The Connection of Practice and Research

This is my first post for the summer and the 5360 class (it is not the one on my view of the three main issues in composition...yet), and I want to respond to something I thought of as I read the first chapter in Harris' A Teaching Subject. My own interest in reflection as a "teaching practice" and mode of learning is closely entwined with beliefs and assumptions about how we learn and even how the brain works. As a teacher, when I incorporate reflective assignments between drafts, I do so out of a commitment to those beliefs and assumptions.

But what grounds do those beliefs and assumptions have? What support do I have for the theory(ies) that undergird my practice in this area? What evidence do I have that what I think happens via reflection actually happens? What research supports this practice?

The questions outlined here will be the focus of my inquiry this summer. What are the grounds (specifically emperical grounds) for reflection as a teaching practice?

Now to what I found REALLY interesting from Harris. In his chapter on "Growth," Harris outlines the emergence of a new teaching practice in composition championed by (among others) Britton and Moffet that language learning (literacy competency) evolves and can be developed in a certain way. They saw student's growth occuring in a movement from expressive to more interpretive/argumentative writing. (I still basically structure my Freshman Comp I class along Moffet's progression.) While I found this history of "the growth movement" very illuminating on my own practice, I was struck by how this perspective on teaching practice gained currency:

"Britton influenced their work not because he offered an unbiased view of how children learn to use language but because he was able to make a convincing case for the value of a certain kind of learning. His theory described not what was but what ought to be; it was justified through the teaching practice it gave rise to. And so, even while he failed to offer the map of language learning that he promised that he promised, Britton still succeeded in changing how many teachers worked in their classrooms." (9)

What Harris points out here about Britton and the "growth movement's" assendence is how it happened based on argument and rhetoric. Britton was able to make a good case, AND his case was not founded in emperical research full of research studies and statistics "proving" his theory. His arguments tapped in to other foundations for belief connected to teachers lived experience in the classroom (their practice).

I am interested in this dynamic of influence on practice because I believe the use of reflection is similarly based upon these kinds of practice-based beliefs rather than in emperical research. Yancey has influenced so many teachers in regards to reflection not because of reseach but because of arguments and connections she makes to what teachers also hold to be true about teaching and learning.

So I guess I am getting at one of the curious features of teaching practice--that we as teachers base what we do often on intuition, influence, and what we think works in the classroom (and what we have experienced that we perceive as working). Given this climate and nature of the basis for teaching practice, what role can research play? What difference can it make? I am after engaging in research on a particular teaching practice based on what I will call "teaching sense" (as in a teacher's "common sense" or common place). How can I test or interrigate this "teaching sense?" What role can research play given this nature of belief?