What is ‘research’ for teacher-researchers?

Abstract

Numerous scholars have promoted ‘practitioner research’ or ‘teacher-research’ as a way of facilitating professional development for pre-service and in-service teachers, promoting change and reform in K-12 settings, and giving voice to teachers' personal and professional knowledge. In this article, the authors consider what ‘research’ is for teacher-researchers. They argue that the ways in which definitions of research are interpreted by different stakeholders – in policy documents, and university and school board review procedures – may exclude practitioners from the production of research-based knowledge and hinder teacher-research collaborations among university educators and K-12 teachers. They view this exclusion as part of the larger ‘knowledge’ critique of teacher-research. In this article, the authors first review contrasting definitions of ‘research,’ before exploring how interpretations of research definitions proved problematic within the context of their teacher-research group. They propose that the current emphasis in the USA on forms of ‘research’ that focus on causal questions to examine evidence of effectiveness, overlooks questions and issues central to teachers' work, and re-inscribes the boundaries between ‘research’ and ‘practice’ that have traditionally divided university researchers and K-12 practitioners. Such narrow definitions of research, they argue, discourage practitioners from engaging in teacher-research, and prohibit the development of a practitioner-based stock-of-knowledge grounded in teachers' knowledge and experience.