Teacher research begins in teacher preparation.

Abstract

Teacher research is very different from traditional social science research on teaching. Every teacher has the opportunity to conduct teacher research; however most do not. If there is to be a new generation of teacher-researchers, preparation must begin in teacher education programs such as the Master of Science in Teaching program at Rowan University.

Introduction

In faculty rooms, at meetings, in conferences, at koffee klatches, teachers talk about teaching. Instinctively they know that these discussions will help them understand the impact of what they are doing on student learning. Sometimes the conversations reveal frustration; sometimes they reveal success; sometimes they reveal panic. Teachers also talk about articles or books they have read, but it is more likely that their conversations are about students and lessons. These conversations are the germination of action research questions. Each time teachers verbalize their questions and explore ways to solve problems, they are taking the first steps towards becoming action researchers. What happens as they raise questions and propose solutions is the beginning of research conducted in the classroom by practicing teachers and is designed to make them better teachers, not to create changes in the entire profession. It is about creating an environment in individual classrooms where the quality of learning is enhanced. While the individual teacher's research may be generalizable, it is not necessary that it should be. Most teachers do not envision themselves involved in research. Teachers are so engaged in practice that they have little time for praxis (McNiff, Lomax, & Whitehead, 1996). "Praxis," according to McNiff et al., "is informed, committed action that gives rise to knowledge rather than just successful action" (p. 8). This is what action researchers are committed to doing. Developing teachers who will see themselves as researchers begins during the teacher preparation program.

Action research described

In the first half of the twentieth century, educational philosophers were describing the kinds of questioning and problem-solving teachers do. Dewey's Progressivist ideas of the 1930s suggested that teachers should be reflective about what is happening in their classrooms (Tomal, 2003). He wanted teachers to take what they saw and use that knowledge to structure learning experiences. "He urged educators to be both consumers and producers of knowledge about teaching--both teachers and students of classroom life" (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993, p. 9).

Lewin's focus on collaboration, group inquiry to identify problems and propose solutions, became a foundation for research in the business field in the 1970s and 1980s but did not gain popularity in education until the 1980s (Tomal, 2003). Action research is a process, and Lewin identifies six stages in his action research model: Problem Statement, Data Collection, Analysis and Feedback, Action Planning, Taking Action (Implementation), Evaluation and Follow-up. (Tomal, 2003, p. 11) Poetter et al. (1997) want teacher candidates to have an awareness of the role of action research. Interns must "bridge the gaps between theory and practice and provide a new way for viewing the necessary marriage between study and practice" (p. 7). The hope is that candidates will see inquiry into what is, and is not, working as an integral part of learning to be a teacher. They must be willing "to ask questions,... to observe, to reflect and to write" (Poetter, 1997, p. 11) about their own learning. Creating situations where candidates explore their teaching and their students' learning will ensure that they take the first steps towards doing teacher research. Teacher research and research on teaching are not the same. Teacher research, according to Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1993), has different qualities from research on teaching with regard to ownership, supportive structures, research questions, generalizability, theoretical frameworks, and documentation and analysis (pp. 12-13). Ownership of teacher research belongs to teachers as opposed to professional researchers. The relevant research questions come from concerns encountered in practice, and the report comes in the form of interpretive analysis and "new paradigms and alternative kinds of discourse and analysis" (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993, p. 13). The findings of this kind of research are important, but their importance is based on their applicability to the classroom where the question evolved. Teacher research is much more personal than research on teaching. Conducting teacher research puts teacher candidates in a position to become more than purveyors of content. Candidates will become self-critical in their own teaching; they will recognize what works and build on their strengths while they develop an awareness of weaknesses. They will respond by creating plans of action (McNiff & Whitehead, 2002). Action research is purposeful. The casual conversations of teachers may be the first step towards a meaningful question to be answered or problem to be solved. McNiff et al. (1996) suggest that the teacher must be committed to engaging in systematic inquiry into what goes on in classrooms and must have the desire to change things to improve both teaching and learning. Tomal (2003) believes that action research fits the education setting because it is practical in its identification of a problem and creation of a logical, possible solution. The results are to benefit the setting in which the research is conducted rather than benefit all (or even other) educational settings. In action research, teachers are studying themselves, their students, and their classrooms. The teacher is necessarily a participant and therefore must influence the outcomes (Schwalbach, 2003).

