Teacher+Research

Teacher Research, Action Research, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: all are terms that simply refer to classroom teachers taking an inquiry-based approach to the teaching and learning that goes on in their practice. To do teacher research is to ask a question, make observations, try out strategies, and analyze the results. It does not require a knowledge of statistics, or having a control group. The tools can be a teaching journal, or beginning and end of semester writing or surveys, or student portfolios, or analysis of student work. So we encourage you to gain the authority that comes from conducting your own research! Administrators and colleagues will listen and respect these kinds of results. It takes us a step beyond anecdotal staffroom talk.

Teacher Research: Getting Started //adapted from Falk, Beverly and Blumenreich, Megan. (2005). The power of questions: A guide to teacher and student research. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.//

Keep a journal: Jot down the things that excite you, bother you, and/or interest you. Note your wonderings, your puzzlements, and your queries. After a time, reflect on your writings to identify issues you may want to examine in greater depth. You may need to revisit your journal and read what others have had to say about the issue that interests you, and/or share your question with a friend or colleague for help in framing your question. The question should be in an inquiry format (the What, Why, How questions)… Note, however, that all of these sorts of questions are suited for inquiry. For instance, Why questions can be tricky in that they sometimes require the researcher to come up with a simple solution to a complex problem.

Ask yourself: is your question framed in a way that is personalized to your situation? Can you pursue it in the context of your life? Do you already know the answer to your question? If so, keep playing with it to make it more open-ended. Is your question meaningful to you in your life as a teacher? (e.g, will it pass the “so what” test? Is your question ‘loaded’? In other words, are your assumptions part of the question?

The document below is an Action Research Rubric developed by Jan Fulkerson, Anderson University.

This is a link to the George Mason University School of Education Teacher Research site. [|George Mason University Teacher Research]

The site below is excellent and shows what a school district can do to encourage and support action research. Besides many guidelines and resources, you will find a searchable collection of action research abstracts done by Madison teachers. Cool! [|Madison, Wisconsin, School District Classroom Action Research Home Page]

Here is a copy of the teacher research proposal format.