Creating Contexts To Change Teachers' Beliefs about the Influence of Research.

Abstract

Expectations for educational research can seem like the ancient moral equation Nietzsche criticizes in his Twilight of the Idols. There Nietzsche (1968/1889) derides the Socratic/Platonic equation of reason, virtue, and happiness. Reason leads truth. Truth leads virtue, and virtue leads happiness. Clifford (1973) notes a similar equation in her work on the history of the impact of research on teaching. Underlying the enduring optimism and hope for educational research is the belief that to know the is do the right (pp. 1-2). Educational research provides the knowledge that will influence teachers. Teachers thereby acquire the pedagogical excellence (virtue) necessary promote some educational good. This article does not question the equation's basic structure, except deny any necessary connection between parts. Knowledge derived from research may lead pedagogical excellence. But, important differences appear in how teachers, teacher educators, or researchers conceptualize the right. Among teachers, Dewey (1929) laid out broad possibilities. Prospective teachers, on the one hand, want know how do things in order be successful teachers. Research knowledge becomes a source of procedural advice for good performance, and knowing the means using the recipes (p. 15). For Dewey, on the other hand, knowing the was also associated with understanding a system of scientific thought. This sense of the right meant understanding the principles of and warrants for knowledge derived from research in order enrich teacher judgment: