Ideological Divergences in a Teacher-Research Group

Abstract

This article is about the role played by ideology in a teacher-research group. Treatments of teacher research remain mainly directed at clarifying the content, the status, and the boundaries of the research practice engaged in by teachers and describing how teacher research contrasts with “university research” with regard to these elements. We focus on the differing ideologies of research, teaching/learning, and writing held and developed by the members of a teacher-research group. The concept of ideology is used to emphasize that beliefs about society, politics, and cognition were intimately bound up in the teacher researchers’ different perspectives. In analyzing the ideological positions that developed within the group, and the conflicts and interchanges among participants, we show that there exist important divisions within the teacher-research movement that are intellectually creative and socially important in their potential to generate needed discussion of assumptions underlying pedagogic practice.