Inclusive and Supportive Education Congress International Special Education Conference Inclusion: Celebrating Diversity? 1st - 4th August 2005. Glasgow, Scotland

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Growing Policy, Practice and Research: is inclusive synergy possible?

Louise Hayward and Nicki Hedge
l.Hayward@educ.gla.ac.uk & n.hedge@admin.gla.ac.uk
University of Glasgow

 Abstract

This paper questions the extent to which the policy, practice and research communities can work inclusively and collaboratively to achieve a synergy that affords learning for all.   Using experiences and data from a project initially conceptualised as early intervention with a focus on nurture groups, we will trace the development of that project as its focus shifted to learning enhancement for all.   The trajectory from targeted support for 'those in need' to inclusive support for all will be mapped alongside the development of the project team's approach towards classroom change premised on the synergy of research, policy and practice.   Whilst all project members, from each of the key constituencies, have stressed the importance of an inclusive, mutually respecting dynamic and whilst the project has evinced tangible, positive change in young learners' classrooms, this paper will highlight a number of tensions that remain.   We shall outline some of the challenges of the participatory action research approach adopted through the extended lens of inclusion for all. We will note the roles, initial and emergent, of those drawn from the policy, research and practice communities and we shall acknowledge initial suspicions and anxieties across those groups.   In particular, we will discuss the tensions around issues of agency, power and control as we, the researchers, struggled to realize an inclusive approach to change that required participation, trust, a willingness to take risks, a belief that all had something to offer and an acceptance that none of us knew all, if any, of the answers.    Fullan (1993) has argued that any successful innovation will require the expansion of professional development to include learning while doing and learning from doing.   Additionally, the project we report here was premised on Senge and Scharmer's (2001) admonition to integrate the knowledge-creation process in participatory action research.   Premising a project on such ideals is intuitively attractive but practically challenging and, we shall suggest, it yields many parallels between articulating and realizing policy in inclusive education. Determined to work towards inclusive learning for all, our focus was not only on the young learners in classrooms, but on all involved in the action research project that sought to grow change and to create knowledge across all of the project communities and individuals. Our role as researchers was no more and no less directive or important than that of colleagues from the practice and policy communities.   However, recourse to the intuitively equitable, collaborative haven of differentiated identities and accompanying responsibilities failed to satisfy our concerns with issues of power and control. We continue to be concerned by relative positions of authority aware, for example, that as we produce this text, and as we present this paper at a conference, then we are occupying a certain position of authority despite a willingness to engage in reflexivity.    This paper focuses on these tensions asking, ultimately, how an inclusive synergy between research, practice and policy can be realized in order that we can effect change resulting in improved educational opportunities and experiences for all children.

Introduction    

It is intuitively attractive to believe that life would be better if research, policy and practice communities were to work together in more inclusive ways with the common purpose of enhancing educational success for all.   However, like many intuitively attractive ideas, the apparent simplicity of the concept belies the deep complexity of any attempt to live the idea in practice.   However, acknowledging complexity does not mean ignoring it.   Recognising and living with complexity may be an essential part of developing approaches to research that are in themselves more inclusive and which, in turn, are concerned to develop more inclusive individuals, schools and societies.   In this paper, we reflect on a case study of collaborative, critical action research and begin to explore some of the complexities in a process of change intended to bring research, policy and practice together.   We explore dilemmas emerging from our experience and consider the extent to which the policy, practice and research communities can work inclusively and collaboratively to achieve a synergy that offers enhanced learning opportunities for all.   A more detailed discussion of the issues we raise in this conference paper forms the basis of a further paper.

