Engaging in Practitioner Research

Our teacher, Mr. Crane, and our lawyer, Ms. Drake, seemed to decide rather easily and quickly how to get started in their research efforts, readily determining a focus and plan of action. But they were fictitious, of course, and most professionals approach this task with a good deal more reticence. Most have little or no experience in research of this kind and cannot fall back on past experience or on observing others going through the process. Perhaps the best advice at this stage is to just try something to get into the pattern and build experience through practice, even if the focus and the plan do not seem vital to one's work.

Choosing Study Questions

As mentioned previously, an important element in initiating practitioner research is the selection of a focus and formulation of a plan. This is achieved by deciding on an area of interest and a potential question or two that can guide the study. Those new to practitioner research are surprised how quickly the process moves along once a focus and questions are chosen. To get started, professionals may be able to find an area of interest from those suggested in Table 12.2. Two sample questions have been provided for each area as initial ideas for planning, but these would need to be revised to suit each professional's work characteristics.

Reviewing this list of focus areas and sample questions might offer a hospital administrator, for example, the opportunity to select the time focus area in order to pursue a practitioner research plan to make better use of patients' wait time in the emergency room. In another case, a librarian may choose the talk focus area to analyze what information he most often offers patrons during a given workday. And a museum guide could decide to study her communication effectiveness by getting feedback on the clarity of her spoken and written material. Although professionals may require at least some training or guidance before initiating practitioner research, and even though they may well need some advice along the way, most will find that the experience itself will provide nearly all of the direction needed.

Table 12.2 Eight Practitioner Research Areas with Sample Questions

Data Collection

A key element in the practitioner research cycle is that of selecting which data to use in answering study questions. Although specific details for collecting data are presented in Chapter Four, some ideas specifically useful for practitioner researchers should assist those who are relatively new to data collection. Data collection is, first of all, a deliberative process that requires some practical problem solving. There are very few settled rules about what instruments to use or what kinds of observations to employ. One important guideline is that open-ended tools better serve the purpose of capturing the complexity of the work environment, but more closed-ended instruments are very efficient ways of collecting corroborating information. Therefore, an open-ended questionnaire question might ask: “What are all the ways the intake experience could be improved?” But a questionnaire that asks audiences to rate experiences on a one-to-five scale is easier for audiences to complete and for researchers to summarize. One can use the first to collect in-depth data occasionally and the latter more frequently, allowing both to be useful sources of information.

Initially, as a rule of thumb, the practitioner researcher asks two basic questions as data collection methods and tools are determined:

1. Which data sources are probably the most useful in order to best answer the study questions? (Will colleagues, clients, support staff, or even outsiders have the best information?)
2. Which instruments or procedures can be used with the least intrusion? (Are observations best, or will questionnaires be better? Perhaps interviews are better yet.)

One seldom-used approach that offers insight into practitioner work is called stimulated recall. The idea is this: during stimulated recall (S-R) the interviewer makes notes about the practitioner's decisions during work, then stimulates the practitioner's recall about each decision and asks why it was made. This technique is particularly appropriate for such professionals as teachers, counselors, and community organizers who work in hectic interactive environments with audiences. It allows professionals to carefully review their work-related decision making but does not interrupt the work process. Also, it can offer a way to discover decision areas of focus for additional practitioner research. Shavelson and Stern (1981) explained this idea as an approach that demands thorough and deep reflections on the part of the practitioner by studying audio- or videotapes of practice, followed by a question-and-answer session in which practitioners reflect on why decisions were made. The interviewer is ordinarily a colleague who, along with the interviewee, has read about and discussed how the stimulated recall technique is applied.

Suppose that a social worker wanted to find out more about how she makes decisions during sessions with clients. The social worker would request a colleague to assist, make an audiotape of a session with a client, and then follow the guidelines below to gather insight into her professional decision making.

