This section provides an overview of the papers included here, current projects, and "philosophy" and
principlesthat guide my research agenda.
principlesthat guide my research agenda.
Over the last few years I have tried to maintain a mosaic-like research and writing agenda in which I try to integrate individual projects
that are often independent of each other but when viewed together provide a richer image of what I am trying to become as a scholar
and teacher. The agenda is typically four-fold in nature and, most likely, I am at some stage of a project in each of those four areas at
any given time. While that might seem too scattered or fragmented for some people, it is a concession to my need to have several
things going at once and the reluctance to give up my reading and thinking in any one area for any amount of time.
Primary Agenda
First, I maintain one dominant, long-term project that expands as new questions or problems arise in that area. For much of the past decade that project has
been in the area of Professional Development School (PDS) research. That project spun off into a number of conference papers and culminated in the book, Professional Development Schools: Lessons from the Field (see below). I am currently focusing on two primary areas of research. The first is an outgrowth of
my experience as a Fulbright Scholar and is focused on promoting civic engagement among young people. The second involves looking at the role of "place"
in conducting and interpreting educational research on school/university partnerships and interaction.
Exploratory Agenda
This is what I call my "for fun" projects. These projects explore and integrate my various areas of interest -- theology, aesthetics, popular culture, the arts --
into education-related topics. I cannot consider myself a "scholar" in any one of those areas but I think I can safely say I'm a well-informed fan or patron of
those disciplines. To whatever extent that's true I try to use those disciplines to inform the way we analyze issues and conditions in schools and teacher
education. For instance, one of my favorite articles to write was one in which I used a metaphor involving the blues and blues musicians to explore the nature
of teachers and their work. Another example is, "The Fundamentalist Tendencies of the New Curricularists", in which I used the characteristics of
fundamentalist theology to critique the dogmatic aspects of postmodern/critical thought (Curriculum and Teaching Dialogue, Vol. 12, nos. 1 & 2, pp. 37-52).
Currently I have turned my interests in this category toward the performing arts and am exploring what we might learn from choreography, Boal's "Theatre of the Oppressed" and so on.
Scholarship of Teaching
I also try to maintain my commitment to and interest in teaching through self-study projects in which I explore some dimension of my practice in a scholarly
way. At times this agenda overlaps with the others (my PDS research has been incorporated into graduate teacher education courses or research
methodology courses and methods of aesthetic education I learned at the Lincoln Center Institutes have been integrated into various classes) but other projects
take their own direction. The largest of those is the Trio-Ethnography that has its own link on this site. Much of this work can now be found in a chapter of the
newly released book, Duoethnography: Dialogic Methods for Social, Health, and Educational Research (Left Coast Press). I have extended that work now into
how duoethnography can be used with preservice teachers (see below) and some of the challenges involved with duoethnography as a research method -- the results of which are going to be in an upcoming article in International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education.
Most recently, I am writing about preservice teacher beliefs and thinking. Three projects in vein:
1. Using of preservice teacher storytelling as a way of helping induct new teacher education students into the PDS experience,
2. Using of duoethnography to explore preservice teacher identity, and with more directed, systematic and developmental ways to help teacher education students create belief statements (the results of this will be a chapter in an upcoming book on using duo ethnography in teacher education
3. How the preservice teacher belief statement can be used in a more deliberate and meaningful way (I'm writing the results of this to submit for publication soon)
Serendipitous and Opportunistic Projects
Writing in this area is prompted by one of two events. "Opportunistic" projects are those that arise when I am invited to take part in other people's work --
grant-related research, encyclopedia entries, book chapters. Those projects are always related to areas of expertise and interest but they were not initiated
by me and may not fit into any other current interest. The other types of research/writing that I put into this category are things like writing op-ed pieces for newspapers or interesting research opportunities that arise as a result of something we are doing in a class or in conversation with a colleague.
that are often independent of each other but when viewed together provide a richer image of what I am trying to become as a scholar
and teacher. The agenda is typically four-fold in nature and, most likely, I am at some stage of a project in each of those four areas at
any given time. While that might seem too scattered or fragmented for some people, it is a concession to my need to have several
things going at once and the reluctance to give up my reading and thinking in any one area for any amount of time.
