I believe research is very important to do in academia, both in the position of a student and as a teacher. As a teacher, it is a way to see if what you're doing is working in the sense that it has a positive impact on your students, and if it isn't, then hopefully it will also inspire you to change your practice to enhance positive student experience. It's important to remember that teachers should also always be learning - both from their experiences and through research combined.
I know that asking questions and researching them shouldn't stop after post-secondary. However, I can't help but feel that teaching could be overwhelming at times and when you have stacks of papers to mark, self-reflecting and researching may not be on your list of priorities. But I do agree that it is important to reflect on your teaching at some point so that the students are given the best possible opportunity to succeed and that largely depends on their experiences in the classroom. If you find you're not getting the results you want in your classroom, you shouldn't stop until you find something that works.
There are obviously obstacles in implementing new research strategies in the classroom and I think getting approval to try new things is a huge barrier for teachers. There are permission slips, and you need approval from administrative staff, etc., that can really dampen your efforts to get every student and perhaps other teachers on board. It can be frustrating when you want to initiate positive change. Researching together, like the teacher-researchers in the article had, might help the initiatives gain momentum, as well as help other teachers reflect on their own practices.
Lastly, stemming from Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Freire, I think it's essential to demonstrate to your students that you are not the sole giver of knowledge, but that you too, learn from others and the knowledge they have to give. Like Karen Nesmith realized in the article, you should be willing to do those things you ask your students to do and I wholly agree with that.
1 comment:
Teacher as a researcher inspire me of the idea of mutual learning. Students learn from the teachers, who also learn from the students based on the classroom experiences with the students and search for better methods to facilitate students to learn at their best and obtain the greatest academic and socioemotional outcome. This is consistent with your idea that teachers are not the sole givers of knowledge, at the same time they learn from others and the knowledge they have delivered.
Also, teacher as research, I think, it consists of a continuous process of exploring and experimenting better teaching styles, which contribute to an improvement of educational practice in a broader sense.
This possibly create heavier workload to teacher as if you mentioned the multiple roles of a teacher could be overwhelming at times. However, I do think narrative research could make the education system, from classroom to policy setting, better off and student could enjoy the advantages from it.
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