ABSTRACT
This paper discusses the contribution which research, especially research on teaching, has made and could make to teacher education. It is argued that research on teaching has demonstrated the complexity of classroom processes and provided a rich store of concepts and information which can help one to reflect on these processes; but that any generalizations emerging from this research must be viewed as tentative, value-laden, not in a form which provides recipes for action, yet highly consistent with much of teachers’ common-sense experience-based knowledge. A conception is outlined of teacher education based on dialogue between teachers and researchers and on students’ formulation and testing of their own hypotheses, and it is suggested that such teacher education could be best facilitated by interpretive and action research designed to elucidate, examine, explain and extend teachers’ working knowledge. Research showing a similar concern for the perspectives and strategies of student teachers is advocated and exemplified for teacher education itself. Finally, a plea is made for research into the professional ideologies and activities of different groups of teacher educators, and into the various institutional pressures and constraints to which these are related.
