Teacher thinking Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Introduction
The essence of teaching has not changed considerably, since the birth of the profession: the cooperation of teacher and children, with the aim of making children competent in life. The factual aims, the ideal ways to reach them and the expectations of teachers’ and children’s role change from time-to-time, consequently with the change of the world. In the last few decades special responsibility fell on schools, if they wanted to meet the requirements as time went by. “In modern societies, knowledge determines the developmental opportunities of the individual, as well as the pace of societal-economical progress.” (Csapó, 2007, p.11.).
“One of the most important issues of Europe’s pedagogical research is the method of transformation of school education, and the specification of teachers’ new roles (OECD, 1998). Nevertheless, the attitude of renewal can only be embedded to the practical teaching very slowly. The main concept of schools’ elemental and methodological reconstruction is the modification of teacher’s thinking and pragmatic work.” (Hercz, 2002, p.251.)
According to the international technical literature, it is unambiguous that within the research of teachers, the research of the thinking of teachers can be separated. It is known, that it is their thinking, their knowledge and their opinions that form their everyday practical activities (Falus, 2001a), as well as it is known that researchers consider a decisive portion of a multi-dimensional system, rather than a mechanical correspondence when they start their work. Throughout the years, several concepts emerged about the relationship between opinions and activity, in the previous decade researchers pointed out an interference between them (Huberman, 1993; Richardson, 1996).
The long-term aim of this research is to help trainings and extension trainings – within our range of possibilities – with the empirically revealed correspondences. Our work is concerned with the research of educational sciences, more precisely, with research on teachers and on their thinking. It is a fairly new field in Hungary, only a few researchers’ attention was raised by it. Precisely examining the technical literature, comparative studies concerning personality, values or opinions of teachers working in various types of institutes and departments are very rare with the exception of some major researches (Falus és mtsai, 1989, Golnhofer és Nahalka, 2001; Szabó, 1998). Research, that would include kindergarten teachers - according to the aspect mentioned - to all teachers, their personality and thinking being compared to other teachers’, has not been conducted in the last two decades, even though in order to be able to build up an educational process, the leader of all phases should be seen, in the shape of the educator.
The aim of our research is to get acquainted with the thinking of teachers, more precisely with the implicit theories, opinions and preconceptions concerning children’s cognitive development, as well as to expand on the characteristic thinking of various teacher groups, and to compare the thinking of educators working in different types of institutions.