Putting Research in the Collaborative Hands of Teachers and Researchers: An Alternative to Traditional Staff Development

Abstract

The research to practice gap continues to be a prominent concern among professionals in the field of education. Traditional staff development in which teachers attend presentations and workshops for a few days each year has been one method for attempting to bring empirically validated instructional practices into the classroom. Unfortunately, traditional staff development has had little effect on classroom practice. This paper will present an alternative strategy for bridging the research to practice gap—bringing university researchers and classroom teachers together to collaboratively plan and execute classroom research. Because a great many universities are located in or near rural areas, rural school districts can provide rich opportunities for collaborative partnerships. This paper will provide guidelines for uniting researchers and practitioners in the endeavor of collaboratively designing and implementing classroom research.