Dewey's Logic as a Methodological Grounding Point for Practitioner-Based Inquiry (original) (raw)
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The Teacher in Teacher-Practitioner Research: Three Principles of Inquiry
Teachers and Teacher Educators Learning Through Inquiry: International Perspectives, 2017
This chapter will dis l three underlying principles of teacher prac oner research: autonomy; disturbance; and dialogue. These principles have emerged from a range of projects we have undertaken in partnership with teachers at all levels of educa on. This dis lla on is not so much about the details of the ‘how’ of teachers’ research into learning and teaching in their own contexts - we (and many others) have wri en about this elsewhere – but rather about where the ques ons come from and how meaning is created and communicated. It is about the robust voices of teachers, and the diversity and richness of their research as harnessed through the process of prac oner enquiry. We will therefore explore how meaning is created and communicated by teachers involved and use the principles as a lynch-pin through which we explore their professional learning. The chapter will include some background to explain how we have worked with teachers, as well as narra ve, case examples and analysis to illustrate important aspects of an inquiry approach. Most importantly, we’ll include as many voices from our partnerships as possible to re ect the collabora on that made this learning possible.
Teacher Research as a Way of Knowing
Harvard Educational Review, 1992
In this article, Susan Lytle and Marilyn Cochran-Smith, two university-based teacher educators, argue for a different theory of knowledge for teaching-one that is drawn from the systematic inquiry of teachers themselves. In contrast to a knowledge base for teaching that privileges only the knowledge of the university researcher, the authors propose a knowledge base that includes the emic perspective of the teacher researcher, whose questions and processes are embedded in classroom practice. In their analysis, the authors draw on a wide range of texts written by teachers, including journals, essays, oral inquiries, and classroom studies. Lytle and Cochran-Smith conclude that teacher research, which historically has been marginalized in the field, challenges the assumption that knowledge for teaching is generated by outsiders only; they argue, rather, that school-based teacher researchers are themselves knowers and a primary source of generating knowledge about teaching and learning for themselves and others. Over the past several decades, there have been a variety of efforts to codify a knowledge base for teaching. Implicit in these efforts is a theory that privileges one source of knowledge, that of university researchers, over others. In this article, we argue that educators need to develop a different theory of knowledge for teaching, a different epistemology that regards inquiry by teachers them selves as a distinctive and important way of knowing about teaching. From this perspective, fundamental questions about knowing, knowers, and what can be known have different answers. Teachers are among those who have the authority to know-that is, to construct "capital K" knowledge about teaching, learning, This article appears with the permission of Teachers College Press. It is an adaptation of Chapter
The Value of Teacher Research: Nurturing Professional and Personal Growth through Inquiry
2000
nyone who has ever been a teacher knows that teaching is a complex, challenging, and often uncertain process. There are no absolute answers for how best to teach young children. However, research has shown that students of teaching tend to believe there is some set of "right answers" to the problems of teaching, and they hold fast to the image of teachers as consumers and disseminators of information (e.g., Stremmel et al. 1995). If there is one thing confirmed by both the professional literature on teaching and the anecdotal experiences of many teacher educators, it is the assertion that teaching is more than technique (Schön 1983; Ayers 1993; Cochran-Smith & Lytle 1999). Teaching is a process involving continual inquiry and renewal, and a teacher, among other things, is first and foremost a questioner (Ayers 1993; Hansen 1997). The conventional and restricted vision of the teacher as technician-consumer and dispenser of other people's knowledge-has been reinforced, however, by No Child Left Behind and its focus on high-stakes accountability and standards-based instruction (Liston, Whitcomb, & Borko 2007). Nevertheless, Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999) suggest that the narrow notion of teacher as technician has been a catalyst for the current teacher-as-researcher movement in the United States. This movement has helped reunite two complementary and natural sides of teachingreflection and action (thinking and doing). The teacher research movement also has helped teachers reclaim inquiry as a legitimate means of gaining knowledge and insights about teaching and learning. In this article, I paint a more promising and encompassing view of teaching as an inquiry process, a view that sees teachers as researchers who take seriously the study of self with the aims of bringing about
With increased frequency, teacher education programs require candidates to engage in practice-based research capstones (e.g. Lattimer, 2012; Mule 2006). Yet, experience provides evidence that newly credentialed teachers regularly disregard the practice of teacher inquiry immediately after graduation, prompting the authors to ask, how can the teacher research thesis be better utilized to foster a career-long inquiry stance? This article highlights central tensions in the teacher research theses common in teacher education programs, and suggests a vision for change. Using narrative resonance (Conle, 1996), the authors articulate possibilities for transformed teacher research capstones that are rooted in practitioner inquiry. This argument connects with calls for reflective pedagogy of teacher education (Loughran, 2007), establishing quality in beginning teacher researchers’ work (DiLucchio & Leaman, 2012), and cultivating sustainable inquiry practices that teachers can easily draw upon (Beck, 2017; Massey, et al., 2009). Recommendations include, 1) grounding teacher research in a practitioner inquiry framework (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) as opposed to action research methodologies; 2) inviting practicing K-12 teacher researchers to be research guides; and 3) transforming expectations from an academia-oriented paper to participation in a network of teacher researchers. Through this reimagined practice of beginning teacher research, we suggest increased likelihood of cultivating life-long teacher researchers. Full text can be found here: https://digitalcommons.nl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1159&context=ie
The Teacher Research Movement: A Decade Later
Educational Researcher, 1999
The current wave of interest in teacher research in the United States is now a little more than a decade old. In this article, we identify what we see as the seminal writings that marked the latest renewal of interest in teacher research and other forms of practitioner inquiry. 1 We describe intellectual traditions and educational projects out of which these writings emerged as well as major publishers and professional communities that nurtured the movement. Then we suggest that five major trends characterize the current teacher research movement in the United States: (1) the prominence of teacher research and inquiry communities in preservice teacher education, professional development, and school reform; (2) the development of conceptual frameworks for teacher research that may be thought of as social inquiry, ways of knowing in communities, and practical inquiry; (3) the dissemination of teacher research at and beyond the local level; (4) the emergence of critique of the teacher research movement on epistemological, methodological, and critical grounds; and (5) the transformative possibilities of teacher research for university cultures. In conclusion, we make recommendations for the next decade based on our own understandings and experiences with teacher research and the teacher research movement.
