or difficulties. In my research, I attempt to determine how I can improve the learning experience for pupils with dyslexia, which is also called specific learning disability. Doyle (2003) describes dyslexia as a neurodevelopmental disorder, which is manifest in specific problems in language, reading and writing. The Department of Education and Science (1988) in Ireland gives pupils with specific learning disability access to the services of a resource teacher for 2.5 hours weekly of individualised tuition. I am a resource teacher.

I discuss two research episodes in this paper, which are taken from my work as a resource teacher. They present the voice of eight dyslexic pupils in forms that celebrate the children’s learning strengths. Audio tape-recording transcripts present my research participants’ voice orally in the first episode and pupils' artwork facilitates their voices visually in the second episode. In both episodes I show that finding suitable forms in which one can present participants voice has significance for research outcomes.

A Reason to Give Opportunities for Voice to Research Participants

The background to giving a voice to children is my theory that pupils with specific learning disability are not disabled learners but that they actually learn differently. In creating opportunities for the voice of pupils to be heard, my research makes 'a space from which the voices of those not normally heard (in education) can be heard’ (Lather 1991 in Usher 1996). My research aims to show that pupils with specific learning disability can identify personal methods of learning differently, which might in future be a guide to appropriate learning and teaching strategies for schools. During the first research episode I realised that allowing children to speak is not synonymous with giving a voice. I also found that dialogue is not merely conversation but goes beyond words to reach new understandings.

Episode One - The Significance of an Oral Voice

To present voice in the first episode, I invited eight children, who are dyslexic and aged 9-12 years, to speak in a group setting. In the conversations they identified their learning difficulties. They initially listed difficulties in curricular or subject areas, with sentences such as 'Irish and Maths are hard for me' or ' Reading is hard for me but I try my best anyway'. As they continued to converse, the pupils began to identify specific areas of personal difficulties within subjects such as, 'It’s hard to understand the meanings of the stories and to understand it' or 'Long words are hard to remember and spell' or 'Writing is hard for me, I can't write straight'. Pupils named priority learning/teaching targets. As a result of permitting my children to represent their personal learning difficulties orally, I as a teacher, changed from being the professional 'knower' in the classroom and I realised that I too was a learner. This follows the thinking of Zeichner (1999), who the places the teacher as a learner in his USA studies of the power of self-study in the 'new scholarship' tradition (Schon 1995). The significance of this episode is the development of new educational theory, grounded on valid practitioner inquiries, as a knowledge base for teachers (Schon 1995; Zeichner 1999; Whitehead 1993; and McNiff 2002).

Another audio-recording that was made in this first research episode addressed an area of difficulty common to many dyslexics, which is long-term memory with specific reference to spellings ability. The children, who presented their voices orally, score up to five years behind their peers in ability to spell on standardised tests. They identified their individual preferred learning styles by stating that they learned spellings by

Method	Learning Style
the sounds of words	Auditory
to find how many bits I first count how many vowel sounds in it	Visual
rhyming the words	Phonomic Awareness
breaking the words up	Syllabification
going one bit after another	Sequencing
learning them off by heart	Rote learning
looking at it three times and saying it three times, then writing it three times	Multisensory approach

During further discussions the pupils' articulated a theory of learning spellings for those with specific learning disability/dyslexia by stating that, 'It is hard to get spellings right. We all have different ways of learning spellings. I find the right way for me.' In the following weeks each child experimented with the other ways of learning spellings listed on the tape-recorded list above. The children made individual studies of how they successfully learned to spell. They did this by selecting words of their own choice and recording how long they could remember how to spell those words. Repeating the standardised testing confirmed improvements (of up to three years within three months). But the major significance of this episode was that the idea for this learning experiment came from the group of children and not the teacher.

I gained significant insights into the nature of teaching pupils with specific learning difficulties by listening and allowing them formulate ideas together. The pupils voiced a theory of learning spellings and created personal knowledge dialogically and also demonstrated the value of metacognition in learning. The new knowledge they generated enabled me to take issue with established education theory for teaching children with specific learning disability as evidenced in the work of Hulme and Snowling (1997), McAnnaney and Sayles (1999), Pollock and Waller (1997), Thomson (2001) and Reid (1998). These authors based their thinking on a medical model of rectifying a deficit in the pupils and offered various remediation and compenation techniques. In contrast to this, my study led me to seek to identify learning abilities rather than deficits in my pupils.

