Teacher educators as researchers: multiple perspectives

This article suggests that part of the task of the teacher educator is functioning simultaneously as both researcher and practitioner. However, there are sharply diverging viewpoints about the worth of this kind of research. On the one hand, there is now more research about teacher education being conducted by teacher educators themselves than at any previous time. On the other hand, in certain contexts, this research is discounted because it is judged not rigorous or because it does not generalize across contexts. The article considers the deliberations about practitioner research by the AERA Panel on Research and Teacher Education as an illustration of how these competing viewpoints can play out.     

Double Blind: Supervising women as creative practice-led researchers

Abstract

Many women creative practice-led researchers appear inhibited by a number of factors directly connected to their gender. This article discusses these factors, including the culture of visual arts professional practice, the circumstances surrounding women postgraduate students and unproductive self-theories about intelligence and creativity. A number of feminist strategies are discussed as potential interventions that may assist women creative practice-led researchers and their supervisors to reap more personal and professional rewards from their postgraduate research.     

Teachers as researchers: The rationale; The reality

Conclusion Collaborative action research, a style of research which connotes involvement, commitment, and growth, has the potential to bring together process and outcome, teaching and research, reflection and action, theory and practice. It is an organising frame to foster productive blending of school knowledge and academic knowledge, through the participation of members of the secondary and tertiary sectors. It has the potential to enhance the professionalism and expertise of members of both sectors, in circumstances which facilitate personal development. It has the potential to enhance the relevance and applicability of educational research to the educational context and hence to generate real and permanent change in schools. We believe that this form of research has potential to be of value that extends beyond the direct participants and school settings in which it occurs. The problem is of translating this potential into practice. Neither the school nor the educational research sectors are geared for such long-term collaborative research. However, PEEL demonstrates that it can be done. Educational research can be made relevant and important to teachers. Through collaborative action research, teachers can participate in improving the quality of education in our schools.     

Developing a research partnership: teachers as researchers and teacher educators

This paper discusses a combined university–school research project involving three associate teachers from the pre-service teacher education degree at the University of Otago, New Zealand in the examination of their literacy teaching practice. The provision of resources for this collaborative study allowed the teachers to design the project in response to the learning needs of the children in their classrooms. The paper specifically analyses the research experience for the teachers as they theorized their classroom literacy practice and utilized the research findings to inform the content and processes of teaching at both the primary and tertiary classroom levels.     

Preparing teachers as researchers in courses on methods of teaching science

The four standards for professional development of teachers of science from the National Science Education Standards (NRC, 1996) provided a frame for reflection upon ways in which prospective teachers engaged in research in my courses on methods of teaching science. Students learned both science content and science pedagogy by inquiry. An extended research project helped students to integrate knowledge of science, learning, pedagogy, and students, and to apply that to teaching science. Students built knowledge, skills, and attitudes for lifelong learning by participating in a research festival and presenting at conferences. I designed this science-teaching methods course in the context of a teacher education program that is attempting to implement reform approaches to instruction. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 35: 791–809, 1998.     

School psychologists as researchers: An approach for initiating training and practice

A project is described that involved school psychology students in doing applied research. The possible impact that implementing such a plan might have on creating cooperative research opportunities, on providing training in applied research, and on influencing the school's perception of the school psychologist's role is considered.     

Facilitating teachers as action researchers and reflective practitioners: new issues and proposals

ABSTRACT

In this article I reflect on my experiences facilitating teachers as researchers and reflective practitioners and the importance of enhancing the dynamic and complementary relationship between theory, research, practice and reflection at every step of action research. Given the complexity of teachers’ participation in action research, I drew on a reflexive research-based account within a second-order process of action research to support a group of teacher-researchers to rethink their understanding of participatory education and transform their own practices. This research-based account describes the challenges faced, the decisions made, and the actions taken, all shaped by ongoing dialogues with teachers’ beliefs and practices, with the goals of action research, and with the processes of gradual transformations observed in both the teachers’ thinking and practice and in my own as a facilitator. The present study adds to the discussion of the interrelationships between theory, research, practice and reflection by providing an example of their enactment at every step of action research in order to support participatory education.     

