reflects and values the complexity of the research focus and the importance of
narratives to provide‘thick descriptions’to engage in close, shared conversations,
and to negotiate emerging conversations about possibilities for changes to the ways
in which knowledge is shared and constructed. Close partnerships between teacher
educators and teaching teams, as both researchers and teachers, is supported by an
ethnographic approach and its openness and‘non-interventionist’code.
Thus, we propose a method to negotiate and research the concept offlows of
knowledge to strengthen and grow connections between teacher education and early
childhood centre communities. The role of research is critical, although there is a
shift in emphasis away from research institutions, favouring instead the generation
of knowledge within centre communities in a mutually beneficialflow of knowl-
edge between research institution and centre. Teacher education institutions benefit
significantly from involvement that has wide-ranging practical benefits for the
design of‘their’programmes. They have a critical role to play in reconceptualising
and informing collaborative research in centre communities.
Collaborative research in teaching teams requires a research design that is
qualitative and interpretive, involving a process of observation, reflection and
discussion of the teaching team’s day-to-day construction, sharing and experience
of knowledge in an early childhood centre. Through the sharing of critical dis-
cussions and different narratives of experience, teachers enrich their teaching teams
and the centre community (Dalli et al. 2012 ). The approach builds on the ongoing
development of skills in collaboration that are regarded as important for early
childhood centre communities, and it aligns with current research and scholarship in
thefield of teachers’work which call for a rich, deep understanding of how teachers
work together and share ideas and narratives about themselves and their teaching
practices (see for instance Dalli et al. 2012 ; Osgood 2012 ).
Both methodologies have strong associations with cultural research models
relevant to the local communities. While it is important to avoid regarding these
approaches as synonymous, the essence of respecting voice,‘natural’settings,
complex influences and shared experiences make this approach sensitive to social
and cultural difference. The methodological emphasis is on research as a profes-
sional collaborative practice rather than as a top-down approach of knowledge
production and reproduction in the academy being transferred/applied to teachers’
pedagogical practice. The ground-up approach puts into practice the tenets of
critical theoretical, narrative and dialogical approaches to building collaborative
inquiry (Woodrow 2008 ). The combination of these two methodologies is closely
aligned to‘symbolic interactionism’and focuses on how the research and teaching
partners make sense of their environment, creating a synergy between the research
focus and the research design, and providing a robust platform for the analysis of
findings as teachers and researchers construct, discuss and reconstruct the data. In
the sense of critical ecological ethnography, such a study depends on partnerships
within each centre being strengthened, professional relationships being negotiated
and knowledge of the centre community being enriched.
794 M. Tesar et al.