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The value of connecting research and practice.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

This study examined the attitudes of undergraduate teacher education majors and education faculty about the value of connecting educational research and practice in the university and in K12 schools. Seventeen students and ten faculty participated in the study. The findings indicate that many participants think educational practice and research are typically conducted in isolation of each other.

Introduction

In recent years, both research findings (Barton, 2005; Berends, Lucas, Sullivan, & Briggs, 2005; Business-Higher Education Forum, 2005; Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Mathematics and Science Education, 1999; Swail, Cabrera, & Lee, 2004) and policy discussions (Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy, 2005; Darling-Hammond & Sykes, 2003; Tornatzky, Pachon, & Torres, 2003) have focused on the achievement gaps of American children and the importance of teacher education. In 2001, the Carnegie Corporation of New York began a new national teacher reform initiative intended to address some of these issues. The "Teachers for a New Era" or TNE initiative sought "to stimulate construction of excellent teacher education programs at selected colleges and universities" (Carnegie Corporation of New York, 2001, paragraph 2). Eleven colleges and universities were selected to participate in the initiative and were charged with making sweeping changes in their respective teacher education programs. "We expect outcomes implementing radical change. Among these [changes] will be different allocation of resources; academic organizations; criteria for evaluating participating faculty; internal accountability measures; and relationships with practicing schools" (p. 1). A major goal of the TNE initiative is to treat "teachers as modern clinical professionals while transforming "schools of education into schools of modern clinical practice" (Hinds, 2002, p. 3)

This study [1] examined the attitudes undergraduate teacher education majors and education faculty at a public university had about the value of connecting educational research with educational practice. The participants were students and professors at a Hispanic-serving research university located in a large bi-national metropolitan area along the United States-Mexico border.

Literature Review

Scholarly Teaching: The Struggle with Research and Practice

Shulman (2000) defined the scholarship of teaching as similar to "clinical work of faculty members in a medical school's teaching hospital" where clinical work is "subjected to systematic reflective analysis" (p. 49). Scholarly teaching is different from the scholarship of teaching, according to Shulman. The latter, said Shulman, is "peer reviewed and critiqued, and exchanged with other members of our professional communities" (p. 49). Many, like Shulman, have called for a reexamination of education so that research may inform practice and practice may engender further research. Schon (1995), for example, discussed the "dilemma of rigor or relevance" in modern research universities. For Schon, the norms and "prevailing epistemology" of research universities was such...

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