A survey research on Finnish teacher educators’ research-teaching integration and its relationship with their approaches to teaching

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The study aims to clarify how Finnish teacher educators integrate research and teaching to support their approaches to teaching. Research questions cover teacher educators’ forms of research-teaching integration, approaches to teaching, and the relationship between them. With a survey methodology, the study obtained 101 responses with a questionnaire. Six forms of research-teaching integration were identified with a qualitative content analysis. Integrating research with teaching content was mentioned most often, whereas integrating research with teaching methods and applying inquiry-oriented methods in teaching were reported less. Three kinds of approaches to teaching were found by cluster analysis. The participants with different approaches differed in their ways of research-teaching integration. However, the differences were not statistically significant in Chi-square tests. The study contributes to the international research on teacher educators and the variety in research-teaching integration in teacher education. Future research could further explore the individual and contextual factors influencing their research-teaching integration.