Lynch , Smith , Howarth
immature profession . To strengthen our point , imagine a medical practitioner who favours their experience and guesswork over an evidence-base when making a diagnosis . You would not feel safe in their care . You want a degree of certainty that what is prescribed is based on the best knowledge and applied field studies that is available in the world today . Our point therefore is that we cannot see any valid reason why teaching practice should be any different . Our hunch is that many parents would share our view .
Rust and Meyers ’ ( 2006 ) view is that research is an essential activity of teachers , as well as being a means for teachers to assess the impact of their practice on student achievement and to do something about it . As Cochran-Smith ( 2002 , p . 9 ) has argued , undertaking research on their work should be a mindset rather than a project or strategy . Rust and Myers ( 2006 ) also propose that teacher research is included in education policy , an optimistic view given the present climate in education .
What can be stated strongly is that by knowing what relevant research is suggesting , undertaking a rigorous scrutiny of their work and adopting processes of inquiry , teachers can develop more effective ways of achieving valued outcomes . In practical terms , they can mould and prioritise their teaching work in a myriad of ways . It is not difficult to imagine the impact of systematically solving enduring problems , developing new processes for teaching and running a classroom , putting a work plan together more effectively and implementing techniques for ensuring that on-line programs are achieving what they set out to do . Thus , Cochran-Smith and Lytle ( 1999 , emphasis added ) define teacher research in the broadest possible sense as practitioner inquiry that involves “ systematic , intentional , and self-critical inquiry about one ’ s work in K-12 , higher education , or continuing education classrooms , schools , programs , and other formal educational settings ”.
In summary , the process of researching can be best understood as a process that enables the teacher to seek the answer to a stated problem or question about an occurrence or outcome ( good or bad ) in their classroom or professional environment more broadly . The task now is to explain how teachers act as researchers .
Clinical Research and Professional Learning and Application
In a practical sense clinical ( classroom / school based ) research is concerned with interrogating collected data , most common in classrooms and schools by way of student assessment , and applying qualitative or quantitative research methods to ascertain the extent of learning gains or otherwise , trends and overall performance anomalies . Qualitative research is “ especially effective in obtaining culturally specific information about the values , opinions , behaviours , and social contexts of particular populations ” 55 . In classroom or schooling contexts qualitative research is most often conducted as ‘ satisfaction ( type ) surveys ’. While informing of how students ( or parents ) view their own learning progress or the teacher ’ s teaching , its value in informing learning outcomes from a pedagogic performance perspective is limited because of its focus on the subject ’ s valuing or otherwise of circumstances .
By contrast , quantitative research is all about quantifying relationships between variables ( Creswell , 2003 ). This type of research is more tangible to informing learning outcome performance as it elicits quantifiable results in the form of ‘ averages ’, numerical and diagrammatical ‘ trends ’ and correlations . NAPLAN results are examples of this type of research outcome . The ‘ quantifiable ’ attributes of this method enables classroom , school or school system ‘ performance targets ’ and ‘ benchmarks ’ to be established and in turn enables learning-based monitoring and comparison activities to be conducted by the teacher , principal or schooling system . This process is fundamental to teacher improvement as it focuses the teacher to what ’ s not working ,
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Qualitative Research Methods : A Data Collector ’ s Field Guide located at http :// www . fhi360 . org / NR / rdonlyres / etl7vogszehu5s4stpzb3tyqlpp7rojv4waq37elpbyei3tgmc4ty6dunbccfzxtaj2rvbaubzmz4f / overview1 . pdf , page1 .
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