The Context

East Ayrshire, a forward-looking education authority in the South West of Scotland, had developed a strong early intervention strategy in all its schools.   This strategy was designed to promote better learning opportunities for all young learners in East Ayrshire but was particularly focused on children who traditionally had found learning challenging.    However, when reviewing progress, the authority had been surprised by its own data.    Four of the primary schools where a significant number of young children had been identified at educational risk were not, as anticipated, located in the most challenging social circumstances.   To compound their confusion, three of the four schools had recently been inspected by HMIE and identified as ‘good’ schools, that is schools where overall attainment was high and teaching was considered to be of high quality.   Policy makers, concerned to understand more deeply what was going on and what might be done to improve the situation, contacted researchers at the University of Glasgow and a project began to investigate three main questions.   Why did the achievement gap in literacy in the Education Authority appear to be widening despite a sustained programme of positive action in a committed authority, put into practice by highly competent professionals, teachers and nursery nurses?   What, if any, action might be possible to begin to reconcile policy intentions and policy outcomes?   If it were possible to narrow the gap in the four schools identified then what might be the implications for other schools across the authority?   (see Hayward & Hedge, 2005a).  

Like many countries internationally, Scotland has been involved in waves of innovation with comparatively little evidence of meaningful change, except perhaps in increased levels of stress for those involved in the change process ( Kemmis and McTaggart, 1998; Hayward & Hedge, 2005b ).   In common with Desforges (2000), as researchers we regarded the relationship between research, policy and practice as problematic and within the East Ayrshire project looked to explore the potential of an approach where, within the context of a political decision to instigate an investigation, policy could be grown with deeper understandings of the inter-relationship between research and practice.   Fullan (1993:60) suggests that different models of development are necessary if they are to involve ‘…expanding professional development to include learning while doing and learning from doing’.   In this project both researchers and policy makers were committed to a collaborative, participative model of change recognising the importance of ownership in transformational change (Fullan, 2003).    Consistent with Habermas’s ( 1974:40) view that,   ‘In a process of enlightenment there can only be participants’, a project was established involving all participants in the research, policy and in the practice communities from within the identified schools .  

The project methodology had much in common with critical action research ( Kemmis and McTaggart, 1998).   It was intended that there would be a combination of systematic reflection and strategic innovation where teachers, policy makers and researchers would work together to explore the achievement gap, to decide what change, if any, was needed and to investigate how ideas might be translated into different classroom contexts in different ways.   Teachers’ own judgments would be used as a basis for monitoring, deciding and evaluating what the next steps would be.   Although, in our presentation, we shall problematise the notion that researchers are drawn from and represent the theory community, policy-makers the policy community and practitioners (Headteachers, teachers, nursery nurses and classroom auxiliaries) the community of practice, the starting point for the project, in the heads of the researchers, was that none of those communities would have a dominant voice, but that each would contribute to the developing of thinking, debating issues, and asking hard questions.   As Kemmis (2001) advocates, all judgments, all interpretations would be open to question. Consistent with ideas of co-operative enquiry, we were keen to commit to a model of research that worked with people rather than on people.

We believe that ordinary people are quite capable of developing their own ideas and can work together in a collaborative enquiry group to see if their ideas make sense of their world and work in practice…..we believe that the outcome of good research is not just books and academic papers, but it is also the creative action of people to address matters that are important to them. Heron & Reason, 2001:179.

Whilst we might question the implications of describing people as ‘ordinary’ if that implies that there are those who are extraordinary, we do believe that the idea of people working together making sense of meaningful ideas in different worlds is central to the process of transformational change.

Senge and Scharmer (2001) argue, from an analysis of community action research approaches, that if any innovation is to lead to real and sustainable change, then there are certain necessary characteristics that must be part of the initiative; a shared statement of purpose and set of guiding principles, infrastructures that support community building and collaborative concrete projects to deepen common purpose and improve infrastructures.

The focus of the project was a matter of concern to all three communities: research, policy and practice.   Early Intervention, a major policy initiative intended to be inclusive appeared to have contributed to extending a gap between those who coped well in literacy and those who found literacy hard.   The question was why?   The project was originally intended to focus on nurture groups (Bennethan & Boxhall, 2000) but soon began to investigate the broader conditions that might be compromising the inclusive aspirations of the Early Intervention policy in East Ayrshire.

