ABSTRACT
As a high school science teacher I was often concerned about thinking of interesting ways of teaching my students. However, the rush and bustle of school life quickly taught me that most things were urgent and immediate. It was important to be ready to move when the bell rang at the end of a lesson, there was a constant need to respond quickly to events, and time was always a resource that was in short supply. Therefore, attempting to genuinely engage students in their learning was more an idealistic goal than a common achievement. To realize the goal meant attempting to balance the constant (non-direct teaching) demands of school while attempting to know more about how students learnt and how particular teaching strategies genuinely impacted on students’ learning outcomes. This tension between the nature of teachers’ work and the time, energy and expertise necessary to inform practice through research, I believe, is a constant dilemma for teachers.
