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Exploring the Nature of Theory in a Teacher Research Community
Sharon Miller
If
classroom teaching in elementary and secondary schools is to come of
age as a profession—if the role of teacher is not to
continue to be infantilized—then teachers need to take
the adult responsibility of investigating their own practice
systematically and critically, by methods that are appropriate to
their practice.
Frederick
Erickson (cited in Richardson, 2001, p. 301)
A few years
ago, I worked with a teacher researcher who had an almost visceral
negative reaction to the notion of theory. I had urged the
participants in our Teacher Research and Inquiry Institute to read
research and theory that was related to their study and that
supported their assumptions about teaching and learning—research
that would also support their research methods and their
findings. Eve expressed disdain for and refused to read either
traditional or non-traditional research that might support her
inquiry.
I had asserted
that once they had gone beyond their first year of teacher research,
when they no longer struggled with the processes, they were very
likely becoming theorists in their own right. I suggested that they,
and others like them, had a great deal to offer to the conversation
about teaching and learning, and that, along with formal theory,
they should read the work of other teacher researchers, and should
consider how they, too, could share their work on behalf of others.
Eve resisted
the notion that other teacher researchers—published and
unpublished—would serve this purpose, because the teacher
researchers were not recognized theorists; they were teachers. She
couldn't admit that she, by virtue of her teacher research study, was
becoming a theorist and that she would have something to
contribute to larger, more public conversations about teaching and
learning.
As a result of
her resistance, we began a series of conversations around the notion
of theory and its relationship to classroom teachers. These
conversations continued among this group—and others who
would follow—for a period of two years.
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Exploring the Nature of Theory in a Teacher Research Community