Research on Teaching and Learning: Thirty Years of Change

Research on teaching and classroom learning over the last 30 years has changed from initial enthusiasm for objective-descriptive studies, through correlational and experimental paradigms, to the more recent enthusiasm for ethnographic and interpretive studies more closely related to the personal experience of teachers. This article reviews these changes, using as examples studies carried out at the University of Canterbury since 1959. The reasons for the radical revision of research methods that have been employed in the most recent series of studies are described, and some of the results are used to illustrate the research process being developed. We argue that the findings of classroom research need to be embedded in an evolving explanatory theory of classroom learning that is of practical value to teachers and that the generalizability of the findings is a pragmatic, empirical question requiring a program of replications that evolve interactively with the development of explanatory theory.