home

Teacher as Researcher (Quotes by Lawrence Stenhouse)



The teacher is like a gardener who treats different plants differently and not like a large-scale farmer who administers standardized treatments to as-near-as possible standardized plants. Under such conditions variation of treatment gives a better gross yield attempting to maximise the yield of every individual unit; and this is what is required of education. The teacher must diagnose before he prescribes and then vary the prescription. …both teachers and pupils are involved in meaningful action and meaningful action cannot be standardised by control or sampled.”

Real classrooms have to be our laboratories, and they are in the command of teachers, not of researchers. This is the characteristic of professional schools: the research act must conform to the obligations of the professional context. This is what we mean by action research.

We shall only teach better if we learn intelligently from the experience of shortfall, both in our grasp of the knowledge we offer and of how to offer it. That is the case for research as a basis for teaching.

“It is teachers who, in the end, will change the world of the school by understanding it.” Inscription on Lawrence Stenhouse’s memorial plaque at University of East Anglia.