In earlier papers we have argued for recognising the complexity of beginning from where people are in the process of change (Swann & Brown, 1997) and we have suggested that where people are is a political, educational and emotional issue (Hayward & Hedge, 2005a, 2005b). In this project, researchers, policy makers and practitioners shared common educational concerns to narrow the growing attainment gap.   However, in terms of the learning of the group, the difficulties in the interface between where people were located politically, emotionally and educationally led to initial problems and, for some, feelings of dislocation that affected the group dynamic.   R esearchers and policy makers wanted to avoid traditional models of staff development where research evidence has had a dominant voice, used to tell teachers what to do; an approach that has had little influence on practice.   Practitioners’ perceptions were that they had experienced little else other than dominant voices, from research or from policy, it mattered little which, telling them what they were doing wrong, what to do about it and blaming them if things didn’t work.   As researchers, policy makers and practitioners came together initially to explore ideas then tensions, suspicions and, at times, expressions of aggression, frustration, hostility, despair and anger were evident. By completion, the project was described as having had many successes by all those involved, practitioners, policy makers and researchers.   

Within months of commencement group tensions and suspicions had declined and teachers described themselves as feeling more motivated and confident.   Teachers, nursery nurses and parents reporting increased interest and engagement in learning amongst all learners.   Teachers, headteachers and learners all talked of having more fun whilst learning.   Teachers reported changes in their attitudes to learners, suggesting that they now believed that all children could succeed.   Teachers suggested that in class there were far fewer examples of learners beginning sentences with ‘I can’t…’ and they cited evidence of children having achieved as much, if not more, than previous classes, the difference being that this held true for all learners.   Parents noticed and talked of improvements in their children’s motivation and in their progress.   There was evidence from teachers and learners that their schools were developing as more optimistic and self-confident places. These changes have been sustained throughout and beyond the life of the project.

However, within this apparently successful project that attempted to act in an inclusive ways, tensions remain around issues of agency, power and control and dilemmas arose that seem worthy of reflection.   The aspiration to work inclusively implies a commitment to a number of ideas that are complex and difficult to achieve.   Building a project on notions such as participation, trust, a willingness to take risks, a belief in the importance of individual and collective contributions, openness, a lack of certainty and an acceptance that none of us knew all, if any, of the answers remains intuitively attractive but practically challenging and, we suggest, it yields many parallels between articulating and realizing policy in inclusive education.   In the next section of this paper we outline some of the issues faced in attempting to work collaboratively and to research inclusively.

Challenges & Tensions

This section begins to makeexplicit examples of the tensions and challenges as the project developed, many of which remain unresolved.   The idea of differentiated identities and responsibilities failed, and continues to fail, to entirely satisfy our concerns with issues of power and control. We continue to be concerned by relative positions of authority aware, for example, that as we produce this text, initially for presentation at a conference, we are occupying a certain position of authority invested in us by dint of belonging, like it or not, to a community of academics.   The willingness we can demonstrate to engage in reflexivity is bordered by the parameters of identity and our location in and outwith communities.   Riley et al’s (2003) exploration of the dynamics and power relationships between researchers and the researched highlights postructuralist issues around reflexivity and points to an acknowledgement that any account of research pertaining to a ‘real world’ neutral representation is flawed.   Their accommodation of postructuralist and reflexive clashes is grounded in an explicit awareness that any reflexive report on research, such as that we are constructing here, will be but ‘… one (of infinitely many) versions of the processes and experiences that occurred during the research’ (Riley et al. 2003 para. 6.)  

Within the East Ayrshire project we sought to avoid ideas of researchers and researched, arguing instead that we were all concerned to bring a variety of perspectives to a situation of common concern, that is to address the questions articulated in the first section of this paper.   However, it is difficult to be confident that that was entirely true or at least it is difficult to be confident that the stakes were the same for all groups participating.   It was the teachers’ classrooms that were under scrutiny.   It was the teachers’ own practices that were discussed.   The evidence from research or from policy was not personal in the way that the information from teachers’ classrooms was.  

