ERNWACA-NIGERIA

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ERNWACA-NIGERIA First Annual Café LAGOS 17
February 2005       THE PAF APPROACH TO
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN
EDUCATION   By Pai OBANYA 1
 
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FOCUS OF THE DISCUSSION

• Rationale for Choice of Subject
• R D in the Field of Education
• PAF A Triplet Concept
• Possible Applications of the PAF Methodology in
  the Nigerian Context
• Reflexive Conclusions

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RATIONALE FOR CHOICE OF SUBJECT

• DEMYSTIFYING RESEARCH
• ENHANCING RESEARCH COMMUNICATION
• ENHANCING RESEARCH MARKETING
• BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE GENERATION AND
  KNOWLEDGE UTILISATION
• MAKING NIGERIAN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH MORE
  DEVELOPMENT-ORIENTED

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R D PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE

• The heart and soul of todays knowledge based
  industrial and commercial production
• Knowledge and research-supported innovation for
  global competitiveness
• Going beyond present scenario to next
  generation products and services
• Focus also on PROCESSES and HUMAN CAPITAL

• Increasing collaboration with basic research to
  turn results into marketable products
• Research planning beginning from the end
• Greater move towards demystificationmore
  participatory approaches
• EDUCATION needs R D

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PAF A TRIPLET CONCEPT

• RESEARCH THAT IS
• PARTICIPATORY
• ACTION
• FORMATIVE

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ACTION RESEARCH

• Origins traced to the work of Kurt Lewin (1958)
  rehabilitating persons affected by World War
  IIIn use in education research since the 1970s
• its definitions are adequately captured in the
  following formulations from a variety of sources
•          Inquiry in the context of focussed
  efforts to improve the quality of an organisation
  and its performance
•          Typically designed and conducted by
  practioners who analyse data to improve their own
  practice
•          A process designed to empower all
  participants in the educational process with the
  means to improve the practices conducted within
  the educational experience
•          All participants are knowing and active
  members of the research process
• The systematic study of attempts to improve
  educational practice by groups of participants by
  means of their own practical actions and by means
  of their own reflections upon the effect of those
  actions

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MAIN FEATURES OF ACTION RESEARCH

• Undertaken by the real actors. These could be
  teachers, inspectors, curriculum developers,
  material designers interested in improving the
  effectiveness and quality of their work..
•  
• Focus on self-reflective inquiry. This is seen
  in the typical design (called a PROTOCOL), which
  tends to approximate the following pattern
• Reconnaissance and General Plan an understanding
  of a problem is developed and an intervention
  plan is adopted
• Action the intervention is carried out
• Observation data are collected in various forms
• Reflection and Revision the cyclic process goes
  on until a sufficient understanding of the
  problems and issues is achieved.
•  

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PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH

• ORIGINS attributed to Paulo Freires Pedagogy of
  the Oppressed 1968
• MAIN FEATURES
• Narrowing the distance between the researcher and
  the researched
• Action learning on the part of all those involved
  in research, usually through iterative
  experiments
• A wide array of techniques to enable the ordinary
  person to participate fully in research focus
  group sessions, record keeping, timelines,
  participatory mapping and modelling, etc. These
  techniques are becoming increasingly standardised

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PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH

• Participatory Research has a lot in common with
  Action Research. It is also a process of
  stimulating people to collect information,
  reflect on and analyse it, use the results as a
  knowledge base for improvement, and wherever
  possible document the results for wider
  dissemination or the creation of peoples
  literature
• However, Participatory Research in its true form
  seems to focus more on larger scale
  socio-economic development projects, with
  external support and the use of outside
  professionals.
• The role of the outside professional should
  ideally be limited to helping the beneficiaries
  to articulate their problems, assisting with the
  choice of research methods, exposing them to
  outside experiences, and improving their access
  to external information.
•  The term PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH is a
  reaction against top-down research that
  conducts research at the top and implements its
  findings below. It is an experiment on
  side-side research

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MORE ON ACTION RESEARCH

• Ø     1. People are the subjects of research the
  dichotomy between object and subject is broken
• Ø     2. People themselves collect data and then
  process and analyse the information using methods
  easily understood by them
• Ø      3.The knowledge generated is used to
  promote actions for change
• Ø     4. The knowledge belongs to the people and
  they are the primary beneficiaries of knowledge
  creation
• Ø     5. Research and action are inseparable
  they represent a unity
• Ø      6.SUCH PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH MAY NOT GET
  WRITTEN UP. ORAL AND VISUAL METHODS CHARACTERISE
  THIS METHOD OF KNOWLEDGE CREATION. SOME OF THE
  MATERIAL COULD BE TRANSLATED INTO PICTURES,
  CARTOONS, GRAPHICS AND SLOGANS, WHICH MAY BE A
  MORE EFFECTIVE METHOD OF COMMUNICATION.  