Incorporating action research

One of the most important things that we require of teacher candidates is that they involve themselves in reflective decision-making about the nature of what they do. Candidates must begin to look at ways of teaching that will have a direct influence on what and how students learn. We can acclimate teacher candidates to this process by familiarizing them with the INTASC (Interstate New Teachers Assessment and Support Consortium) Standards for beginning teachers. In New Jersey, these standards are the ones the state will use to judge new teachers with regard to knowledge, disposition, and performance. It is critical that we begin during the certification phase of teacher education, at the undergraduate or graduate level, to enable candidates to look at their own performance reflectively. Principle #9 states: "The teacher is a reflective practitioner who continually evaluates the effects of his/her choices and actions on others (students, parents, and other professionals in the learning community) and who actively seeks out opportunities to grow professionally" (INTASC). Every INTASC standard opens doors for action research because each requires teachers and teacher candidates to view classrooms as dynamic places where there are multiple strategies to enhance learning for every student. As teacher candidates become familiar with the knowledge, disposition, and performance mandates within each principle, they will recognize myriad possibilities for action research. Dynamic teaching requires practitioners who are willing to challenge themselves to ask questions, propose solutions, create and implement action plans, and evaluate results.

Rowan University Master of Science in Teaching program

The Rowan University Master of Science in Teaching program prepares candidates for certification in elementary education, special education, and content areas of secondary education. As their capstone project, students plan research that will advance their understanding of teaching and learning and will improve the quality of their own teaching. While many will elect to conduct traditional, social science research, others will identify problems or questions of teaching that are well suited to action research. These students will accept the challenge of learning to teach, of identifying questions about their own teaching practice or their students' learning, and of devising a plan to improve one or both. Those who choose action research will explore the possibilities for creating more productive classrooms as a result of their inquiry and action. In general, the students choose a topic during a research methods class, complete a literature review, and develop a tentative research plan. Candidates then collect data during the student teaching semester. They spend a summer session analyzing the data and writing their final thesis or report.

Sometimes students have no specific questions when they begin their student teaching semester. Up until that point, everything has been an academic exercise that they have completed as a degree requirement. Although they have spent a semester in schools and have had the opportunity to observe teachers teaching and students learning, they have not had the chance to connect the two through their own teaching. Student teaching is a journey during which candidates need time to breathe and to reflect on what has happened with an individual lesson, reflect on the bigger picture of student learning over time. It is challenging for these candidates to deal with the pressures of learning to be teachers and to be researchers simultaneously. Constantly facing them is the issue of whether students are learning and, if they are, how they are learning. The most important thing is that they ask questions about the nature of teaching and learning and questions about their own practice and the influence it is having on students. They propose answers to the questions and define ways of solving the problems the questions raise, thereby becoming reflective practitioners. The nature of research and the respect or lack of respect for action research is one that education students will grapple with as they proceed in doing their research. Once they ask themselves whether the topic they have chosen will make a difference, they can begin the process of outlining a plan of action. In a very short time, they must determine if the problem they envisioned in their methods class actually manifests itself in the school where they are placed and create a plan of action to resolve the problem.

Constraints 

Time, experience, and school culture/climate are the major issues teacher candidate-researchers will deal with. The student teaching experience actually lasts approximately fifteen weeks. There are myriad interruptions to teaching during that time. Candidates do not typically begin teaching until the second or third week in the school. While this gives them time to identify the workability of their proposed question, it also means that they already have a limited time period in which to conduct their research. It is imperative that the candidates be realistic in the question chosen for exploration. Johnson (2002) suggests a minimum of two months, longer if possible, to conduct the study in the context of master's thesis research. Some interventions might be shorter. In the midst of lesson planning and portfolio preparation, teacher candidates are honing their observation and reflection skills. They must learn how to question their own preparation and performance, to craft additional questions, and to collect appropriate data. After hours of planning, candidates may discover that what they planned does not work with students. At that point candidates will redefine their action plan. In the moment of discovering that a problem exists, candidates must also begin to propose solutions. This kind of research in the context of teaching can be uncomfortable for candidates and teachers. The time demands of teaching are combined with the constraints of data collection. Solutions are often quite elusive. Candidates have little or no experience with the school in which they are doing their internship. The students with whom they are working are not actually their own and will "return" to the cooperating teacher at the end of the fifteen weeks. As teacher candidates and teachers struggle with how to implement their ideas, they become action researchers.

