Teachers may rely too heavily on their feelings ("experience") and not be using best-practice. So it is good for them to do research (small "r") in the field, even if it is only reading up and studying.

However, for a teacher to really be able to teach pupils science and research projects, nothing beats obtaining first-hand experience through a higher Research (Big "R") degree.

The fun part is that the teacher has a captive set of respondents on which to experiment, with 100% response rates being attained (are not

marks wonderful motivators?!).

Trainee Teachers on the BA program at Uni. take a compulsory course in Action Research. Then they are encouraged to do Action Research (of a small identifiable issue they are willing to understand or improve on) during their Teaching Practice. This all has helped many of the trainees I mentored to focus on the students' learning rather than performing in front of the class. In this AR project they, by definition, have to interfere in the teaching-learning process (maybe informed by previous research or other people's advice and experience) to improve on what's investigated and reflect on how un/successful it was ... etc.; reflection in action + reflection on action.

Ultimately this whole process will help them become reflective practitioners. And that's first hand experience plus research (small 'r') geared towards professional development. I guess this is one answer to your two questions.

Sorry, my bad. I meant BA and edited my post.

Gloria, I agree whit most of what you say. I could just clarify a bit by giving you more background.

Our pre-service students get a lot of real hands-on training. The first year they have no teaching practice and only visit mentors and confer with their tutors, do some peer-teaching, role-plays etc..

During the 2, 3 and 4 year they have lectures in the fall terms and they go into a class every spring term and are attached to a mentor. That way they are fully responsible to teach the assigned class during the whole school term following the curriculum, 'all inclusive', they teach, maintain the documentation, attend parents meetings alongside the mentor, the full range. In the ideal situation the mentor is present in every students' class and confers with them afterwards, so mentors interfere only in 'emergencies'. In the beginning, the students act as teaching assistants, later co-teach classes together with the mentor, or two-students teach together, and finally they fully take over.

Each of the three years the students teach at different levels (year 2 -primary, year 3 - secondary, year 3 - tertiary.) At the time of graduation the students have between 200 and 400 real classes they've taught and the last year is the AR project they may embark on. With that number of classes, they have enough real experience - from discipline through gifted students and laggards, individual work, parents, all sorts of real situations they've had to deal with - and some of them even brave themselves to a teaching job immediately after graduation.

So research is an option in the last semester for those who wish.

My thoughts about this is that teachers should rely on both their competence (developed as practictioners) but also on theories of learning that have developed as a result of research. I suggest to the undergraduate pre-service teachers that I work with that they need theoretical knowledge when dealing with parents, principals etc. So, for example, if they are teaching geometry and are using concrete materials rather than digital resources on an IWB, and they are challenged as to why they aren't using the IWB, they are able to explain that theories of learning suggest that maths concepts are best developed with concrete materials. in scenarios like this it is better to be able to answer in this manner rather than just indicating 'my experience says so and so'.This is obviously more critical for novice teachers who haven't as yet built up a repertoire of practice. I think it is also useful for practictioners to base decisions on research - not necessarily the full blown type conducted by academics - but on themselves indentifying a question, collecting and analysing data - and coming to an informed decision. This sort of activity will also do much to lift the profession in the eyes of a largely critical public.

To add to the discussion, I distinguish between trainers and mentors. And I distinguish between pre-service teacher education, newly-qualified teachers in induction, and in-service teacher development when teachers have already had several years of authentic classroom experience. Each of the three categories needs different orientation to research, I believe. The first two groups will possibly benefit from an introduction to small classroom investigations, say case studies. The third group, from my observations, ultimately learn to survive in a classroom, have found several things that 'work' and hit a plateau, as Maynad describes in her book (Maynard, T. (1997). An Introduction to Primary Mentoring, London: Cassell). Those teachers may be unwilling to change established practices and go on to experiment and they happily drift in this 'safe' environment. This plateau is not necessarily bad since those teachers deserve to enjoy their achievements, but it should not last for long. This is where I see research as a developmental tool for life-long professional development. Someone, 'a critical friend', could challenge those established (possibly) routinised classroom practices and encourage self-assessment and evaluation in the form of practitioner research. And if those teachers had been introduced to research while in pre-service, and later in induction as newly-qualified teachers, they'll have an idea of what and how classroom research can benefit their future development.

Thank you for a most interesting discussion and thought provoking postings. My particular research interest is in evidence-based teaching (based on qualitative research rather than test-scores, etc) with a focus on online learning and the role of multi-disciplinary expert opinion in informing online learning development. I would be interested in the views of others about how to define experts and critical friends in this context and what would be their required competencies and criteria.

Research orientation is required because it helps to increse our uptodate knowledge regarding which helps ateacher to make the class more informative and intresting/.

I agree that research orientation drives the development of new methods and may in the long run change, and hopefully, improve practice. But: to play the devil's advocat for argument's sake, should teachers not learn a variety of routines and how to use them effectively as opposed to spend time learning research methods and doing research?

Research experience to a considerable extent is to be provided to student teachers.They should follow problem based learning.Practicums following a problem solving approach may help them to develop the research quality.It may also help in developing the 21st century skills.

The answer is in the question only: In my opinion Research is a systematic procedure that one should have an idea of or teachers can be trained on this : But remember only those who have interest in subject , Zeal to do the extra can perform research along with teaching.

Good question. I think research orientation should be one of the core courses or training in teacher training. Because if you are good researcher, you have good chance to be a good teacher and good communicator with your students.

Good question. Research has to be an integral part of any teacher. If the teacher does not have research orientation he/she is not going to be a good teacher. As we all know the information available in the textbooks is not always sufficient, and the teacher has to do research to find additional material to support his/her presentations.

Also in the kind of disciplines that I teach and research, it becomes extremely important for me to keep myself abreast of what is happening in my field to keep my students well informed about the current state-of-art of the subject.

Research brings in a constant encouragement to a teacher, in terms of new readings, new experimentation, new thoughts that can be shared with students, create interest to students as well as himself

If teacher = lecturer? If "yes": as many as possible. Each lecture should be prepared besed on up-to the-date knowledge, sometimes even non-published. Lecturer, who is imultanously a researcher and writes valuable scientific papers and books is the best evidence. His/her curiosity may significantly influence students.