Abstract:

Research on teachers has its own trajectory of development. Similarly to research in other social sciences, the current state of research on teachers is a synthesis of several complex social factors related to a certain region, such as its history, culture, legislation, philosophy of education, or even the character of its school reforms.

The aim of this overview study is to present results of a qualitative content analysis of more than 4000 educational studies and journal abstracts of educational research studies. Behind this procedure, there were two main questions: 1. to find out how the history of a certain (post-communist) region influenced its research on teachers (so called diachronic view on research on teachers); 2. to reveal the trends and focus of research on teachers under the influence of current societal context across the world (so called synchronic view on research on teachers).

1. The first part of the study presents the results of the diachronic investigation. They consist of a historical overview of research on teachers during the last seven decades, pointing at differences in the character, themes, and methodology of research on teachers between Soviet and Western part of Europe before and after the collapse of the communist regime in 1989. As the post-communist countries have their own distinct history and specific features of reforms since 1989, the authors decided to use the research data to indicate the trajectory of their research on teachers in comparison with research in Western countries. As the data show, on the one hand, thanks to the democratic efforts but also to globalization and ICT boom, there has been a tendency towards gradual overlapping ways of educational research in the whole of Europe. On the other hand, several recent unsuccessful educational reforms, teachers' passivity and dependence upon state might be residuals from the previous era.

2. The second part of the study presents data from a qualitative content meta-analysis focused on the newest trends of research on teachers from the global perspective (Europe, America, Africa and Asia). The findings mentioned in this study relate to research methodology; and the shift in research topics.

2.1 Though the trajectory of development of the methodology of research on teachers till now can be described as an ongoing tension between positivistic and reflective approaches, currently it is opening itself to a pluralistic and mixed approach, to both a big data research, and individual teacher's inquiry. Current researchers use either the paradigm "research – product“ or the paradigm of "a reflective professional“.

2.2 The content of research has shifted from a strong emphasis on teacher competencies to teacher’s beliefs, thinking, and communication with the environment. The phase of teacher preparation is the most often investigated out of all phases of the teaching profession. The fastest growing research area is the social support of teachers, then the influence of ICT, the impact of educational reforms, and quantitative measuring of the performance of teachers, as well as their socio-eco-cultural-ethnical background. The trends show that the researchers will have to focus not only on explicit phenomena, such as teacher competencies and performance but at the same time there must be a much stronger emphasis on researching the impact of the environment on hidden layers of teacher personality.

Keywords:

Research, teachers, post-communist region, comparison, methodology.