I gained new awareness of the children's abilities that were not evident in a subject-focused curriculum. I, as their teacher, have learned from their voices that children with specific learning disability learn in a multitude of different ways. This meant that if they could not learn in the ways in which I teach, I must learn to teach in the way in which my pupils can learn (McDonagh; 2002). This value is grounded in the idea of emancipation through empowerment on the lines of Berlin and Fréire. Fréire's pedagogy of hope, presented the idea of dialogue in teaching as a co-operative activity involving respect where one person didn't act on another, but rather people worked with each other. In a similar vein, I believed that as a researcher and teacher I couldn't give participants a voice but rather my work provided participants with opportunities for voice. Through my search for appropriate forms of voice I found that, 'The process is important and can be seen as enhancing community and building social capital and to leading us to act in ways that make for justice and human flourishing' (Fréire et al.1998). Berlin spoke to my ideas of multiple ways of learning and knowing. In writing on monism and pluralism, Berlin believed that there was no one right way of knowing - a form of fundamentalism- but that acceptance of multiple ways of knowing led to true dialogue. Such an acceptance also created a freedom, which grew from informed choice because it involved exploring many ways and excluding none.

Episode Two - Finding Another Form of Voice

In that first research episode, I summarised how eight children, who are dyslexic, developed their capacity for independent learning and began to see themselves as knowledge generators and demonstrated the value of metacognition as a feature of successful learning. The second research episode built on the idea of multiple knowledge creators within the classroom. I facilitated pupils' voice in another form that ignored their learning difficulties as I presented pupils’ voice on how they understood the ‘learning disability’ with which they are labelled. Pupils were invited to use their favourite art media to depict their feelings about dyslexia. The eight pupils discussed the artwork they produced in a group setting. One of the pictures was drawn by a dyslexic pupil aged nine, who, to date, had received help in the form of resource teaching and a weekly workshop of the Dyslexia Association of Ireland. Class teachers had commented on her tendency to mood swings. She discussed her picture as follows; (initials are used for ethical reasons of guaranteed anonymity).

L said, “It means I feel happy. The two rainbows mean that sometimes my feelings backfire. So sometimes I can be happy and then I can be sad straight again. It's just expressing how I feel happy. The hands and the background is just to make it feel happy. Pink is my favourite colour."

S asked, “How come you drew yourself in the middle of the picture, and rainbows and decoration all around?”

L said, “It was just an expression of how I felt. I thought that drawing a picture of me helped me realise how I feel.”

P asked, “Why did you put the love heart on it?”

L said, “It just expressing how happy I was. I was busting my feelings out in paint.”

I believe that I had permitted her to present her voice in a visual format. As a critical friend wrote, “you stood aside and gave them (my pupils) a voice. Art made it safer for them. It was a filter that allowed them to have a voice. Art created an atmosphere where they were prepared to tell what they thought.” Pupil L had developed a visual voice and through my encouragement of dialogue in the classroom, she had also demonstrated strength in presenting her ideas orally. Her visual voice spoke as loudly as written words.

Even if the voices of specific participants never make it into final published reports, I believe in creating opportunities for voice because participants' voices can tell stories of which we, as educators, may be unaware. Pupil B is an example of this idea. In describing his artwork he said, “I put a kind of border around it, for the glitter. I done the outside and what I feel like in the inside. I'm having a party and there's the balloons and all that. And then there's the teacher on the outside. I put all red on the outside of the picture and all nice colours on the inside.”P asked, “Just to keep the teacher out?” B answered, “Yea just to keep everything bad away from me.” Asked if he was referring to all teachers or just a particular one, B said, “Mm. Most of them.”

Issues of low self-esteem and poor self-perception, as shown in this B's picture, were obvious in many of my pupils' pictures. To counteract the low self-perception demonstrated, pupils accessed Internet information on famous and successful people who are reported to have specific learning difficulties. Using clip art and word art pupils presented their findings, as part of a group project explaining specific learning disability/dyslexia.

The Power of Voice

Issues of power and voice arose when the children, delighted with their control of their own learning, insisted on presenting their project orally to groups of teachers. The children further proposed to test the teachers' learning at the end of the presentations. In a section of their project titled ’You too can feel dyslexic’, they enjoyed pressurising teachers to answer the following two questions in one minute. The questions were, 'What did you learn about dyslexia? What further questions do you have about dyslexia?

The significance and the power of voice for educational change can be seen in this sample of a teacher’s answer sheet to the pupils’ question where he said 'I learned a lot about dyslexia. There were certain things I hadn't realised. I think I would do things maybe differently with dyslexic children in the class.' When the teacher considered ‘doing things maybe differently’ he initiated a change in pedagogy. Changes in pedagogy are slow and painful for teachers. They don’t come from reading the best argued research paper. Nor do they flow from slickly presented curriculum in-service training. But such changes grow from a personal wish for change by an individual teacher. So, I recommend being open to voice in educational research because it can be an influence for change in education.