Primary Agenda
First, I maintain one dominant, long-term project that expands as new questions or problems arise in that area. For much of the past decade that project has
been in the area of Professional Development School (PDS) research. That project spun off into a number of conference papers and culminated in the book, Professional Development Schools: Lessons from the Field (see below). I am currently focusing on two primary areas of research. The first is an outgrowth of
my experience as a Fulbright Scholar and is focused on promoting civic engagement among young people. The second involves looking at the role of "place"
in conducting and interpreting educational research on school/university partnerships and interaction.
Exploratory Agenda
This is what I call my "for fun" projects. These projects explore and integrate my various areas of interest -- theology, aesthetics, popular culture, the arts --
into education-related topics. I cannot consider myself a "scholar" in any one of those areas but I think I can safely say I'm a well-informed fan or patron of
those disciplines. To whatever extent that's true I try to use those disciplines to inform the way we analyze issues and conditions in schools and teacher
education. For instance, one of my favorite articles to write was one in which I used a metaphor involving the blues and blues musicians to explore the nature
of teachers and their work. Another example is, "The Fundamentalist Tendencies of the New Curricularists", in which I used the characteristics of
fundamentalist theology to critique the dogmatic aspects of postmodern/critical thought (Curriculum and Teaching Dialogue, Vol. 12, nos. 1 & 2, pp. 37-52).
Currently I have turned my interests in this category toward the performing arts and am exploring what we might learn from choreography, Boal's "Theatre of the Oppressed" and so on.
Scholarship of Teaching
I also try to maintain my commitment to and interest in teaching through self-study projects in which I explore some dimension of my practice in a scholarly
way. At times this agenda overlaps with the others (my PDS research has been incorporated into graduate teacher education courses or research
methodology courses and methods of aesthetic education I learned at the Lincoln Center Institutes have been integrated into various classes) but other projects
take their own direction. The largest of those is the Trio-Ethnography that has its own link on this site. Much of this work can now be found in a chapter of the
newly released book, Duoethnography: Dialogic Methods for Social, Health, and Educational Research (Left Coast Press). I have extended that work now into
how duoethnography can be used with preservice teachers (see below) and some of the challenges involved with duoethnography as a research method -- the results of which are going to be in an upcoming article in International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education.
Most recently, I am writing about preservice teacher beliefs and thinking. Three projects in vein:
1. Using of preservice teacher storytelling as a way of helping induct new teacher education students into the PDS experience,
2. Using of duoethnography to explore preservice teacher identity, and with more directed, systematic and developmental ways to help teacher education students create belief statements (the results of this will be a chapter in an upcoming book on using duo ethnography in teacher education
3. How the preservice teacher belief statement can be used in a more deliberate and meaningful way (I'm writing the results of this to submit for publication soon)
Serendipitous and Opportunistic Projects
Writing in this area is prompted by one of two events. "Opportunistic" projects are those that arise when I am invited to take part in other people's work --
grant-related research, encyclopedia entries, book chapters. Those projects are always related to areas of expertise and interest but they were not initiated
by me and may not fit into any other current interest. The other types of research/writing that I put into this category are things like writing op-ed pieces for newspapers or interesting research opportunities that arise as a result of something we are doing in a class or in conversation with a colleague.
2nd edition of the collection co-edited with my wife, Donna Adair Breault. A collection of essays arranged thematically according to Dewey's thinking on democracy and education, as well as on current issues like high stakes assessment. Contributors both world-renown Dewey scholars and classroom teachers.
This book is the culmination of more than 10 years of research on the literature related to professional development schools (PDS). The research reviewed more than 350 articles and papers on all aspects of the PDS experience with an emphasis on the warrantability, meaningfulness and quality of research in those writings.
My chapter in this book (edited by Joe Norris, Rick Sawyer & Darren Lund), "Seeking Rigor in the Search for Identity", was my first published work on duoethnography. It is also a report on the first "trio-ethnography" and outlined my use of web-based qualitative research reporting. The full, web-based version of the trio-ethnography is included in this website. The link can be found below.
Trioethnography (fully linked project)
Trioethnography (fully linked project)