Page 86 - Empowering pre-service teachers through inquiry - Lidewij van Katwijk
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Chapter 4
3. Applying research in practice, which Earl and Katz (2006, p.18) cite as being capable of “evidence-informed decision making” that requires not conducting research per se but rather making use of data available in previously published research (Van Veen et al., 2010). Aspfors and Eklund (2017) also mention “research-related teaching.”
4. To conduct research, using skills such as analysing a problem related to practice, undertaking a literature review, formulating a research question, choosing and using research methods, collecting and analysing data, drawing conclusions, and writing a research report (Aspfors & Eklund, 2017; Hökkä & Eteläpelto, 2014; Munthe & Rogne, 2015).
With the exception of some studies of research-based teacher education in Finland (e.g., Aspfors & Eklund, 2017; Jyrhämä et al., 2008; Krokfors et al.,2011; Puustinen et al., 2018) and Reis-Jorge’s (2005) contribution, few studies empirically investigate how teacher educators and pre-service teachers perceive and value pre-service teacher research. Moreover, recent findings suggest some ambiguous views among pre- service teachers (Puustinen et al., 2018). Therefore, the current study seeks to address the following research questions, applying the four main aspects of pre-service teacher research identified above, as a framework.
How do pre-service teachers and educators from Australia and the Netherlands perceive:
1. the purposes of pre-service teacher research?
2. the learning outcomes of pre-service teacher research?
3. the value of pre-service teacher research in teacher education programmes?
4 Method
4.1 Study design
We used a mixed methods approach, with emphasis on the qualitative data collected in focus groups with additional data from questionnaires, which are complementing as well as confirming (Small, 2011). This combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches provides a more complete understanding of the research problem than either approach alone (Creswell, 2014, 2016).
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