On Becoming Teacher Experts: What's a Teacher-Researcher
The phrase "teacher-researcher" has -almost become- educational jargon. Many teachers are suggesting that they do research in their classrooms because they observe children. Too often such observations are made in a vacuum. Anyone can observe children, but the teacher-researcher observes with an informed eye. The observations are filtered through the teacher's knowledge of both children's growth and the language process. The sensitive teacher-researcher does not deny the learning theories that have been developed and . researched. Rather these theories are used, retested, questioned, and extended within the classroom.
In the process of experimentation, the teacher has to question some previously held assumptions about children and about learning. Some assumptions will be rejected outright as no longer valid; others will be held onto for a time until a new piece of information comes to cause a modification. Classroom researchers are indeed in the business of creating rather than borrowing knowledge- They are not, however, careless in their responsibility to continue reading and learning from others.
This month Glenda Bissex delineates the specific characteristics of a teacher-researcher. Her description of the teacher-researcher as a questioner, observer, learner, and a more complete teacher offers a realistic view of this new professional. The teachers of children with whom Bissex works are ..able to articulate their reasons for teaching in a certain way. Teachers who are researchers can easily address the concerns of those who say "in my experience as a student" or "when 1 went to school" because they can demonstrate to the doubting that a particular educational practice works. The teacher-researcher is a theory maker who stands rooted in what has gone before but who extends theory into new areas of knowledge.
When you read Bissex's article, extend her text to include the concept of teacher as theory maker in order to answer her question "What's a teacher-researcher?"
S. J. R.
To dispel some traditional associations with the word "research," I'll begin by saying what a teacher-researcher isn't.
So what IS a teacher-researcher?
A teacher researcher is:
Marie Clay notes that "an interesting change occurs in teachers who closely observe. They begin to question educational assumptions" (English Journal, Feb: 1982, p. 91). One assumption that has been questioned by observers of children in classrooms (and of children before they enter school) is that learning to read precedes learning to write. Young children have been seen learning to read while they write, for example
A teacher-researcher is a questioner.
Why is
Terry unwilling to read? How are poor writers and readers different from good
ones? Do they have different concepts of what writing and reading are all about?
Problems can become questions to investigate, occasions for learning rather than lamenting.. Everything that happens in a classroom can be seen as data to be understood rather than causes for blaming or congratulating ourselves or our students. Teachers are constantly making evaluative judgments, but that evaluative frame of mind narrows our vision. "I really enjoyed asking questions of my students," one teacher-researcher told me, "because it gave me more insight into those students."
New approaches to teaching
are no longer just risks, but opportunities for learning: What would happen
if I had a reading workshop in this class and we shared and conference books
everyone chose to bring?
A teacher-researcher is a learner.
In my ideal school, principals ask teachers, "What did you learn today?"
not "What did you teach?" Teacher-researchers have plenty to respond. (In this
ideal school, principals are researchers, too.)
It's no accident that the notion of teacher-researchers grew out of writing projects which actively engaged teachers in doing what they taught. And whatever our subject matter, isn't it learning that we teach? Just as classrooms become writing workshops, they .arc also becoming learning workshops, where hotly teachers .end students sec themselves as learners-where teachers are learning from children (as Lucy Calkins did in Lessons from a Child)where teachers ask questions of themselves as well as of students-where teachers are models of learners.
Finally, a teacher-researcher is not, as I have said, a split personality but a more complete teacher. Teachers have asked whether it's possible to teach and do research at the same time. This very question reflects the separation we feel between knowing and doing, and the division within our educational systems between those who "know" (such as college teachers, who have -classrooms yet are not considered "classroom teachers") and those who "do'." (the teachers who arc not trusted to, and often do not trust themselves to know what and how they should teach.) ."I can't tell you how much difference this had made to me," one teacher-researcher who had received some criticism of her teaching methods said to me. "I knew I was doing the right thing because I'd done the research." If teacher research had been on the horizon ten years ago, I might still be in a classroom myself rather than having been driven to choose between knowing and doing.
Glenda Bissex teaches in
the faculty of education at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont.
Language Arts, Volume 63, No. 5, September 1986.