The Usefulness of Educational Research for Trainee Teachers' Learning

In this paper the authors argue that subject-related educational research can play an important role in trainee teachers' learning since it provides a disciplined perspective from which trainees can derive new ideas and understandings related to their own developing practice as well as a critical basis from which to formulate, examine and justify their views through reference to a wider, collective pool of experience. However, the authors strongly argue that research will only contribute usefully to trainees' learning provided certain fundamental principles governing the inclusion of research within the structure of the training course as a whole are applied. In the first section of the paper the authors define ten necessary principles which determine the conditions for successful use of research-based ideas in trainees' learning. Research-based ideas introduced on a training course, it is argued, must be seen by trainees, and subject mentors, to have a significant practical relevance with regard to classroom practice. The ideas and arguments must be carefully selected and strategically integrated within a course and must elicit informed critical evaluation. The second half of the paper consists of two illustrative examples of how these principles are applied in the integration of two research-based ideas ('inductive grammar teaching' and 'Interpretations of History') on the Modern Foreign Languages and History PGCE courses at the University of Cambridge School of Education.