Teachers’ Professional Practice Development with a Foundation in the Educational Sciences

Abstract

According to the Swedish Education Act (Skollagen), the education system must have a solid scientific foundation, with teachers expected to base their work on current research from the field of educational sciences. One way to promote this type of system is both to make research available to teachers and to highlight the importance of research for teachers’ professional practice. In this study, we are interested in how teachers read and interpret existing research. At one school, a group was formed that comprised three teachers and two representatives from school management who worked to promote development at the school. As researchers, we selected five scholarly texts on the theme of school development and observed the group as they discussed these texts in relation to their own practice and its development

The main aim of the study was to develop a deeper understanding of the meeting point between teachers’ practice and the different types of content in research articles. To achieve this aim, we developed a method that identifies the intertextual meeting points between research texts and experiences from teachers’ practice – that is to say, occasions in the discussions when components from the research texts meet practice-based references. In particular, we are interested in the potential that exists to develop teaching practice that has a basis in scientific research. Our method of analysis aimed to identify the central components of the research texts that the group members chose to highlight in relation to their own professional practice. In the same way, we also identified different types of discussion activities that had strong ties to the group’s current practice. When text components are activated in relation to various practice-oriented social activities, an intertextual meeting point occurs. This part of the work is based on an initial open analysis of what the group said in their discussions of the five texts.

The components of the texts that appear to be central are as follows:

• Results/Conclusions (i.e., the presentation in the text of the results and conclusions of existing studies)
• Context (i.e., the conditions and circumstances within which the text was produced/what the text is dealing with at a broader level)
• Theoretical Approach (i.e., the scientific, theoretical or epistemological points of departure and frameworks of the text)
• Key Concepts (i.e., central and distinctive concepts that are used in the text)

The practice-based discussion activities that appear to be central are as follows:

• Action Orientation (i.e., the articulation of something that describes an action – what teachers do or should do)
• Professional Language Development (i.e., the articulation of something that shows a more informed way of understanding and that talks about a phenomenon or process that is already known. This language has a basis in research; deeper understanding)
• Re-evaluation (i.e., the articulation of an a-ha moment or moment of realisation; a changed understanding)
• Common Assumptions (i.e., the articulation of a collective opinion is reinforced – alternatively, the collective opinion is placed in juxtaposition to aspects in the text)

In a further analysis, we identified the strongest intertextual meeting points. Those that dominated the group’s discussions are as follows:

• Results/Conclusions meet Action Orientation, A1-B1. Here, participants refer to the text component "results or conclusions" in relation to a discussion or reasoning about their own practice as teachers and to how they should act.

• Results/Conclusions meet Professional Language Development, A1-B2. Here, participants refer to the text component "results or conclusions" and in so doing develop their professional language by demonstrating an enriched way of understanding and talking about something that is already known to them.

• Results/conclusions meet Common Assumptions, A1-B4. Here, participants refer to the text component "results or conclusions" in connection with their articulation of common assumptions that are well established in their shared teaching practice.

• Context meets Common Assumptions, A2-B4. Here, participants refer to the “context” component of the text – that is, the timeframe, location, and central circumstances of the study in question or the research area that the text is part of, while also articulating common assumptions.

By far the most dominant intertextual meeting point during these discussions is that the participants use the results presented in the texts to enrich their own professional language. With regard to the results that the texts present, this means that the participants learn about new concepts or gain a deeper understanding of what they already have experience with.

The results further show that texts with clearly written results and conclusions stimulate action-oriented discussions. Texts with strong, ideologically-framed theories provide a basis for reflection, a developed professional language and, in some cases, a re-evaluation of existing practice. The discussions also reveal a relatively strong practice-based discussion activity, which is mainly about consolidating common assumptions. Texts that have extensive descriptive analyses run the risk that readers will “get stuck" and simply use them to express what they recognise.

In summary, the results show that teachers' reading of research texts is highly relevant when it comes to the potential for discussions that develop teaching practice. The most important text component in these discussions was the results or conclusions presented in the texts. However, this was only the case when the knowledge claims made in the research text aimed to contribute by way of a clear set of professional development actions. The dominant practice-development discussion activity was the development of professional language in particular in its meeting point with the component of results and conclusions as well as the component of context – that is to say, the actual conditions and circumstances that are typical for this study.