Developing teachers’ research capacity: the essential role of teacher education

ABSTRACT

With a focus on the US, I briefly review the literature to examine current trends, and outline a typology of what is meant by educational research for teaching by, with and for teachers, followed by a discussion of why it is important for educators to engage in and commit to such research. The key question in this article is what kinds of research are helpful for program improvement and for high-quality teaching and learning? A follow-up question is where should teachers learn to do such research and what would it mean to be a proficient teacher-researcher? These questions lead to an exploration of the role of teacher educators in helping teachers learn diverse epistemologies, theoretical perspectives, and methodologies to engage in researching the complexity involved in enriching and improving teacher education, teaching and learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Education research
• practitioner research
• evaluation research in teacher education
• mathematics education
• teachers as researchers
• VAMs

Acknowledgments

The framework reported in this article emerged from research supported by the US National Science Foundation under awards number REC 0514431 and DRL-0910001 (Tatto, PI for both grants). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

I am thankful to the anonymous reviewers and the editors for their valuable and insightful comments which helped to improve the quality of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was the main law for K–12 general education in the United States from 2002–2015. The law held schools accountable for students' learning outcomes as measured by achievement tests. The law penalized schools that didn’t show improvement. The current law Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) authorized in 2016 replaced NCLB and is the nation’s main education law for all public schools, and continues to hold schools accountable for students’ learning outcomes as measured by achievement tests. While ESSA attempted to de-emphasize the use of VAMs in their teacher-level efforts several states still use VAMs such as New Mexico, New York, and Texas, and in these states use of VAMs have extended to the evaluation of teacher education programs.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation [DRL-0910001,REC 0514431].

Notes on contributors

Maria Teresa Tatto

Maria Teresa Tatto is a Professor in the Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation at Arizona State University, and the Southwest Borderlands Professor of Comparative Education at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. Previously she was a Professor of Education at Michigan State University. She is a former president of the Comparative and International Education Society, an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford, England, and a Fellow in the American Educational Research Association. Dr. Tatto studies the effects of educational policy on school and teacher education systems.