Conclusion: Research Partnerships in Early Years Education

Abstract

Teachers are more than technicians, more than doers. The old saying that “those who can do, those who can’t teach” can no longer be applied to teachers in the twenty-first century. Those who engage in teaching, whatever their title (educator, carer, teacher, pedagogista), are required to understand why they do what they do at both the theoretical and the technical levels. The authors in this collection have discussed how teachers engaged in research, at various levels of engagement, are supported in new ways to rethink their taken-for-granted ways of working, to be troubled within their pedagogical habits, to encounter tensions and uncertainties around and about best practice or evidence-based practices. Alongside the teachers, the partners in the research, whatever their title (university researcher, academic researcher, outsider, expert researcher, research associate), are challenged to rethink their areas of expertise, to reassess what counts as knowledge, to encounter uncertainty, diversity, innovation in ways and forms that challenge traditional research methods, traditional ways of writing in the academic world, and more familiar forms of knowledge, understanding, and learning. Across the chapters the authors have provided examples where the partnership of teachers and researchers has challenged predictable, linear, causal links among professional development, research, and teacher transformation. Each chapter has provided the context and examples that highlight the importance of teachers engaged in research—whatever method or form that this may have taken.

[T]eaching as profession in itself nowadays is seen as an area of knowledge, being a subject of inquiry and research. The dichotomy between head and hand is in this respect a thing of the past. Teachers should be good doers because they are qualified as good ‘knowers’. Not all teachers are expected to be scholars but all teacher students urgently need to be trained in critical thought and theoretical reasoning. This is the major task and possibility of educational research today.

(Franck, 2006, p. 9)