Tensions also arose for the project between the complexity of ideas about inclusive ways of working and their impact on practice and what seemed an ever-present threat from those who wanted to adopt a reductionist approach to the project.   At times it seemed as if there was a belief that the complexity of inclusive ways of working was a first stage, that this complexity would lead to a set of simpler ideas that could then be put into practice in far easier, less time consuming ways.   All in the project agreed that the research process and classroom changes implemented arose from complex, inter-related ideas but we had no idea how challenging this view was and how difficult it would be to articulate such key points.   Nor were we prepared for the apparent unwillingness or inability of others to hear those points.   For example, reports in the media that arose from this project highlighted the potential for misunderstandings and misrepresentations of our   (researchers’, policymakers’ and teachers’) version of events.   Whilst most newspaper articles were very positive about the work going on and the enthusiasm shown by teachers and learners, newspaper headlines suggesting that children in the East Ayrshire project schools were no longer being ‘taught the basics’ but were ‘only’ playing were obviously more eye-catching than those, and there were some, that stressed the import of play, of fun, of enjoyment in a rather less staged and structured curriculum for 5 year olds, developed by various communities going back to basics; thinking about what mattered in learning and how best to support one another in maximising learning opportunities for all.   Project participants from all communities had been engaged in discussion with the press and had all, in their own ways, stressed the importance of using evidence from a variety of sources to inform practice. We made clear connections between evidence about learning and the actions that they had taken to be more inclusive in their approaches, developing less formal, structured curricula and injecting more enjoyment into young learners’ classrooms.   We were at pains to note underlying educational foci, such as play for, not instead of, learning.    However, newspaper headlines almost without exception ignored the complexity and focused on what they perceived to be a good strapline.   Teachers and policy makers were left feeling they had to defend themselves against accusations of giving up on learning, allow children freedom to do nothing but play aimlessly.   Researchers too found themselves having to explain their position when newspapers published comments from other researchers in the field, presumably responding to what the journalists had said about the project, calling into question what was being done.   In one of the newspaper articles an academic, described as Scotland’s leading educationalist in Early Education, suggested that the project was in danger of failing young learners who, in his opinion, were capable of precisely the complex thought and productive learning that, in fact, the project sought to encourage.

Producing an academic paper, largely for an academic audience many of whom we can assume to be familiar with the issues the East Ayrshire project, provides some refuge from media misrepresentation and over-simplification.   However, simultaneously this presentation and the conventions of the genre of academic texts force us back into dilemmas around power, agency, ownership and change itself.   For example, it is unlikely that this text will be read by many teachers, apart from those engaged in further academic study.   Tinkler (2004: 2) suggests that traditional academic research and its publication can result in a ‘disconnect’ between research data and change and that change will be unlikely, ‘… when researchers write studies in inaccessible “academic” language, publish these studies in obscure journals … and then expect those who need the information to find the information and utilize it’.    We have published details of the East Ayrshire project in Learning and Teaching Scotland’s Early Years’ Matters (LTScotland, 2004) as part of our collective strategy to interact with all communities involved in the project and as part of our concern to afford not only polyvocality but polyvalent dissemination and debate.   We feel slightly uncomfortable writing in very different ways for different audiences, particularly with the perceptions of hierarchy that will surround the different texts.    The text we have constructed for an academic journal (Hayward & Hedge, 2005a) is likely to be seen as challenging or inaccessible whereas the text for Early Years’ Matters (LTScotland, 2004) is likely to be seen as straightforward and accessible.   In terms of influence Early Years’ Matters has a distribution of 12,000 and it is unlikely that academic journal distribution will be anything like that.   However, as researchers, as university staff, we are, inevitably though not exclusively, driven by the imperatives of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and the demands to write in particular ways and to publish in particular places. Questioning the effects of the RAE in social work, Gambrill (2002) is clear that publications are significantly influenced by RAE criteria and that ratings of contribution to practice are undervalued.   In education, Beckmann and Cooper (2004:8) suggest that the RAE   ‘… obstructs the development of alternative perspectives, practices and possibilities’.   Additionally, Levin and Greenwood (2001:103) caution that, ‘… universities are mainly devoted to their own, often autopoetic, knowledge production processes, to insider academic career struggles, and, increasingly, to making a profit’.   Suggesting that such a scenario will frustrate learning and social change, Levin and Greenwood (2001: 107-8), by way of a solution, advocate ‘pragmatic action research’ in which   ‘…theory cannot exist unless it is grounded in warranted praxis and is understood to be of value by those affected by the problems’.   To the extent that those participating in the project described here felt it had afforded positive change in the classrooms, in the learning of young children, then warranted, if limited, praxis encourages us to further analyze our own pragmatic action research within and across existing theories.   The irony of the academic voice we use to do so, precisely in order to effect shifts in theoretical and practical understandings of young learners and their teachers, in critical action research and in our identities as researchers, is not, however, lost on us.   A compromise, perhaps part of the pragmatism of both our research philosophy and the construction of our identities in a university as motivated by RAE and as beset by academic career struggles as any other, is to produce this text as but one representation of the project.   Moreover, we have invited all project participants to read and comment and, if they will, to contribute to this text.   There remains, however, a disconnect between the capacity of our research methodology to hear, encourage and strengthen the voices of all involved and the opportunity to legitimize those participative voices in the closed spaces of academically acceptable texts.   

