ABSTRACT
The relationship between theory and practice, and the extent to which one is influenced by the other, has long generated considerable debate in education. In a climate of considerable educational upheaval, such as has been the case recently in England, there is a serious risk of the perceived gulf between science education research and classroom science teaching becoming wider. Busy teachers, struggling to cope with the classroom reality of policy changes in science education, are unlikely to view educational research very positively unless they feel it has something of direct value to offer to their immediate day-to-day concerns (Rudduck, 1985; Pimenoff, 1995). Furthermore, it becomes increasingly less likely that teachers will wish to engage in research in science education themselves or to view a career in science education research as being worthwhile. Such a trend is particularly worrying as it suggests that one of the important growth areas in educational research over the past two decades, that of practitioner research (see for example Stenhouse, 1975; Ebbutt and Elliot, 1985), is under threat. One effect of the practitioner research movement, or teacheras-researcher movement, has been to provide a number of valuable insights into educational processes and practices at the classroom level (for example the collection of Webb, 1990) and this provides an important bridge between theory and practice.
