Page 82 - Empowering pre-service teachers through inquiry - Lidewij van Katwijk

Chapter 4
(Dunn et al., 2008). This paper focuses on pre-service teachers conducting research related to becoming a teacher, including literature reviews and research proposals, to demonstrate their knowledge of the content and methods of educational research.
In many teacher education institutes worldwide, including bachelor’s as well as master’s programmes, engaging with research, that may include learning to read and interpret published educational research or actually conducting research is a compulsory component (Dunn et al., 2008; Griffioen & de Jong, 2015; Van der Linden, Bakx, Ros, Beijaard, & Van den Bergh, 2015). However, while teacher educators endorse the need for pre-service teachers to engage in such research activities, many pre-service teachers seem to resist this component of their degree requirements (e.g., Krokfors et al., 2011; Ulvik, 2014; Van der Linden et al., 2015). Joram (2007) identifies one reason for this situation as emerging from clashing epistemologies between pre- service teachers and their educators, whereby educators typically consider research- based findings important for their students to learn, while pre-service teachers are not interested in this type of evidence and only want to learn how to teach, with the claim that “specific skills of teaching are the most important thing they should be learning” (p. 131). Other research affirms that pre-service teachers believe that conducting a research project takes time away from more practical aspects of the curriculum (Dunn et al., 2008). Pre-service teachers tend to be strongly influenced by the practicing teachers whom they meet during their in-school placements, and those practicing teachers often have little experience with conducting research, such that they may express apathetic or negative attitudes toward it (Dunn et al., 2008; Munthe & Rogne, 2015; Rinke & Stebick, 2013). Several studies conducted in Finland, where conducting research is required for bachelor’s and master’s theses, report that teacher candidates appreciate the research-based approach (Byman et al., 2009; Jyrhämä et al., 2008; Munthe & Rogne, 2015). However, Puustinen et al. (2018) conclude that even if pre- service teachers recognize the programme goal to create “teachers as researchers,” they are sceptical of the relevance of this goal for the teaching profession and do not always recognise a link between theory and practice. Newly qualified teachers in Finland and pre-service teachers in Norway find conducting research problematic, in that it interferes with their practice periods, due to time constraints (Ulvik, 2014), and they have difficulty identifying applications of research activities in their daily practice (Aspfors & Eklund, 2017).
Despite increasing attention to pre-service teacher research in teacher education programmes, reflecting its potential impact on improving teacher quality and stimulating lifelong learning, resistance and negative attitudes toward research
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