Practitioner research and excellence in teaching

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between established teachers’ professional learning and their use of practitioner enquiry, or action research, as a means of improving the quality of their classroom teaching. It reports on one aspect of a ten-month pilot study jointly funded by the Scottish Government and the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) to explore means of evaluating the impact of the Chartered Teacher initiative on pupil learning. Whilst the study found evidence for the beneficial effects of teachers’ engagement in practitioner research, as part of the requirement of Chartered Teacher programmes, it also raised a number of issues as to exact nature of participants’ learning and whether current approaches to the use of practitioner research in teacher education need to be revised.  Full text of this work will be available from the Scottish Educational Review web pages: http://www.scotedreview.org.uk/content/2010/42[2]