Researching Problems of Practice in a Teacher Education Program
Mordechai Gordon & Eric Conrad
Abstract
Inspired by Cochran-Smith’s and Lytle’s understanding of teacher research and the notion of inquiry as a stance, this essay explores the transformation of an integrated research course sequence that was originally launched as a major component of the teacher education program at the School of Education of Quinnipiac University. In what follows, we first describe the creation of the original research course sequence, the revisions recently made to it as well as the main reasons driving us to make these revisions. We highlight the new emphasis in this sequence on researching problems of practice and how the teacher candidates in our program implemented the changes that were made. Drawing on two-years of data with the new version of the research course sequence, we use multiple data sources to assess both the outcomes of the course sequence and the process that our teacher candidates experienced. Finally, we briefly reflect on some conclusions and implications that emerged from the changes that we made to our research course sequence.