Toward a More Effective Model of Research on Teaching

Classroom teachers wish to improve their craft and educational researchers want to generate useful knowledge, yet educational research seldom influences classroom teaching. Reflecting on twenty years' experience as a junior high school teacher and as a university professor involved in formal studies of classroom teaching, Arthur S.Bolster,Jr. examines the genesis and perpetuation of the divergent perspectives of teachers and educational researchers concerning how knowledge is formulated and determined. He advocates a sociolinguistic ethnographic approach as the research methodology most likely to generate knowledge that is both intellectually rigorous and helpful in teacher development.