Session Information
10 SES 08 A, Research in Teacher Education: Cultures and Methodologies
Paper Session
Contribution
An internationally agreed upon requirement for teacher education these days is that it shall be research based. However, when it comes to defining what a research based teacher education entails, there is less agreement, or I would even go so far and say, little understanding for what it means.
In this paper I will examine various blurred issues related to the concept ‘Research Based Teacher Education’. A major question is if teacher educators shall mainly act as consumers of research because many teacher educators’ primary expertise is teaching and practical aspects related to teacher education (Murray & Male, 2005). For these teachers a research based teacher education would, to a large extent, mean that they expose students of teaching to relevant research literature. For other teacher educators who have entered teacher education directly from the academy with little or no practical teaching experience, research is their primary expertise. They interpret a research based teacher education as being active producers of research (Smith, in press). Does a research based teacher education have room for both approaches, or does one overtake the other, as the situation seems to be in some teacher education institutions?
Other questions to be examined are: What do we define as research, and when does reflection become research (Smith, 2011)? Are there specific criteria that need to be met in order to define an enquiry as research? Another, not less complex issue to discuss is who are the teacher educators who shall engage in research-based teacher education, only the institutional based teacher educators; subject matter teachers and teachers for didactics and applied pedagogy, or should also the school-based teacher educators (mentors of student teachers practice teaching)? The final question given attention in the proposed paper is what kind of research? Should research based teacher education cover a wide range of research methods and fields?
The final part of the paper informs about how Norway tries to meet the many challenges illuminated in the above questions by establishing a national research school for teacher education, NAFOL. We try to give meaning to the concept ‘A research Based Teacher Education’ to avoid it becoming another buzzword we use without a structure which puts the concept into practice in a mindful way.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Borko, H., Liston, D. & Whitcomb, J. A. (2007) Genres of empirical research in teacher education, Journal of Teacher Education, 58 (1), 3-11. Cochran-Smith, M. (2005). Teacher educators as researchers; multiple perspectives. Teaching and Teacher Education 21, 219-225. Loughran, J.J., Hamilton, M.L., LaBoskey, V.K., & Russell, T.L. (Eds.) (2004). The International Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices (Volumes 1 & 2). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. McNiff, J., Whitehead, J., Lomax, P. (2003) You and Your Action Research Project, London: Routledge. Murray, J. & Male, T. (2005). Becoming a teacher educator: evidence from the field. Teaching and Teacher Education 21, 125-142. Smith, K. (2011). Forskning er utvikling i lærerutdanningen (Research is development in teacher education). Accepted for publication in The 2010 conference book: FoU i Praksis, Trondheim: Tapir forlag. (in press). Smith, K. The multi-faceted teacher educator- a Norwegian perspective. (Accepetd for publication in Journal of Education for Teaching. Zeichner, K. (2007). Accumulating knowledge across self-studies in teacher education. Journal of Teacher Education 58(1), 36-46.
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