The Individual and Collective Minds Behind the Role of the Educator-Researcher: An Integrated Educational Experiment

An educational experiment was introduced by Hedegaard (Studying children: A cultural-historical approach. Open University Press, New York, 2008a) as a synthesis of pedagogical intervention and research method. The planned intervention is designed collaboratively between teachers and researchers to supports children’s learning and development. But what happens when the researcher also assumes the role of the educator? This chapter presents an example of an educational experiment that was undertaken individually by an educator-researcher. To support the educational experiment, a collective of PhD supervisors and the other intellectual colleagues acted as an expansive community that enabled theoretical discussions and data analysis to be performed at an interpsychological level. It was found that with digital video observation as the main research method, the dialectical relations between the individual and the collective created unique opportunities for the formation of the researcher’s identity, as well as fulfilling the research aim of the educational experiment. Thus a new configuration of the educational experiment is proposed as an enabling research method, where an educator-researcher used digital video observations, and an expansive intellectual community for peer review.