Reflective practice

In the Rowan program, student teachers keep reflective journals during their clinical practice observations as well as during their actual clinical internship/student teaching semester. Typically, the first semester reflections are about how they see themselves becoming aware of their roles as teachers. From their observations of their clinical supervisor as well as other teachers in the buildings where they are assigned, they begin to define themselves as teachers. They begin to ask questions about teaching practice and methodology. They begin to make connections between what teachers do and the learning that takes place, and they begin to question why learning does not happen for some students. There are moments when these clinical interns make connections between poor practice and lack of learning or between best practice and learning. During their student teaching, the focus shifts to their own experience and to questioning their own procedures, methods, and understanding of their students.

Sample Rowan projects

One student researcher in the MST Cohort of 2002 chose to explore a condition in her classes she described as "male students' writing apprehension" (Bartolomeo, 2002). Although the final product of her work was a traditional thesis with both quantitative and qualitative characteristics, she actually was conducting action research. She did not intend for her work to change the world of teaching writing; she wanted to know whether what she did in the classroom would lessen the apprehension of her students (Bartolomeo, 2002). She decided to try three things in her classroom in an effort to lessen writing apprehension in her male students over a four-month period: teacher intervention, role modeling, and gender balanced bulletin board design. Bartolomeo's (2002) intervention was designed to counteract gender stereotypes through teacher-student discussion and specific writing experiences. Three male poets enrolled in a university creative writing class visited the class to discuss their work and their feelings about overcoming gender stereotypes. The third piece of the action plan was to create bulletin board displays that represented both genders equally. Student work and other display items were chosen to show that gender equity was valued. What Bartolomeo discovered was that the boys in her class much preferred creative writing assignments because they felt less apprehension with those. They did express apprehension about the types of expository writing most assessed by high-stakes standardized tests. They felt that these kinds of writing assignments did not fairly evaluate them as writers. Bartolomeo endeavored to give a variety of opportunities for all types of writing during her semester so that the boys would begin to change this attitude.

A second project was undertaken because an MST student teacher of Hispanic descent found a gap in the curriculum. During her research methods class and her first clinical observations, she asked questions about why, as a student of Hispanic descent, she had never been exposed to writers from her own culture during her 16 years of school. The question led her to surmise that if she had not studied this literature, perhaps the students she would be teaching would not have studied it either. This became the focus of her action research. She proposed a multicultural unit to assist her students in redefining what they believed to be American literature. When she began student teaching, Vasquez (2002) had some serious concerns that the students in her American literature classes were expressing negative attitudes towards other cultures and wanted to attempt to help them modify these attitudes through their study of literature from another culture. Because of Vasquez's own experiences as a Latina, she decided to teach a two-week multicultural literature unit that focused on Hispanic-American writers. America has always been a nation of immigrants. As our minority populations grow, the literary canon of old no longer meets the needs of the multi-cultural population. It is important for all students to understand the culture of the people of the nation, and most literature curricula do not reflect the works of the multicultural minority population. The students of her classes did not express any knowledge of the work of Hispanic-American writers. The 2000 census showed that 12.5% of the U.S. population is Hispanic or Latino and that this was a 57.9% increase over the 1990 census (U.S. Census Bureau).

