The Peculiar Problems of Preparing Educational Researchers

Abstract

In this article, some difficulties are examined involving turning educational practitioners into educational researchers at American education schools. Teachers bring many traits that are ideal for this new role. At the same time, students and professors in researcher training programs often encounter a cultural clash between the world-views of the teacher and researcher. Students may feel they are being asked to transform their cultural orientation from normative to analytical, from personal to intellectual, from particular to universal, and from experiential to theoretical. They often resist. Differences in worldview between teachers and researchers cannot be eliminated easily because they arise from irreducible differences in the nature of the work that teachers and researchers do.