Conclusion and What’s Next?

Abstract

This chapter begins by reconsidering the 31 student contributions in Chaps. 5 to 35. They are interesting for three reasons, namely for what they chose to write about, what they chose to say about these things, and how they reached their conclusions. Here we are less interested in the merits of these conclusions, that is, how well informed and insightful they seem to be. They are not written by established specialists in the areas they deal with, but instead by novice teachers at the beginning of their paths towards mastering the intricacies of teaching and learning in school settings. After looking further into what these novice teachers are saying about the issues and how they draw their conclusions, we will then offer suggestions as to how the study represented by these papers help position these teachers for future learning and development in the course of their careers. In this regard one might hope there would be ways to further strengthen teachers’ abilities to research their own classrooms to provide a solid basis for critical reflections, but it seems clear that this cannot be guaranteed, so that the foundations for reflective teaching laid during pre-service education are particularly important.

To wind up this volume, this chapter reconsiders the preceding 31 student contributions in terms of how their authors approached them, and it then goes on to consider the possible roles of these papers and further study of approaches to classroom research in the developing careers of both these writers and their readers.