Teacher Research: Toward Clarifying the Concept
1989
Teacher Research: Toward Clarifying the Concept Unfortunately teacher research, which by definition has unique potential to address issues that teachers identify as significant, does not yet have an acknowledged place in constructing the knowledge base for teaching. Relating Teacher Research and Research on Teaching Many teacher-researchers model their classroom and school-based inquiries on more traditional university-based social science research. Myers (1985) has been influential in arguing for me adaptation of basic and applied social science research paradigms to teacher research. He suggests that the norms of generalizability, tests of significance, and optimizing controls of problems apply to teacher research, but need to be defined differently by classroom teachers. Myers calls for teacher-researchers to be well-grounded in problem definition, research design, and quantitative data analysis, and suggests that they begin by replicating the studies of university-based researchers. In contrast to Myers, Mohr and MacLean (1987) and Bissex and Bullock (1987) argue that teacher research is essentially a new game not necessarily bound by the constraints of traditional research paradigms; they urge teachers to identify their own questions, document their observations, analyze and interpret data in light of their current theories, and share their results primarily with other teachers. Berthoff (in Goswami and Stillman, 1987) puts little emphasis on data gathering and, instead, asserts that teachers already have all the information they need and should reexamine, or in her word "RE-search;" their own experiences. Each of these sets of recommendations for teacher research contains an image of what the game might look like-an approximation of university-based research; a more grassroots phenomenon that has its own internal standards of logic, consistency, and clarity; or a reflective or reflexive process for the benefit of the individual teacher. Yet each of these images, although quite different, also implicitly compares teacher research to university-based research on teaching. In this section we explore what we consider a problematic relationship between research on teaching and teacher research.
Living the Praxis of Teacher Education through Teacher Research
Scholar-Practitioner Quarterly, 2004
The main objective of this self-study is to reflect and document the development of our own praxis by using teacher research in our teacher education courses. By praxis we mean an ongoing interdependent process in which reflection, including theoretical analysis, enlightens action, and in turn the transformed action changes our understanding of the object of our reflection. Based on the examination of our reflective journals, collegial dialogue, and students' teacher-research reports, we have achieve three major insights: (1) Teacher Research is a vehicle of genuine praxis of teacher education; (2) Praxis involves a dialectical rationality, which is radically different from the conception of practice within an instrumental rational-ity; and (3) Modeling and scaffolding the praxis of teacher research for our master's students-in-service teachers-facilitate both their transformation and ours.
Opinion Article Teacher-research: Agency of Practical Knowledge and Professional Development
Journal of Language and Education, 2020
Educational research has generally attracted negative criticism for its generalisability, contextual independence, and inadequacy in addressing teachers' practical problems in their unique educational settings. Moreover, as classrooms are always complicated environments, teachers are therefore encouraged to become active researchers of their own classrooms in order to maximize their instructional performance and provide optimal learning opportunities for their students within their particular context. To promote teachers' self-inquiry into their own practices, this paper will first define what teacher research is, followed by arguments for its need and significance in the teaching profession. Suggestions to help teachers become engaged in classroom inquiry are provided after commonly reported difficulties are reviewed. This paper is expected to provide considerable insights for classroom teachers as well as school administrators in their search for practical, concrete, and contextually-rich knowledge.
Moving Forward with an Eye on the Past: A Historical Perspective of Teacher Research
Facilitating In-Service Teacher Training for Professional Development, 2017
Teacher research has become a well-known term in professional development circles, yet it is still often misunderstood. This chapter seeks to facilitate those who are interested in teacher research by providing a historical perspective. Understanding the development of teacher research over that past century will allow interested parties to move forward with greater insight of the potential benefits and drawbacks inherent in teacher research. Such an analysis may lead to increased success for teacher research projects as the twenty-first century unfolds. Although teacher research can be a challenging form of professional development, it has incredible transformative potential. It has the potential to enhance the entire profession of teaching as well as the knowledge, skills and abilities of individual teachers. A call is made for teachers and academics to move forward by forming an alliance to explore new models and methods of teacher research.