Although there were traditional qualitative components to her study, the focus of Vasquez's work with students was to determine whether her teaching could effect a change in their attitudes about what constituted American literature as well as their attitudes in general about other cultures. Making a difference in their understanding was a crucial goal in her preparation and teaching of lessons. She identified a question, proposed a solution, and activated her plan. Her final analysis of the unit was that it would take much longer than two weeks to effect any permanent change. A student in the 2004 MST cohort had a question about how students independently implement the writing process. She recognized that during her teaching and modeling they did as they were asked, but she wondered whether they used any of the steps when they were not directly monitored. Additionally, because of her experience with Let Me Learn[TM] and the Learning Combination Inventory (Johnston & Dainton, 1996) that identifies learning patterns in four categories (sequential, precise, technical, and confluent), Hagan questioned whether students' independent use of the writing process would be connected with their use first patterns. Learning patterns are not learning styles or multiple intelligences. They are the ways learners choose to show what they know. Scoring on the LCI can range from a low of 7 to a high of 35 in each pattern. A score of 25 or higher is a "use first" pattern, meaning that if a student is given a choice, he/she will gravitate to that pattern, even automatically using a pattern that will not net the best results. The other possibilities are an "as needed" pattern, where the student can use the best pattern even though it would not be the first choice, and "avoid," which is self-explanatory. School tends to value sequence and precision, the patterns of organization, deadlines, chronological order, reading, writing, and oral response. (Johnston & Dainton, 1996). Because these students are eighth graders, they will be facing two very important standardized tests in New Jersey, the GEPA (Grade Eight Proficiency Assessment) and HSPA (High School Proficiency Assessment). Her goal is to help students understand their patterns and the connection this has to writing tasks so that they can be more successful writing for school and for standardized tests. Her understanding of her students' patterns will drive her instruction in writing overall, but she will be particularly interested in following the progress of eight students who manifest strong use first patterns, two learners in each category.

Conclusion

Teachers view themselves as practitioners, not researchers. That is the role that the establishment assigns to them. Few teachers see themselves as legitimate researchers. They are not actively engaged in exploring the impact other people's ideas have on their classrooms. By its nature, the Rowan MST program immerses teacher candidates in the role of researcher. Once most teachers complete their preparation programs, they spend the first year in survival mode. Even graduates of the Rowan MST program will find it difficult to maintain the research process they were compelled to engage in during their certification/masters program. For teachers who were not involved in research during their preparation program, it is a fair guess that they will certainly not be during the beginning years of their careers. There is simply too much pressure to add this additional component. These teachers do not consider their classrooms as laboratories where they can test things on their students. Teachers everywhere are working on finding answers every day. Unfortunately teachers in the trenches do not see themselves as researchers who hypothesize about a problem and its possible solutions, nor do they set themselves up to systematically test the possibilities. How do we develop teachers who can and will do this? We begin in our preparation programs.

References

Bartolomeo, L. (2002). The effect of teacher intervention, role modeling, and a gender-balanced bulletin board design on 10th-grade male students' writing apprehension. Unpublished master's thesis, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ.

Cochran-Smith, M. & Lytle, S. L. (1993). Inside/Outside: Teacher research and knowledge. New York: Teachers College Press.

INTASC (Interstate New Teachers Assessment and Support Consortium), Council of Chief State School Officers. (2001). "INTASC standards." Accessed at: http://www.rowan.edu/mars/depts/seced/seced1.htm

Johnson, A. P. (2002). A short guide to action research. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Johnston, C. & Dainton, G. (1996). Let Me Learn: Learning combination inventory Form II. Pittsgrove, NJ: Let Me Learn, Inc.

McNiff, J. & Whitehead, J. (2002). Action research: Principles and practice. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

McNiff, J., Lomax, P. & Whitehead, J. (1996). You and your action research project. London: Routledge.

Poetter, T., Pierson, J., Caivano, C., Stanley, S., Hughes, S. & Anderson, H. D. (1997). Voices of inquiry in teacher education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Schwalbach, E. M. (2003). Value and validity in action research: A guidebook for reflective practitioners. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

Tomal, D. R. (2003). Action research for educators. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

U.S. Census Bureau (2000). "Mapping census 2003: The geography of U.S. diversity." At http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/atlas/censr01-104.pdf

Vasquez, N. (2002). Redefining high school American literature in a diverse nation. Unpublished master's thesis. Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ.

Jorgensen, Assistant Professor in the Department of Secondary Education/Foundations of Education, teaches courses in pedagogy and content area literacy and supervises student teachers.