Building teachers’ voices on teaching in a research-informed teaching course

Abstract

This study aims to understand the extent to which 56 teachers developed new academic-based voices about teaching in the context of a research-informed teaching course. The empirical evidence consisted of a set of 228 short reports written by participants on the course. Each report reflects a fragment of knowledge acquired by a teacher and includes four sections: the source of research information, the verbatim text extracted from research, its perceived usefulness, and the type of curriculum content. Each written report was considered a thematic unit of analysis, and data were analysed with qualitative and quantitative methods. Findings showed a wide variety of sources and features of academic information acquired by teachers, teachers’ differing purposes in using this information, and various curriculum-related contents. The findings also revealed three main types of teachers’ academic-based voices, which we have labelled theory-informed voice, practice-informed voice, and educational-tool-informed voice. The study demonstrates that each teachers’ voice was distinctly used in each identified curriculum content.