Researching your teaching

This chapter aims to understand key principles of research in education. It seeks to develop research designs to investigate research questions that are important to teachers in their own educational context. The chapter focuses on qualitative research where different elements are often referred to as factors. A review of the role of research in education concluded that research carried out by teachers has the potential to make a major impact on their practice and the resulting quality of learning taking place. In education contexts different elements exist that have the potential to impact on the area of focus that teachers aim to research. When designing a research project, it is important for teachers to find out what other work has been done in teachers' area of focus. Identify search terms related to teachers' research focus and use these to carry out electronic searches to find literature such as journal articles and reports that will help teachers develop their research design.