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Trained in traditional methods of educational research at The Pennsylvania State University in the early 1970s while completing a Ph.D., I was taught about the statistical ramifications of an experiment using analysis of variance with repeated measures, Bartlett's test for homogeneity of variance, Cronbach's Coefficient Alpha Index of Reliability, and Pearson's Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient. I conducted and completed the research for my dissertation at a local high school which included three college-bound eleventh-grade classes taught by the same English teacher. Using Black Literature as a focus in an attempt to measure changes in students' social attitudes, the research, results, and recommendations were subsequently published in English Journal in March 1977. My attitude toward educational research and classroom teachers at that time is represented in a 1966 text by Deobald B. Van Dalen and William J. Meyer, Understanding Educational Research:
Although most classroom teachers are appliers rather than producers of research, instructors play a role in some investigations. To assist research workers, you may be requested to offer your classroom for observational purposes, to supply information about students, to administer tests, or to recruit students as subjects for experimental programs. You may play a part in the research movement that encourages classroom teachers to attack local problems under the supervision of specialists. You may cooperate with research workers who translate new theories and scientific findings into practical programs and conduct pilot programs in public schools to test them.
In the future, more and more teachers will be called upon to play a role in research. Certainly you will be a more interested and intelligent participant if you possess some knowledge of scientific investigative procedures. (15-16)
Listen to the roles that these research textbook writers give to teachers. Note the condescending way that they look at teachers in research studies. Observe how teachers are described as appliers, assistants offering classrooms, attackers of local problems under the supervision of specialists, cooperators with research workers, and how teachers will be more interested and intelligent helpers in research if they "possess some knowledge of scientific investigative procedures" (8).
As the teacher as researcher movement unfolded about 15 years ago, I had some concern about teachers conducting research. As I read, listened, and thought, my position then was that teachers were...