Research-based teacher education: Interactions between research and teaching

Abstract

Throughout the literature, research and teaching are described as being fundamentally different; they are reported to rely on different norms to ascertain what counts as knowledge as well as what accepted ways of knowledge development are. In spite of this, it is generally assumed that teaching could benefit from using the outcomes and methods research (more). Alternatively, drawing on emerging theories on horizontal development, boundary crossing and user engagement, this dissertation explores in what ways and under what conditions research benefits from different kinds of interactions between research and teaching. These questions inform the six empirical studies in the context of university-based teacher education that are portrayed in the different chapters of the dissertation. The interactions focus on studying and stimulating student teachers’ meaning-oriented learning (MOL) and deliberate practice (DP) in a one-year post-graduate subject-specific dual teacher education program, using different research designs and research instruments. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on conceptual interactions, exploring the concepts of MOL and DP from different perspectives, including that of teaching practice, and developing design principles for fostering MOL and DP in teacher education. In chapter 4 these principles are used as starting points for two parallel year-long formative interventions, in which new practices and knowledge are developed collaboratively (i.e., by means of interpersonal interactions) by educators and a researcher-interventionist. Chapter 5 considers the consequences of this relatively new research design for research quality. Chapter six studies two “outliers”; student teachers who voiced resistance to the pedagogies used. By means of an auto-ethnography with weekly measurements, chapter 7 explores intrapersonal interactions: two consequential transitions between research and teaching. A synthesis of the substantive findings of the different studies indicates that the benefit of interactions between research and teaching for research is located in the increased understanding of the complexity and interrelatedness of the object under study, potentially adding to the truth value, applicability and neutrality of the research undertaken. The conditions under which this benefit can be realized include attending to discontinuities, showing engagement, being open to learn, and valuing expertise equally. These findings elaborate on the existing literature in multiple ways; by stressing experienced discontinuities instead of predefined differences, by considering active resistance as a sign of engagement, by illustrating how the researcher’s openness to learn is consequential for research quality and lastly by showing the benefits of exploiting the expertise of teaching in promoting student teacher learning. In light of these findings, we recommend to abandon the use of a ‘gap’ as this metaphor implies a lack of interactions between research and teaching, whereas this dissertation has shown diverse examples of direct interactions. Moreover, a gap invites to be closed, whereas the benefit of the interactions between research and teaching was found in the diversity between the practices. Instead, we recommend using the metaphor of boundaries, which invite crossing, while retaining the differences between and thus the strengths of both practices.