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FORMATIVE RESEARCH

• Formative Research, also known as field or
  usability testing) is a methodology for improving
  educational practices, and it entails seeking
  answers to such questions as
• What is working?
• What needs to be improved?
• How can it be improved? 
• Formative research can occur before a programme
  is designed and implemented, or while a programme
  is being implemented.
• The tendency these days is for Formative Research
  to come closer to the Participatory Action
  Research mode.
• Thus, while complex research designs are still
  in use, there is a strong shift towards rapid
  assessment procedures (or RAP). Also, in most
  cases, researchers are teaming up with
  practitioners to conduct formative research.
•  

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TOOLS FOR FORMATIVE RESEARCH

•          Case Studies on situations designed by
  the researcher or naturalistic situations
  (already occurring in the educational
  environment). Naturalistic formative case studies
  can also be either in vivo (arising during the
  conduct of the research) or post facto (arising
  from what had already happened)
•          Observations of situations as they
  occur, as much as possible in carefully
  structured situations
•          Documents from a variety of sources,
  and in a variety of forms, with content analysis
  based on the key questions being raised by the
  formative evaluation/research project
•          Interviews of key informants
•          Focused discussions with key
  stakeholders, with emphasis on seeking consensus
  and congruence
• MOST FORMATIVE RESEARCH STUDIES THESE DAYS WOULD
  USE A MULTIPLE METHODOLOGY PROCEDURE.
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APPLICABILITY IN THE NIGERIAN SETTING

• THE CHALLENGE
• to develop a framework for applying PAF as an R
  D tool in the Nigerian education setting. This
  should in fact be a new direction for educational
  research in Nigeria and for most of Africa, where
  it is often alleged that the knowledge base for
  education sector development work is weak, where
  the relevance of most of existing research is
  being seriously questioned, and where research
  capacity requires both strengthening and
  broadening.
• CHOICE CRITERIA 
• 1. Of the myriad of problems facing Education in
  our immediate environment, which exactly should
  be our entry points to PAF-type research?
• 2.Which of the problems, if correctly addressed,
  would have a positive multiplier effect on most
  of the others?

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FIRST KEY AREA FOR PAF-TYPE RESEARCH

• AT THE MACRO POLICY LEVEL, THE UBE (UNIVERSAL
  BASIC EDUCATION) PROGRAMME
• PAF-type research on UBE can be justified on the
  ground that it has been the real major education
  policy move by the present administration. It is
  also the nations answer to the global challenge
  of EFA (Education for All) by the year 2015. A
  PAF-type R D would
•          Mobilize stakeholders to seek to
  understand what the programme is all about
•          Empower them to articulate their hopes
  and fears on the programme goals
•          Generate a wealth of knowledge on what
  is working, what is not, what can be meaningfully
  done to put things back on track, where necessary
• Develop community feedback mechanisms for sharing
  knowledge on the project, in order to make it
  work, and to adapt implementation strategies to
  changing conditions

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SECOND KEY AREA OF APPLICATION

•          AT THE SYSTEMS LEVEL, PAF RESEARCH
  STRATEGIES AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF TEACHER
  EDUCATION (PRE-SERVICE AND IN-SERVICE)
• 1.Teachers have always been the researched, and
  very rarely the researchers. It is also well
  known that educational research has always been
  top-down and never side-side.
• 2. In addition, research language has always been
  different from teacher language.  
• 3.For teachers to become better able to effect
  positive change in schools, the prevailing
  situation will have to change, and a PAF approach
  to educational research would be one way of
  effecting the much desired change.
• 4. For this to happen, prospective and practising
  teachers would have to learn PAF (internalise its
  basics) through full involvement in PAF.

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THIRD AREA OF APPLICATION

• AT THE INSTITUTIONAL LEVEL, THE PRACTICE OF
  CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT
• This is a pedagogical principle that was intended
  to improve learning outcomes, through greater
  teacher attention to the needs of the individual
  learner.
• Its development was however another top-down'
  affair.
• No account was taken of teachers intuitive
  knowledge and practice of continuous assessment.
• The guidelines for its implementation were also
  in the form of unilateral monologues.
• The result is that continuous assessment became
  first mere continuous testing, later continuous
  cheating, and now continuous harassment.
• A PAF research and development strategy is very
  likely to contribute to reversing that trend,
  since the process would narrow the distance
  between researcher and practioners

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FINALLY, FINALLY and FINALLY

• In the spirit of the PAF philosophy that
  motivated it, this discussion has not said it
  all.
• It has simply made some attempts to challenge us
  all to find ways of turning research in Education
  into an activity to be shared by all, with fruits
  that can be used for the benefits of all.
• The challenge is also one of turning researchers
  into real learners, who should learn from the
  real world of Education.
• It is also a challenge of improving the
  practical utility of research projects in
  Education, and of communicating research findings
  in a more digestible form.
• PAF does not exclude more robust approaches to
  educational research.
• It is only saying that the robustness of
  research can be enhanced by its utility to the
  practioners, and to the stakeholders.
• PAF can in fact enhance the international
  acceptability of educational research efforts.
• Researchers who are able to endure the rigours of
  PAF would in fact be writing research papers that
  do not simply follow the well-trodden path
• They will in addition be making discoveries that
  have been waiting for creative educational
  researchers for a long time.
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THANK YOU FOR A WONDERFUL OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN