Practitioner Research in Children 1st: Cohorts, Networks and Systems

IRISS have announced the publication of Practitioner Research in Children 1st: Cohorts, Networks and Systems by Neil Lunt, Ian Shaw and Fiona Mitchell. This evaluation explores the practitioner research initiative of Children 1st and the Glasgow School of Social Work which was aimed at supporting practitioners to develop and undertake their own small-scale research projects.

The project sought to have an impact at individual, team and organisation level. The findings discuss the consequences, benefits and outcomes at each of these three levels.  The evaluation was commissioned by IRISS and funded by the Scottish Government Changing Lives Fund.

Background
The practitioner research initiative of Children 1st and the Glasgow School of Social Work aimed at supporting practitioners to develop and undertake their own smallscale research projects. The Project sought to have an impact at three levels – individual, team, and organisation. Two cohorts of practitioners were recruited – in
2006 and 2007.

Practitioners were provided with training and support to undertake a small-scale research project. Training took the form of a series of structured, face-to-face training days with ongoing one-to-one support provided by an academic tutor via contact by telephone and email throughout the research process. Teaching content was aimed
towards small-scale research and leaned towards qualitative over quantitative.

Practitioner participation in the programme did not require any formal qualifications or research experience. The research topics and questions were either identified by the agency or by the practitioners. For each hour that participants used of their working time, they were expected to match with an hour of their own time.

Evaluation method
Our evaluation drew on case study methods. We undertook a desk-based review of documentation (including project development documents and training materials). In addition to the document analysis, fieldwork comprised semi-structured interviews (eight face to face and five by telephone) with members of all stakeholder groups, three informal meetings, and three focus groups.

Programme delivery
Six key types of support were provided by tutors: direction and teaching on methods; helping with design and implementation; support around practicalities; discussion of ethical dilemmas; emotional support including reassurance; and keeping projects to timescale.

Identifying the specific topic was often seen as a push and pull process where efforts were jointly made to bring individual interests and agency priorities into step.

Practitioners expressed a commitment to change practice for the better – either one’s own or that of the team or agency. For some practitioners this practice interest was located in deeply felt ‘practice puzzles’.

Fine-tuning and re-shaping ideas was perceived as entailing a process of focusing and downsizing. Practitioners’ limited prior understanding and experience of research left them in a weak position when it came to negotiating their project topic.

Those delivering the programme valued the motivation and enthusiasm of practitioners throughout the life of the projects. Training days were seen as a mixed blessing. Training was most valuable when it was pithy, focused and tuned in to practitioners’ needs. Momentum was often felt to be difficult to sustain.

Support
The interplay of agency managers, cohort colleagues, practice colleagues, university and tutors serve to support, encourage (or discourage), focus, shape, sustain and (re)direct the projects.

Tutoring: Individual tutoring was perhaps the single most valued element within the Project package. Advice that was ‘focused’, prompt, enthusiastic was uniformly appreciated. We sensed a recurring uncertainty about the ‘rules of engagement’ for practitioner-tutor contact on the part of practitioners.

Cohort and practice support: Cohort membership was valued for knowing ‘that you weren’t doing it on your own’. Enthusiastic colleagues in wider teams were invaluable, e.g. identifying children and young people who could be part of a sample.

Children 1st and management: Members of the first cohort were especially appreciative of the commitment and ‘hands on’ engagement from senior management. There was a hint from Cohort 2 members that this active engagement may have weakened a little over time.

Doing practitioner research
This widely observed difference between the two cohorts is intriguing and we are not confident we have fully understood it. Whatever the explanation, strong support systems do not, as such, guarantee progress.

Time: Time to allow practitioners to get on and complete their research was consistently mentioned by tutors as a potential barrier to progress or completion. There was a perception among practitioners that, even in
circumstances where employers are supportive, the research is always likely to be an extra.

Ethics: Obtaining ethical review during the research process was seen as a particular difficulty for the second cohort. This meant significant delay and frustration for practitioners and tutors alike.

Fieldwork: Project practitioners could claim familiarity with the modes of data collection chosen – particularly interviewing – but the linked processes of analysis and writing posed initial challenges for many. There were various occasions of practitioners speaking of their fieldwork in ways that suggest it opened fresh and ‘inspirational’ visions of the possibilities of such work, and a newly minted fascination that research practice has the potential to yield understanding and insight that often escapes day to day practice.

Technology: Limitations in the Children 1st technology resources were noted especially by people in the first cohort. These were perhaps compounded by limited IT skills among some cohort members.

Consequences, benefits and outcomes
Uncertainty regarding audience was a strong theme. Those who had completed their reports perceived a lack of feedback on the part of the agency. For at least some of the participants, their projects had delivered new understandings for their practice.

Overall benefits: Practitioners, tutors and agency managers perceived the benefits to include the opportunity to develop practitioner research experience and research skills; direct changes to practice; and the transferability of skills.

Tutors: were keen to stress how much they enjoyed being involved in the Project and tutoring individual projects and the benefits this accrued. Tutors had important things to say about themselves as beneficiaries. It enabled experienced practitioners now based within university settings to be reinvigorated about practice and to maintain
stronger connections between the university and the ‘grass-roots’.

For organizations: benefits were identified for both Children 1st and the academics such as consolidating relationships between the university and Children 1st so that continued exchanges might result. There were perceived internal benefits derived from the Project in terms of greater communication and collegiality.

Children 1st: identified wider external benefits that the Project has given them such as greater credibility in academic and policy-making settings and the ability to contribute towards a broader vision of social work. Benefits were also identified around the development of a broader learning culture within the organisation, and the ability to be self critical.

However, practitioners conveyed a concern that the wider agency programme had been foregrounded at the expense of the individual projects. This may fail to fully appreciate the significance of their projects for practitioners, for whom the doing of practitioner research was itself almost an epiphany, at least for a significant core.

Reflections on developing a practitioner research network
• Agency sponsored research networks are always likely to present a tension
about who makes decisions regarding research questions.
• A networked project has consequences for practitioners as cohort members.
For example, there were influential group norms about progress that played a
strong part in how projects developed.
• Practitioner research offers a form of work that brings together and contains
different career-life concerns that otherwise may remain scattered.
• Practitioner researchers engage with a language and culture that is strange yet
potentially rewarding for practice and research.
• Practitioner research sits creatively but uncomfortably between the established
cultures of research and professional practice.
• Practitioner research prompts a fruitful re-engagement with professional
memories, which has the potential to develop future professional identities.
• Involvement in practitioner research stirs reflection on the meaning and value
of research and professional work.

This report builds on and complements a literature review on practitioner research in social services which IRISS published earlier this year. http://www.iriss.org.uk/files/iriss-practitioner-research-lit-review-2009-01.pdf

As part of the IRISS podcast series, Rhoda Macrae recorded interviews with both Ian Shaw (http://www.iriss.org.uk/node/748) and Neil Lunt (http://www.iriss.org.uk/node/747) in which they discuss some of the issues relating to practitioner research and the relationship between research and practice.