Reinventing the Role of Teacher: Teacher as Researcher

Abstract

The authors describe a program at the University of South Carolina that helps teacher interns become researchers and take control of their own classrooms and professional lives in ways that confound the traditional definition of teacher. A CENTRAL belief that influences many teacher education programs today is that teachers must be researchers, creators of theory who can inform and generate sound curricular practice. The strategies employed in the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) program at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, support the development of teachers who can fulfill this new role of teacher/researcher. Teacher research is not an imitation of university research. Research or inquiry is a way of life, and teachers who make good decisions about curriculum are continually involved in the research process.(1) Research emerging from practice has a natural life in schools because the questions are more appropriate, the investigations are more natural, and the findings are more credible and valid for school practice than is the case with research conceived, conducted, and interpreted in the clinical settings of higher education. Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan Lyric define teacher research as systematic and intentional inquiry carried out by teachers.(2) They identify journals, brief and book-length essays, oral inquiry processes, and classroom as categories of teacher research. Our goal in the MAT program at the University of South Carolina is that each teacher intern come to see theory, research, and practice as dynamically interrelated and interdependent. Course requirements and experiences are designed to support the continuing development of teacher/researchers. There are prerequisite courses in science, language, mathematics, the social sciences, and so on to ensure that candidates have appropriate academic foundations for teaching in early childhood and elementary education settings. The MAT program begins in two summer school sessions prior to a yearlong internship. MAT students pursue courses addressing theory and research in human growth and development, learning, curriculum, and teaching. They read theoretical studies and research reports and summaries, along with anecdotal records of teachers' experiences in diverse school settings. The students observe in a summer school program for children and interview a teacher or director of the program they observe. Working in cooperative learning teams, they prepare written analyses of the purposes, goals, approaches, and effects of the programs visited. The cooperative learning teams also design integrated thematic units for designated age groups, which they present to one another for critiques. Beginning in the fall semester, the students undertake graduate coursework that emphasizes teaching, learning, and curriculum in science, language arts and reading, mathematics, and social studies. This coursework accompanies a yearlong internship in a school. The connections between the coursework and the internship demonstrate the interdependent relationship of continually evolving understandings of research, theory, and practice. As they fulfill their course requirements, the interns employ a variety of research methods, including clinical interviews, case studies, the collection of quantitative data, and an ethnographic study. The interns are afforded many opportunities to use everyday experiences and seemingly insignificant events identified in their school-based research to make connections between theory and practice. They use the results of their inquiries to make strategic decisions about how the curriculum can best be developed to support the learners they work with every day. The interns plan a series of specific investigations for each area of the curriculum. This enables them to examine the benefits of different approaches to inquiry. Clinical interviews in science. The MAT interns learn how to use the clinical interview to design appropriate science instruction. …