Teacher Research: School/University Collaboration From a New Perspective

Abstract

In the traditional educational research model teachers were not viewed as creators of new knowledge about education, but were perceived simply as consumers of information obtained through research conducted under the process-product paradigm. This paper provides an overview of two concepts that are closely related, the reflective teacher and the teacher researcher, and describes how school- and university-based researchers can more effectively utilize teacher-generated knowledge to help improve our schools. The emerging consensus is that encouraging teachers to become more reflective, or even to become researchers in their own classroom, will help produce significant improvements in education that traditional research has not been able to demonstrate.