Abstract:

The participation of pre-service teachers in education research can be constructed in a number of ways. Since Stenhouse (1979) asserted that to engage with research, teachers need to engage in it, studies have emphasized the benefits of engaging in research for pre-service teachers, rather than simply reading it. At its most basic, it is argued that doing research can link theory and practice for pre-service teachers and provide a context for the content knowledge of curriculum studies programmes. However, participation in research during teacher development can be seen as a learning activity of more profound significance. Maaranen and Krokfors (2007) have suggested that the success of Finnish education is built upon a research-based approach to teacher education that emphasises enquiry into pedagogy in order to develop ‘pedagogical thinking’. On this basis, the authors have, elsewhere, explored how pre-service teachers can participate in research as part of their teacher education (Medwell and Wray, 2014). In the present study we sought to offer trainee teachers the opportunity to inquire into issues of curriculum, rather than the, more usual, inquiry into their own teaching activities.

Pre-service teachers in England face significant challenges to participation in research despite the international phenomenon of demand for research-based practice in education, and there has been some in-depth exploration of what this might mean for UK education. The transfer of power (and money) for educational research to around 700 teaching schools, and the conceptualization of research as a school improvement mechanism, has meant that support for teacher participation in research is patchy in England. Gu et al (2014) found that participation in research was the least of the six priorities of the teaching schools or Teaching School Alliances (TSAs) gifted with the power to lead education research in England. Moreover, research in schools tends to focus on the “technical” aspects of “what works” to address narrow performativity goals relating to its school-improvement role. Whether these teaching schools have the capacity to teach beginning teachers to research also remains questionable.

In this study, we analyzed the reflectiveness of ten trainee teachers participating in a shared research project in Shanghai and English primary schools.

The aim was to explore what kind of reflective learning about research could be identified through content analysis of transcripts of research planning and review meetings and of individual written reflective reports by each participant. The findings of the study were that that undertaking a shared research project was a significant learning event in these pre-service teachers’ paths towards becoming a teacher. Through reflection on their research, these students analyzed their experiences as researchers, the nature of research, their learning during the research process and developed criticality about research. The paper considers what this reflection on the practice of teacher research can offer to the education of teachers in the current school-based UK training context and more generally.

Keywords:

Pre-service teachers, teacher education curriculum, teacher research, reflective practice, student teachers.