Classroom Based Research EVO 2016 was proud and happy to host Mark Wyatt on "What is research for teacher development?".

1. What is research for
teacher development?
Mark Wyatt

2. Research for teacher development
suggests which of the following to you?
1. Doing research themselves helps teachers develop?
2. Research previously conducted can be used to support
teacher development?
3. Teacher development in itself is possible, i.e. teachers
can develop?
4. Some strategies for teacher development might not
engage teachers in research?
5. Research for teacher development is not yet a universally
accepted concept?

3. You may have been a victim of…
 Top-down ‘training-transmission’ models of language teacher
education (Borg, 2015), which can be characterized by one-off
workshops.
 In a top-down approach, teachers are introduced to new ideas
to take back to the classrooms to apply and…
 Or no support for professional development at all?
 Do teachers often have to adapt “to the typical isolation of
their work lives?” (Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2007, p.
954).
 Or maybe you have benefitted from bottom-up teacher
development?

4. How do you conceptualize teacher
development?
 Think of a metaphor that sums it up for you.
 For example, is it a journey or a growth process or
something else?
 Complete the following sentence: My experience of
teacher development is………….

5. How do you conceptualize teacher
development?
 How you conceptualize teacher development is
likely to affect the role within this you see for
research.
 For example, if your experience of teacher
development is being led like a donkey along a
narrow ledge, with the carrot of promotion
dangling in front of you, then maybe the
possibility of research for teacher development is
not so obvious.

6. The term ‘teacher development’ is
comparatively new (as google Ngrams
show us, below)

7. Complete the sentence with the words
that most readily come to mind:
 You can train a ____________ to _________________.

8. With the rise of ‘teacher development’, we
have also seen greater awareness in recent
decades of:
 Teacher cognition
 Teachers are increasingly seen as “active, thinking
decision-makers who make instructional choices
by drawing on complex, practically-oriented,
personalized and context-sensitive networks of
knowledge, thoughts and beliefs” (Borg, 2003, p.
81).

9. With the rise of ‘teacher development’, we
have also seen greater awareness in recent
decades of:
1. reflective models of teacher education (Wallace, 1991)
2. the teacher’s role as a facilitator of learning in social
learning environments (Vygotsky, 1962)
3. intrinsically-motivated teachers’ needs for autonomy,
relatedness and competence (Ryan & Deci, 2000)
4. how teachers develop through their careers, from
novices towards expertise (Berliner, 1988)
5. how practitioner research/action research/exploratory
practice help (Allwright & Hanks, 2009; Burns, 2010)

10. How can we define practitioner /
teacher / action / research?
 Teacher research suggests?
 Practitioner research suggests?
 Action research suggests?
 Exploratory practice suggests?

11. So, how can we define practitioner /
teacher / action / research?
 In an IATEFL Research SIG online discussion last year
(http://resig.weebly.com/online-discussions.html ),
Judith Hanks (who is speaking here next week) amusingly
said:
 “each does exactly what it says on the tin.”

12. Teacher research is
 “systematic inquiry, qualitative and/or quantitative,
conducted by teachers in their own professional contexts,
individually or collaboratively (with other teachers and/or
external collaborators), which aims to enhance teachers’
understandings of some aspect of their work, is made
public, has the potential to contribute to better quality
teaching and learning in individual classrooms, and which
may also inform institutional improvement and
educational policy more broadly” (Borg, 2010, p. 395).

13. Some prefer the term practitioner
research, though:
 I suggest Practitioner as an alternative to Teacher
Research, as it allows the inclusion of learners working
with teachers and other practitioners, such as educational
psychologists, supervisors, coordinators, head teachers...
this creates space for interdisciplinary reflection and
investigation (Ines Miller from Brazil, in an online
discussion in 2015). http://resig.weebly.com/online-
discussions.html

14. Forms of teacher/practitioner research
include action research and exploratory
practice
 Of Action Research, Anne Burns (2015) says:
 “Action lies at the heart of the process, as it is the
strategies, behavioural changes and reflections that are
put in place to explore or investigate a social situation
that forms the basis for the research.”

15. Do you agree with these interpretations of
action research (offered by course
participants in the last week)?
1. “AR is done for oneself rather than for others. So, it is intrinsically
motivated and guided by the passion of the researcher(s).”
2. “Action research provides an opportunity for teachers to come up
with their own solutions to the issues rather than use ready-made
solutions.”
3. “ ‘Mistake is a gift to humankind’ and it is this philosophy which acts
as the key feature of AR”.
4. “According to the article, AR is a systematic way to approach,
understand and try to solve a problem teachers have always been
interested in.”
5. “Academic research is usually meant to inform large, general
populations while AR is meant to inform a specific class, school.”

16. Exploratory practice is based on the
following key principles:
1. Put quality of life first
2. Work for understanding
3. Involve everyone
4. Bring people together
5. Work in a spirit of mutual development
6. Make it a continuous enterprise
7. Draw on existing curricular practices to minimize the
burden and maximize sustainability
 (Allwright & Hanks, 2009, 149-154)

17. Time to discuss: Teacher/Practitioner
research:
 Who?
 Where?
 What?
 How?
 When?
 Why?

18. Who?
 Teachers, their colleagues, their students, anyone
else connected with the context with a
professional interest?

19. Where?
 The classroom, the school, the broader
community?

20. What?
 Whatever puzzles you? Whatever you or your co-
researchers would like to learn more about?

21. How?
 Through using natural (mostly) curricular
practices and naturally occurring data?
 As exploratory practice, as action research?

22. When?
 As a sustainable enterprise, not once a year in
artificial conditions?

23. Why?
 To improve the ‘quality of life’?
 To gain a deeper understanding of issues in the
learning/teaching context?
 To gain insights that may shape change processes,
if change is desirable?
 To build the practical knowledge, research skills,
intrinsic motivation, sense of autonomy,
relatedness and competence of all involved?

24. References
 Allwright, D. and Hanks, J. (2009). The developing language learner. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan.
 Berliner, D.C. (1988). The development of expertise in pedagogy. Washington: AACTE Publications.
 Borg, S. (2003). Teacher cognition in language teaching. Language Teaching 36(2), 81-109.
 Borg, S. (2010). Language teacher research engagement. Language Teaching 43(4), 391-429.
 Borg, S. (2015). Beyond the workshop: CPD for English language teachers. In S. Borg (ed.),
Professional Development for English language teachers: perspectives from higher education in
Turkey (pp. 5-13). Ankara: British Council, Turkey.
 Burns, A. (2010). Doing Action Research in English Language Teaching: A Guide for Practitioners.
New York: Routledge.
 Burns, A. (2015). Doing action research – what’s in it for teachers and institutions? International
House Journal of Education and Development, 38(21), 1-5.
 Ryan, R.M. & Deci, E.L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic
motivation, social development and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68-78.
 Tschannen-Moran, M. and Woolfolk Hoy, A. (2007). The different antecedents of self-efficacy beliefs
of novice and experienced teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23(6), 944-956.
 Vygotsky, L.S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge: MIT Press.
 Wallace, M.J. (1991). Training foreign language teachers. Cambridge: CUP.