Struggling to justify this rather weak reliance on pragmatism, a return to the work of Riley et al. (op cit) encourages us to destabilize this version of the project by recognising its textuality (cf. Ashmore, 1989:18) and, thereby, by openly acknowledging contradictory and multiple voices, interpretations, and shifting sites of power.   Bourdieu (2000:19) notes that he developed his notion of ‘habitus’ to include both subjective and objective structures and thus offer us a, ‘… a durable generative principle that guides the actor in his/her new choices between alternatives that are present in a certain conjuncture’.   Siisiäinen (2000:16) suggests that it isthrough habitus that Bourdieu is able to, ‘…solve dialectically the problem of the relationship between structural conditioning and actors' freedom of choice’.    All in the project are implicated actors influenced by, but potentially and simultaneously influential inside, the political, social and cultural structures surrounding the issue of early years’ schooling.   Whilst most from the practice community have expressed reluctance if not alarm at the prospect of giving papers at academic conferences and, indeed, at co-constructing papers for publication in academic journals, we could argue, following Bourdieu’s line, that their decisions not to participate in this element of the project reflect both the structural conditions (expectations) and the project’s insistence that individuals’ freedom of choice remains paramount.    Giroux (1997:158) would point us, however, to his notions of   ‘ border pedagogy’ and teachers as ‘transformative intellectuals’ suggesting that, ‘What border pedagogy makes undeniable is the relational nature of one's own politics and personal investments. But at the same time border pedagogy emphasizes the primacy of politics in which teachers assert rather than retreat from pedagogies they utilize in dealing with the various differences represented by the students who come into their classes’.    Giroux’s critical pedagogy and ideas of border-crossing are helpful here.   If we re-trace teachers’ initial expressions of despair and frustration in the project, they were frequently focussing on what they regarded as immutable structures that necessitated conformity to and collusion with an approach to early years’ teaching and learning at odds with their own professionalism, experiences beliefs and philosophies.   Giroux   argues that: In essence, teachers become border-crossers when they legitimize excluded social narratives, experiences and voices and make them available in the classroom. In this way, teachers enhance their own political, social and intellectual efficacy. (Giroux, 1997:158)

In the East Ayrshire project we witnessed teachers and Headteachers border-crossing as they, initially, spoke the unthinkable and, swiftly thereafter, realized the same.   Thus the teacher who had persistently bemoaned her lack of physical space and blamed that for her inability to group children and locate activities in spaces that afforded flexible learning and teaching, both formal and informal, was supported by her Headteacher who, literally, sanctioned the removal of a classroom wall.   Project participants did, in Giroux’s (op. cit) terms, ‘… enhance their own political, social and intellectual efficacy’ and, critially, they redefined their roles ‘… from servants of hegemonic power to public and "transformative intellectuals"   that reject dominant forms of rationality or "regimes of truth," and commit themselves instead to furthering equality and democratic life’ as they focussed on making their young learners’ classrooms more inclusive, happier, more equitable spaces for learning .    As they empowered learners to work at a pace and level consonant with their state of readiness and grounded in an understanding that play supports learning as does a positive affective attitude to that learning, teachers articulated the ways in which they were feeling more in control of their pedagogy and classroom management, happier in their work, in general terms, more empowered.  

Clearly any participatory action research process will seek to ensure that power is ‘shared’ but the notion of sharing merits exploration.   In some respects power ebbed and flowed (borrowed from Haworth and Haddock, 1999) in this project and inevitably we witnessed degrees of role fluidity (Hamilton, 1997) but as Haworth and Haddock warn, ‘ The ebb and flow of responsibilities are often determined by the particular stage in the cycle and the various outside commitments of the participants. There is an obvious recognition of who does what best in teamwork situations although we may have to guard against this in order for true role blurring or shifting to take place’ (Haworth and Haddock, 1999).   As researchers, and as problematised above, we were especially powerful as the group came together to plan a presentation for a national education conference.   Suddenly the spotlight, literally, was upon us.   We, and apparently only we, could judge if the East Ayrshire project was worthy of inclusion at such a conference, could write a conference proposal and could lead if not, indeed, completely write/prepare and provide the presentation once it had been accepted for the conference.    It is, however, interesting to reflect on what lay behind the teachers and headteachers’ reluctance to become actively involved in the conference presentation.   It was not an unwillingness to share ideas about the project, many of the participants had been involved in events, in their own school and beyond, talking with people about ideas.   Practitioners seemed almost afraid of the audience, seeming to believe that their views would be at best tolerated and at worst patronized by a research community who held teachers in low esteem, even though they articulated a different view in public.   At this point in the project, researchers within the team were seen as different from other members of the research community, individuals were trusted but the community was not.   The project team as a group went to the conference and in a joint presentation, researchers, policy makers and practitioners contributed, although the researchers and policy makers presented the findings and teachers became involved in the following discussion.   The atmosphere following the presentation was charged, participants seemed energized by the experience.   The level of commitment to taking part was very high.   Gaventa and Cornwall (2001:71-72) remind us that power should be understood not simply through the ‘power over’ relationship but   ‘… as a more positive attribute … as the power to act’ and they note, too, that the ‘power within’ is afforded when power is seen to emerge from within individuals be that influenced or not by others.   Undoubtedly power shifted at various junctures and along different dimensions as the project progressed.  

Initial meetings occasioned a degree of skepticism and, occasionally, hostility that was, probably, discomforting for most of us.   Beckmann and Cooper (2004:5) suggest that teachers in schools are under huge pressure because of   ‘… the deprofessionalization of a vocation that has lost its autonomy   and collegiality, and become burdened by the fear of failure’.    Alongside Mestrovic’s (1997:xi) notion of ‘post-emotionalism’, in which we are ‘… entering a new phase of development in which synthetic, quasi-emotions become the basis for widespread manipulation by self, others, and the culture industry as a whole’ then initial suspicions and tensions were, perhaps, to be expected.   We, the researchers, believed deeply and were explicit from the start that we had ‘no answers’ but both the non-verbal and verbal responses at the group’s first meeting suggested that we were not to be believed.   We have noted this syndrome before, suggesting it characterizes stages of other similarly motivated change initiatives; the KMOFAP project ( Black et al., 2003); Assessment is for Learning (Hayward et al, 2004; Hayward & Hedge, 2005; Hutchinson & Hayward, 2005).   There were meetings that felt almost cathartic as people teachers spoke of lost professionalism.   One teacher said:

‘I found myself on the way to the gym to do a lesson on ball skills…..and halfway along the corridor I realized that I had forgotten the lesson notes.   I stopped the class and asked them to wait in the corridor while I went back to get them.   I had started to go back when suddenly I thought….just a minute…you’ve been teaching for twenty years…you could do that lesson standing on your head….why do you need someone else’s notes….what have they done to you.’

Conceivably our articulation of the research approach we wanted to encourage, an approach grounded in critical and participatory action research, was regarded as synthetic, premised on quasi-emotions and representing an initial mask that we might then remove to reveal the underlying intention of our work.   Immediately the lexis of the sentences above reveal inherent dichotomies.   It is true that we believed we had no answers but as true that we believed some answers were less legitimate than others.    We sought, for example, to progress the focus from a small group of children for whom early intervention was not helping to an inclusive approach from which all children might benefit: an aspiration the practice community was happy, if initially anxious, to embody.   It is true that we wanted to encourage a participatory, critical approach to change, believing it to be the best trajectory for deep, sustainable change but, certainly, we were initially located in the role of controllers.   This too is not uncomplicated.    If we were to focus on the location of power in the initial project meetings then it was delineated but interwined.   Ultimately the Headteachers would decide if they pursued this project and if they would encourage or even allow their teachers to participate.   Ultimately the teachers would decide if and how they worked on this project once they closed their classroom doors and were free to work with their classes.   Initially, though, we the researchers and, though perhaps to a lesser extent, the policy-maker, were left to outline the purpose and parameters, possibilities and pathways that the project might take.   We were committed to listening and learning, mindful of the change literature and Desforges’ (2000) admonition to consider what teachers and policy makers want and need from research and we sought to gather the views of all concerned with respect to early intervention.    However, we should not pretend that our listening and learning was unequivocally centred on and responsive to the views we heard.   We refused to answer requests to ‘tell us what to do’ or ‘tell us what you want’ and, in this respect, we were uncomfortable about seeming to retain power whilst espousing power-sharing.   Moreover we followed the maxim that our role, as researchers, was   ‘… that of facilitator who works collaboratively to involve the stakeholders in every aspect of the research process’ (Glesne and Peshkin, 1992:11).   This was, inevitably perhaps, far from straightforward initially.   

A number of researchers report that teachers often resist collaboration and, instead, prefer to work alone ( Lortie, 1975; O’Neil, 1997; Hargreaves, 1999).   Conceivably the suspicion directed by teachers and Headteachers towards us, the researchers, swiftly broke down some possible barriers enabling the ‘practitioner group’ to come together more quickly than we might have anticipated.    Focussed on organizations, Senge (1998) argues that ‘abandonment’ is critical to change, suggesting that, ‘ The first step is openness … creating an environment in which, at a critical moment, somebody with lots at stake can tell a boss, "This is not working." Building a culture in which people can express their views without fear of reprisal is a huge challenge for most organizations’.   From the first meeting the practice community apparently felt quite willing to express their views though, significantly, those views were grounded predominantly in what was not working in early intervention.   Headteachers and teachers stressed the inflexible curriculum and ways in which it forced children not ‘ready’ into prescribed activity, inadequate staffing, lack of space in classrooms and policy that seemed to have ignored both research and what they, the teachers, ‘knew’.  

