Chapter 6: Flexible, Reciprocal, and On-Site Research: Developing Praxis That Productively Challenges All Participants in a U.S. Urban School Community

In this chapter, the authors present a case study collaboratively researched by a team consisting of two teacher educators and one teacher. Both the university and school research partners were from public institutions in the same urban location, both greatly influenced over the past decade by accountability practices related to NCLB policy as well as narrowing of opportunities for English-language learners through the adoption of “English-Only” legislation. The chapter argues for a reciprocal, flexible, and locally focused research that values the broad range of perspectives in an educational setting, taking care to ask critical questions of the power relationships between the university, school district, teachers, and students as it evolves. The case study offered here uses critical participatory action research (Kemmis & McTaggert, 2000) as well as mediated discourse analysis (Scollan & Scollan, 2004) methods to explore the power of knowledge generated through the shared contributions of teachers, students, and university-based teacher educators in this urban school community. The methodology afforded researchers an opportunity to both understand and demonstrate a developing “nexus of practice”; that is, a fluid building of a culture in which all participants, teachers, teacher educators, and students participated as both experts and novices as they navigated the political environment of a “turnaround school” in a district where NCLB and Race to the Top legislation has greatly influenced school reform.