Whose reality counts? Local educators as researchers on the quality of primary education

This article describes a methodology that local educators can use to conduct structured analytic research on the quality of primary education. The methodology has been developed by four twenty-person teams of local educators who carried out studies in rural regions of Madagascar, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda. In addition to describing the methodology, the article presents short summaries of the researchers’ conclusions and recommendations. However, its main purpose is to share the methodology that has evolved. The methodology is qualitative, but a simple quantitative measure of relationship between binary variables (Yule’s Q) was used to test the researchers’ qualitative findings. It is this tool that provoked the most significant reflection among the researchers in each group. In general, the results of the four studies corroborate other research on the factors that influence student outcomes in primary schools in Sub-Saharan Africa. More importantly, the studies’ results demonstrate that the methodology offers practicing educators a tool that helps them define, collect, and rigorously analyse empirical information to reach shared insights about their schools and then to formulate practical recommendations about what to do to improve student learning.     

Teachers as researchers in a major research project: Experience of input and output

Teachers have long participated in collaborative research. However, they have generally had direct stakes in the outcomes. Teachers in the Early Professional Learning (EPL) Project used their insider status to gather data not directly related to their own practice. Lessons for integrating a group of teacher–researchers into a major project are discussed. Some of these are practical, but also cover their unexpectedly experienced initial isolation within the project team, that has relevance for both forming and theorising communities of enquiry. An outline for a new concept of teacher–researcher begins to emerge that may influence the direction of educational research.     

Collaborative reflection through story: towards a deeper understanding of ourselves as women researchers

This paper outlines the collaborative inquiry process of three female academics who decided to subject themselves to the same qualitative research procedures that they employed with others. In this inquiry, they were in search of “researcher thinking,” attempting to discover the implicit theories they brought to the research site. The methodology involved telling stories about research experiences and collaboratively reflecting on these stories through discussions, field notes, and written narratives. Unexpectedly, a common story emerged that was fundamental to their identities as researchers and as women. All three experienced a tranformation which facilitated the emergence of both researcher and personal voices. Others who follow this process may also gain personal understandings which will enhance research practices and facilitate understanding the possibility that research might empower those who are participating in it.     

Institutional researchers as knowledge managers in universities: Envisioning new roles for the IR profession

Abstract

Using concepts from Davenport and Prusak's “Working Knowledge” and other recent research on knowledge management, this article discusses the processes through which institutional knowledge is created, managed and transferred throughout the university and ways in which institutional researchers can improve these processes. A special emphasis is placed on the need to strengthen the “knowledge brokerage” function ‐ an essential role that institutional researchers are expected to play in large universities. Important principles of knowledge management are illustrated with examples from the author's university.     

Power,participation and decision making in the primary classroom: children as action researchers

This article discusses a project focused on children researching their role in decision making in their classrooms and schools, with a view to increasing their involvement. The action research project was carried out by children, their class teachers and university researchers in six Norfolk primary schools from 2004 to 2006. As the project aimed to introduce more participatory approaches to decision making in classrooms, this necessarily had implications for the ways in which adults worked with children as action researchers. The article explores the constraints encountered by both children and teachers in sharing decisions and in carrying out action research, and identifies two dimensions: the teachers’ thinking and action, as well as children’s research and decision making. The teachers struggled with their need to mediate the project aims in the context of the changing nature of their professional role in the current target‐driven school culture.     

Expanding our understandings of urban science education by expanding the roles of students as researchers

In this article, we explore the roles of student researchers as they have emerged over 5 years of studies on the teaching and learning of science in urban high schools. These studies incorporate sociocultural theory in an approach to research that explores the capital that urban students bring to school and situates student researchers as active participants who exercise agency by accessing and appropriating a variety of resources. We provide examples of students engaged as productive, central members of a research team and describe the roles in which they have participated, from teacher educators and science learners to curriculum developers and ethnographers. We show how the involvement of students as researchers, within these roles, allows them to produce and select artifacts and data resources for interpretation that offer unique insider perspectives on how to improve the teaching and learning of science for urban high school students. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 42: 807–828, 2005