Review

My most pressing deadline at the moment is a review that a colleague and I have agreed to do for a journal. The book is "A Handbook for Teacher Research: From design to implementation'" written by Colin Lankshear and Michelle Knobel. I've started today with some selective reading of chapters. What stands out, and frames the handbook, is the authors' argument for what teacher reserach should be. This involves a critique of teacher research in Chapter 1, and a stated position that is threaded throughout the handbook. It comes as no surprise in the concluding statements of the final chapter to find a political intention to the work: quality teacher research serves to niggle at government and administrative constraints that restrict democratic education. It is this distinctive edge that makes the handbook a must for use in teacher research contexts.

The handbook should be essential reading in a number of contexts. As core reading in course work methodology units it would be useful for presenting the range of options open to teacher researchers. The chapter on documentary research, and discussion of aspects of it in other chapters, for example, could be usefully employed to question the view that research that impacts on classroom practice necessarily arises from research that directly examines practice in classrooms. This is an important point that is established through the authors' consideration of documentary research that has been influential in the area of literacy education. The work of Graff and Street is examined.. The authors also draw on their own research to illustrate the methods that documentary research might involve.