During the second, and certainly the third, meeting of the project, the practice community visibly relaxed and, we think, started to believe that we really were not going to tell them what to do or how to do it because we could not do so rather than because we simply chose not to do so.   Our interaction had focussed mainly on asking questions, seeking clarification and alternative views, providing research evidence that corroborated or challenged teachers’ views and claims.   The dynamic now switched and we were being asked questions by the practice community.   Although not all were yet comfortable with us and, undoubtedly, some suspicion remained with one teacher saying we ‘were on a different planet’ for example, we had moved from a space and place of hostility and suspicion to, in Senge’s (2001) terms, a more ‘generative space’.    According to Senge (2001), ‘ People know when they are in a "generative space." They sense the excitement, trust, and openness to new ideas combined with commitment to results’.   Participants started to share ideas, to think-aloud, to talk of change as the art of the possible rather than to bemoan the impossible.   De Lauretis (1984:159) reminds us that,  'For each person, therefore, subjectivity is an ongoing construction, not a fixed point of departure or arrival from which one then interacts with the world. On the contrary, it is the effect of that interaction - which I call experience; and thus it is produced not by external ideas, values, or material causes, but by one’s personal, subjective, engagement in the practices, discourses and institutions that lend significance (value, meaning and affect) to the events of the world' .    Apparently, as noted vociferously by the project participants, feeling their experience was valued, feeling they were not alone, feeling change could occur, realising they could regain control of their classrooms and their curricula and still remain on the right side of policy-makers and HMIE was changing their subjectivity, and their sense of agency.   The group rarely ceased to be passionate but that passion switched from negative hostility and a sense of impotent despair to expressions of hope, mutual encouragement and belief that not only was change possible but that it was working to the benefit of all.   Foster (2000), writing from the commercial world, notes that, 'Even with a clear purpose, a perfect mix of people and a well-defined process a team can underperform if there is no passion.   Passion is emotion that drives team members to achieve high levels of performance.   Passion is developed through a belief in both the outcomes of activity, participation with and faith in others in the team and the benefits for team members associated with being’.    Such passion as was evident in project meetings was occasionally discomforting.   Zembylas and Vrasidas (2004:119), citing Zembylas and Boler’s (2002) notion of an advantageous   ‘pedagogy of discomfort’ suggest that this requires, ‘… both the educator and students to move outside of their comfort zones’ because, ‘… effective analysis of ideology requires not only rational inquiry and dialogue but also excavation of the emotional investments that underlie any ideological commitment’.    This project evinced passion and what, adapting Zembylas and Boler’s concept, we will call ‘a zone of discomfort’.    It sought to unravel the fabric of deeply held but rarely articulated assumptions, frustrations, beliefs and aspirations.    It sought to do so in a way that accepted, sought to make explicit, and drew from the emotional investments and complexities that underpinned where people in the project were starting from, where they wanted to move to and how they felt change might be realized.   As researchers we experienced the emotional highs and lows of the project as deeply as those from the practice and policy communities though, unsurprisingly, the two of us occasionally experienced different negative concerns and positive reactions at different points and for differing reasons.   Just as we would not, of course, suggest that a community will think alike or react and behave homogeneously, we would suggest that a participatory, inclusive, critical action research community, such as that formed here from practice, research and research communities, should afford spaces for individuals within and across their sub-communities in order that we balance the individual with the collective.  

Outlining lessons learned from participatory research approaches, Gaventa and Cornwall (2001: 78) suggest that scaling-up such approaches will necessitate attention to ‘… personal attitude and behaviour change’ as much as to organizational change.   Moreover, and of particular import for this project as East Ayrshire and other education authorities look to expand it, they (Gaventa and Cornwall, op cit) suggest that we need to think about ‘taking time to go slow’ noting that:

There is a tendency when participatory approaches are adopted on a large scale to rush them into place quickly… Those programmes which have gone to scale most effectively, in fact, have done so horizontally – rather than vertically. That is, they have included processes of peer-to-peer sharing, of building demonstration projects which then spread to other areas, and of including time for learning, testing and continuous improvement in the process.   Gaventa and Cornwall, 2001: 78      

In the conference presentation for this paper we will begin to identify what we have learned from our experience in East Ayshire and will consider possible implications for other participatively focussed change initiatives, striving to develop, sustain and to grow ideas and practices in ways that reflect an inclusive synergy.   Finally, we will reflect on whether or not we believe inclusive synergy in educational innovation to be possible.  

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