ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at how a teacher can pursue areas of research in their own subject discipline, developing themselves as a leading expert in their field. For many teachers, learning more about a person's own field is very enjoyable. One of the main motivations behind being in the classroom at all is a desire to share fascinating areas of interest with young learners. A teacher could choose to pursue a research career in a particular subject in its own right, but it is also possible for scholarship in the subject and in its pedagogy to be combined. The importance of the depth of a teacher’s subject knowledge to learner achievement is quite hard to gauge, and the research literature is surprisingly equivocal on the issue. Citizen science is a form of crowdsourcing of scientific observations which can then be collated and analysed by researchers.
