My fellow Team Ziggy Stardust member Susannah Simmons shared Karen Goodnough’s article with me because she thought I would be interested in “The Role of Action Research in Transforming Teacher Identity.” Since I am a teacher and jumping into the action research pool this semester, I am definitely interested in learning more about how teacher identity evolves. Thanks for sharing, Susannah!
Goodnough’s Research Question
How can an ecological perspective provide insight into how teachers’ identities are formed and reformed in the context of teacher-centered action research communities of practice?
Although I am not researching teacher identity, Goodnough’s (2009) question gives me insight into how to research identity in general. First, I learned what it means to research through an ecological lens or using an ecological metaphor (Weaver-Hightower, 2008), which I think can help me. Researching through an ecological lens means to consider the project context’s ecology or the relationships among individuals, groups, and environments. The ecological metaphor has four parts that action researchers should identify and observe.
- Actors
- Relationships
- Environments and structures
- Processes
Learning about this metaphor is helpful to me when thinking about the context of my study. I feel like this perspective gives me a framework I can use to organize my thinking as I further develop my research proposal and report.
Data Collection Methods
Goodnough (2009) uses a variety of data collection methods and tools. When teachers met, Goodnough (2009) or her research assistant recorded detailed field notes before and after meeting sessions. Like my previous article “Going on Beyond Zebra,” Goodnough (2009) collects data before, during, and after each exercise. Additionally, Goodnough (2009) uses “semi-structured interviews” with teacher participants at the start and end of each school year. This is more evidence for me to incorporate tools to collect pre and post data. As I observe more researchers collecting data at specific points in the action research process, I feel like it is a good idea to adopt similar practices.
Goodnough (2009) also presents lessons, student work, and electronic teacher journal entries as other data collection tools. When I was reading this section, it was clear to me that it can be helpful to have multiple sources of data when trying to observe emerging trends and themes. It showed me how multiple data collection tools strengthens the validity and reliability of the data a researcher collects because there is evidence of one’s findings in multiple types of tools.
Another aspect of Goodnough’s (2009) project I found interesting was the fact that only “50% of the teachers were observed on at least three occasions.” More teachers were not observed because they taught in districts several hours from the university. It was interesting to me because it helped me realize a researcher must be realistic about their project and their limits and be able to identify when they are stretching themselves too thin.
Data Analysis
To analyze her data, Goodnough (2009) used Wenger’s (1998) three modes of belonging (to a community of practice) to categorize and organize data collected from the aforementioned tools. The three modes of belonging include engagement, imagination, and alignment (Wenger, 1998). By observing how Goodnough (2009) organized data from multiple collection methods at different times in the process, I have a better understanding of how I can synthesize the data I collect. I feel overwhelmed by how I am going to synthesize the data so that I can find common themes, but I feel a little more at ease knowing I just need to find a framework like Goodnough (2009) used to categorize and organize my data. As I continue to observe other action researchers, I gain more clarity into the actions I must take to get my project off the ground.
Wes Akers 
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