In Praise of Providing Opportunities to Present Voice Through Action Research

I further recommend being open to voice in educational research as a demonstration of educative influence as in the following example of a letter, which comes from a teaching colleague and is evidence of educational successes that can be attributed to making space for participants to use their voices in research. The teacher wrote,

Just a note to acknowledge your project on dyslexia. I apologise for rushing off midway through the presentation a couple of weeks ago. I can say however that in the 15 minutes I spent listening to (pupil) J and his fellow presenters, I learned more about dyslexia than I had ever known before- shame on me! I promised J the opportunity of a 'proper' presentation in our own classroom not only for me but also for his 28 classmates. A few days later he sat in front of his class and I watched as he grew in stature before my eyes and those of his classmates as he explained to them in his own quiet way what he had discovered and learned. He had a rapt audience throughout and fielded questions with confident ease at the end before inviting all to complete his worksheet (the same two questions as the teachers were asked). Having browsed through what his colleagues had to say, I feel that the exercise was well worthwhile. The children have a deeper knowledge and better understanding of the difficulties dyslexia can cause in people's lives….

Therefore, I recommend being open to voice in educational research because it is a demonstration of educative influence in a wider learning community. By this I mean that the research snapshots I have described, influenced not only me, the teacher, and my pupils, but also other pupils, and teachers not engaged in my research. A result of my search to present pupils’ voice in appropriate forms that celebrated pupils' abilities was that I gained new understandings about research methodology, teaching and learning. Pupils were encouraged to develop their own personal learning styles and abilities because opportunities for voice were created for them in the first research episode I described. In the letter from my teaching colleague, he told how facilitating the voice of my pupils - ‘the disabled learners’ - had empowered them to influence classmates and peers. Finally the words of the class teacher, in his answers to the pupils' questionnaire, demonstrated how the voice of pupils could influence teachers to reconsider their knowledge and teaching methods. Finding suitable forms, in which one can demonstrate voice in a research project, is as vital as finding a suitable methodology, literature base or philosophical framework. Appropriate forms of voice can also provide reliable, verifiable research evidence.

Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999) describe how teachers can be 'knowers and thinkers rather than consumers of others' knowledge and by sustained conversation become co-constructors of knowledge.’ I believe that creating opportunities for voice for all research participants - even if they are children and even if they are children, who are labelled as disabled learners - enables them to be knowers and thinkers rather than consumers of others' knowledge and by sustained conversation become co-constructors of knowledge.'
The creation of knowledge through dialogue is at the heart of the living theory action research and presenting voice in many varied forms has significance for all participants

References

Cochran-Smith. M., Lytle, S.L. (1999) The Teacher Research Movement: a Decade Later. Educational Researcher, October 15-25.

Department of Education and Science (2002) Circular on Special Education 08/02 Application for Full and Part-time Resource Teacher Support to addresss special education needs of those with disabilities. Dublin , Government of Ireland.

Doyle, E.(2003) Dyslexia Uncovered - What the International Experts Say; A Review of Current Research on Dyslexia. Paper presented at Annual Seminar for tutors and AGM of the Dyslexia Association of Ireland , Dublin.

Fréire, M. A., Fréire, P., Koike, D., Macedo, D., Oliveire, A., (1998) Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare Teach. Cambridge , MA : Westview Press

Hulme, C., Snowling, M. (1997) Dyslexia: Biology, Cognition and Intervention. London : Whurr (British Dyslexia Association)

Usher, R. (1997) Understanding Educational Research. London : Routledge.

McAnaney, T. & Sayles H.A. (1999) Compensatory and Remedial Teaching Techniques based on the diagnosis of Cognitive Deficits' Dublin , In-service Handbook ACLD.

McDonagh 2002 ' Pupils Teach and Teachers Learn - a classroom partnership', a paper presented at the 14 th Annual International Conference of the Irish Association of Teachers in Special Education, 'Partnership for Positive Change'. Dublin , St. Patrick's College of Education Dublin City University.

McNiff, J. (2002) Action Research Principles and Practice 2 nd Edition. London : Routledge Falmer.

Pollock, J., Waller, E (1997) Day-to-Day Dyslexia in the Classroom Revised Edition. London : Routledge.

Reid, G. (1998) Dyslexia: A Practitiioner's Handbook. 2 nd Edition. West Sussex : Wiley.

Schon, D. (1995) 'Knowing in Action: The New Scholarship requires a new epistemology', Change November -December 27-34.

Thomson, M. (2001) The Psychology of Dyslexia: A Handbook for teachers. England , Whurr.

Whitehead, J. (1993) The Growth of Educational Knowledge: Creating Your Own Educational Living Theories. Bournmouth, Hyde.

Zeichner, K. (1999) ' The New Scholarship in Teacher Education', Educational Researcher 28(9): 4-15.

Biographical Note:

Caitríona McDonagh is an elementary (primary) schoolteacher in Ireland who specialises in teaching children with various learning disabilities. Her research interest is to understand and develop the quality of her educative influence with a view to improving the learning experience for children with specific learning disability/dyslexia. Issues of social justice and the generation of theories on teaching for learning are at the heart of her research. She possesses an M.A. in Education from the University of the West of England, Bristol , England and is currently engaged in a programme of doctoral studies with the University of Limerick, Ireland. She can be reached by e-mail at: caitrionamd@hotmail.com.