1. The colleague assistant (CA) carefully listens to the tape, writing down anything that even remotely sounds like a decision the social worker (SW) made, either in a planned way or “on the run.” Tape recorder counter numbers are used to catalog where in the session the decision occurred if review is needed.
2. The SW listens to the tape to refresh her memory about the client session.
3. The CA and the SW review the purpose of S-R before beginning the process:
   1. The CA and the SW are primarily interested in decisions made that seem important, and in why each decision may have been made if the SW knows or can puzzle it out.
   2. Some decisions could be typical and even planned for, whereas others may be made spontaneously during the client session.
   3. To begin the S-R process and for each succeeding section of the taped client session, the SW first attempts to identify and give reasons for each decision she hears, keeping in mind that nothing should be considered too unimportant to address.
   4. The CA then follows up in each segment by reminding the SW of decisions she did not address (hence, S-R), asking for reasons behind them.
   5. The SW is reminded that it is altogether reasonable that she does not know why any number of decisions were made, but it is useful to know about these and whether they are important enough to reflect on for future sessions.
4. The SW and CA now listen to a beginning segment of the taped client session, keeping it to a minute or two unless there are very few decisions made. (This S-R session should be tape-recorded so that the SW can review the discussion for future practitioner planning and action.)
5. The SW now comments on decisions and possible reasons, and then the CA asks for clarification or stimulates the recall of the SW by pointing out decisions.
6. The process is repeated as time and energy allow, but most who experience S-R are surprised by how little is covered due to the volume of decisions that occur in most practitioner work. Teachers have found that reflecting on fifteen to twenty minutes of the taped teaching session requires up to ninety minutes of S-R (Lapan, 1986).
7. The SW is now on her own to decide what changes to make as a result of the S-R experience using the rich data she has gained, and she can review the taped S-R interview as needed.

Table 12.3, which shows a small excerpt from an actual S-R interview with a well-respected teacher reflecting on her decisions, can offer a clearer idea about how S-R works.

Table 12.3 Example of an Actual Stimulated Recall Interview

In Table 12.3 the teacher is able to reflect on two decisions made during less than two minutes of her instruction (who to call on and what question to ask first). In this example at least, she had reasons for making these choices, but finds the first one revealing—it sounds as if she had not really reflected on it before. The teacher and the interviewer would continue this S-R process, leaving the teacher afterward to reflect and reconsider her decision making in subsequent lessons, determining to continue using some strategies while changing others. In the first twenty minutes of this lesson there were more than a hundred decisions this teacher discovered and reviewed.

This kind of self-reflection offers rich topics for the study of practice, but it is even more useful for identifying new avenues for self-study. Professionals who have engaged in the S-R process report that it is a thorough experience in reflection, but one that is both time-consuming and energy draining. They also have said that S-R's value is not readily evident, that practitioners need to go through the process to recognize its contribution. Insights gained are well worth the effort, but S-R is not a procedure that can be repeated very often. It is no surprise that it is an underused although profoundly revealing tool.

Table 12.4 provides a quick review of other methods of data collection for the practitioner researcher. Again, rereading Chapter Four of this text will provide much more detail about the selection and use of various data collection procedures and tools. There is, however, one caution that practitioner researchers should heed. As most investigators ought to know, there is an idea that has developed over the years from the field of ethnography known as the law of the instrument. This refers to the tendency for researchers to continually reuse a measure or protocol they really like. The motivation may be that it required considerable effort to develop initially and worked well when applied in the initial study. Indeed, it may have suited the first investigation quite well, but does it really make sense in every study? Even though requiring extra effort, it is usually best to reconsider for each study what kind of instruments and procedures make the most sense when linked to the study's set of research questions.

Table 12.4 Other Methods of Data Collection for Practitioner Research

Structure for Practitioner Research

Most of the qualitative research approaches included in this text are described for those who may never design and conduct their own research. This chapter, however, as an exception to that theme, encourages professionals to engage in a kind of research that is both relevant and effective in regard to reflective practice and the promise of improvement. As noted earlier, the best-performing professionals are those who examine their work through careful and deliberate reflection and reformulate how to proceed even more successfully as a result (Schön, 1983). Kemmis (2009) describes this reformation and self-reflection as a “reversal of consciousness” (p. 465) that leads to a deepened self-awareness and self-presence in one's daily work that encourages ongoing inspection and reflection.

There are, of course, many aspects or areas that can be chosen for examination in applying practitioner research. In initiating a study, one important principle to follow is to focus on one's own behavior and performance in the workplace. All too often those who begin this kind of research readily shine the investigative light on others, perhaps observing clients in group therapy or examining student learning after particularly important lessons. Although clients, students, patients, and other audiences are vital data sources for practitioner research studies, it is the lawyer, nurse, social worker, counselor, teacher, or physician who most influences these audiences and who should be the primary study focus.

The practitioner researcher should begin by selecting an issue or topic of interest, one that is important enough to spend valuable time and energy investigating. But, as emphasized earlier in the chapter, an important second principle is to start with something. It is far too tempting, given the feeling of risk associated with self-study, to contemplate rather than act. One's selection of a focus may not be the most important element of practice, but it gets the research under way. Experiencing the process at the early stages is more important than the actual focus itself. This experience increases a professional's grasp of how this kind of research operates and will sharpen the researcher's ability to improve in choosing focus areas as the cycles unfold. It is also reasonable that the practitioner researcher may change the focus or at least adjust its definition before or during the planning or other phases of the research. As an overview of this methodology, some general guidelines and suggestions in Exhibit 12.2 will be useful reference points during all phases of the study.