Education policy reforms in Armenia enacted in 2021 have established a new state curriculum, a new structure and content of continued professional development (CPD) process which has a mandatory and voluntary options, and a qualification ranking system. These reforms have incorporated the notion of the ‘teacher as a researcher’ into the educational discourse in Armenia. This study examines how the notion of ‘teacher-researcher’ is conceptualised in the new education policy documents and how education policymakers plan to operationalise that concept. 

Lawrence Stenhouse (1975), who is credited for developing the concept of teacher as researcher, asks teachers to engage in a ‘process model’ of curriculum innovation where professional and curricular development become the same enterprise. Stenhouse’s seminal conception of a ‘researching teacher’ will inform our examination of the Armenian education reforms. The central principle in Stenhouse’s work in curriculum development and research is his view of teachers as practitioners who, like artists, can improve their art through the practice of that art and whose professional judgment and imagination are strengthened by careful scrutiny of themselves and other artists at work. Curriculum development is a way of focusing the teacher’s inquiry in an experimental manner on important problems in teaching and learning; research is the process of inquiry by which teachers analyse and learn from practice. In Stenhouse's world, the right to play a part in the criticism and construction of professional knowledge is returned to the teacher, and students are persuaded to accept some responsibility for the authority of their knowing and their right to know. 

Countries that have succeeded in making teaching an attractive profession have often done so not just through pay, but by raising the status of teaching, offering real career prospects, and giving teachers responsibility as professionals and leaders of reform. This requires teacher education that helps teachers become innovators and researchers in education, not just ‘deliverers’ of a curriculum (Schleicher, 2011). However, teacher research by itself is not enough to improve education, a more reflective and interpretive stance is required to enhance teacher professionalism (Leeman and Wardekker (2014), together with regaining a space for professional judgment (Biesta, 2015). 

The most successful countries educationally make teaching an attractive, high-status profession and provide training for teachers to become educational innovators and researchers who have responsibility for reform. There is a need for professionalism in teaching and the professionalisation process by which one becomes a professional. Teacher research is an important element of both processes (Hollingsworth, 1992). 

The lens that this research is looking at teachers and their professionalism is different from the “what works”, agenda that is to say, telling teachers what to do (e.g., Hattie, 2008). “What works” or evidence-based education limits the opportunities for educational practitioners to make judgments in a way that is sensitive to and relevant to their own contextualised settings (Biesta, 2007). Therefore, the lens that we look at in this research deals with teacher professionalism including its core elements such as agency and autonomy so that teachers are seen as content developers, creators, researchers, and artists (Stenhouse, 1975, 1983, 1985; Ruduck, 1988; Eisner, 1975a, b).  

The research questions are as follows:

1. How is the concept of ‘teacher as a researcher’ conceptualised in education policy documents?
2. How Armenian educational policies are in line with European policy trends regarding teacher as a researcher concept?
3. How do the policy makers see the concept and its operationalisation? 

We use a qualitative exploratory study methodology (Robson and McCartan, 2016) with an interpretive epistemology. This enables us to examine relevant policy documents and explore a deep understanding of the rationale behind the introduction of the ‘teacher as a researcher’ concept into a system where the autonomy and agency of teachers have been suppressed for decades (UNICEF, 2022; Kyureghyan, 2024). An analysis of relevant policy documents and in-depth interviews with key stakeholders (policymakers and the Director of the National Centre for Education and Development) are employed. The document analysis is used as the first stage of collecting data. The main dataset will be collected through in-depth interviews. It is common for studies employing qualitative methods, such as interviews within an interpretive epistemology, to use also documentary evidence as an additional source of data when this is both relevant and feasible (Bryman, 2012). As a type of documentary method, we use qualitative content analysis. Content analysis as a research technique frequently referred to in the literature as analysing the words, language or text in documents (e.g. Bryman, 2012). In our study, we use content analysis from a qualitative perspective as ‘word count’ or ‘statistical approach’ is not appropriate for the purposes of our study. Content analysis is the coding of text to extract categories and themes. The content will be analysed inductively, and then a deductive stage will follow to compare and contrast the findings with the ones in the literature. A thematic analysis (Braun and Clarkes, 2006) will be used for the interview dataset to code and categorise the data.

Teacher research is becoming an international trend and is seen as an integral aspect of teacher professionalism (Leeman and Wardekker, 2015). Involvement in curriculum development and research is a way of empowering teachers by allowing them a greater stake in the ownership of understanding. Meanwhile, there is a concern that the growing popularity of the ‘teachers as researchers’ movement will ensure that it will become yet another form of power and hierarchy inside the school or within the CPD process (Hollingsworth, 1992), as in the case of Armenia, becomes mandated, measured, and potentially meaningless to the actual improvement of practice or simply becomes a new process for reproducing existing ideas. According to the initial analysis of the data, the teachers are perceived as agents of change. The relevant policies (e.g. CPD, qualification ranking) aim to empower teachers by providing them with the opportunity to engage in research practice and experiment (to some extent), which gives them more autonomy than they used to have. However, the autonomy to do research and the actual ability to do that are two different things. As of now, the usual practice is that teachers choose from a few available topics for research (an essay more accurately), with no experimentation, analysis and reflection. The data shows that introducing a teacher as a research concept within teacher qualifications and including teacher research into state-mandatory CPD programmes needs careful deliberation and consideration because its content and process can either powerfully influence the shape of teaching practice or just add additional burden on teachers without ensuring the benefits of such a practice.

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