Pre-service teachers becoming researchers: the role of professional learning groups in creating a community of inquiry

Abstract

Contemporary schools seek to employ teachers who are curious learners, who can employ practitioner inquiry skills to investigate, inform and grow their own classroom practice, responsive to their circumstances. As a profession, the question we must ask is how do we best prepare and continue to equip teachers with the necessary research skills to investigate and inform their own practice? In this study, we share our pedagogical stance and features of our approach in a new core undergraduate subject for pre-service teachers (PSTs). We discuss professional learning groups (PLGs) for initial teacher education students as the main intervention in the subject, and, more specifically, we elaborate how regular participation in PLGs formed in an on-campus subject can help PSTs to become researchers. We draw on 183 student exit tickets and student feedback surveys to consider broader implications for how to engage teachers in research. This study poses questions about the nature of practitioner research and investigates the role that PLGs play in disrupting the challenges universities face in preparing teachers to engage in and with research.

Teacher leadership and virtual communities: Unpacking teacher agency and distributed leadership

“…Conversely, teacher agency can also impact the development and sustainability of CoPs (Zeivots et al, 2023). Empowered teachers with a sense of agency are more likely to actively participate in CoPs, contribute to collective problem-solving, and support the establishment of shared visions and goals (Ghamrawi, 2022).…”

‘Making it possible’: the complex dynamics of university foreign language teacher agency for research in funding applications

“…Teachers, as researchers, are expected to be involved in ongoing systematic inquiries as a key element of their work (Hökkä et al 2012). Existing literature has revealed teachers' identity commitment in their research practice -there are challenges and complexities in the language teacher educator's identity construction as a researcher (Yuan 2017); power relations entail tensions in EFL teachers' research practice and researcher identity construction (Lu and Yoon 2022); and domestic visiting study programs and professional learning groups play a role in facilitating teachers becoming researchers (Bao and Feng 2022;Zeivots et al 2022). While the findings of these studies have generated important insights into the construction of teachers' identities as researchers, how teacher agency affects change in their funding application experiences is rarely investigated.…”