Diversity in pre-service teachers' understandings of research

Abstract

In this article we present findings from a small-scale qualitative study examining the understandings of research of a diverse group of 12 first-year Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) students in an urban, historically advantaged, higher education institution in South Africa. Our aim was to examine students’ understandings of research within the initial teacher training course in a context of national pressures to both increase diversity and throughput rates within these programmes, and to focus on integrating research as a means for making teaching a practice involving ongoing inquiry. Our findings pointed to differences in the nature and degree of students’ understandings of research. At one extreme within our sample, some students reflected enthusiasm for an inquiry orientation and were able to relate their research activity to both experiences of learning and possibilities for teaching. At the other extreme, our analysis revealed that some students understood research simply as an institutional requirement, in which neither the content of research reading, nor the activities associated with research, were viewed as tools with which to understand or examine their own experiences of teaching and learning. Our findings are related to existing literature on research within teacher education programmes and within undergraduate education more broadly, including the conceptual frameworks used to examine research activity. We suggest that existing frameworks need broadening in two ways: first, it would appear that scales need to be expanded to accommodate the diversity of student understandings that we encountered within our data; second, the frameworks need to be adapted to incorporate the practice-based focus of teacher education where knowledge is viewed as an underpinning feature. Such an approach may well have purchase more broadly for programmes involving a professional orientation – law, medicine and social work, for example.

Keywords:

• higher education
• reflective practice
• South Africa
• teacher education
• undergraduate research