Comparative policies on Educating Teachers as Researchers: Cases of Japan, Thailand and Malawi

Helping teacher candidates to frame themselves as researchers is crucial to the development of their professional knowledge of teaching and learning. Scholars argue that ‘teacher as researcher’ movement emerged to... [ view full abstract ]

Helping teacher candidates to frame themselves as researchers is crucial to the development of their professional knowledge of teaching and learning. Scholars argue that ‘teacher as researcher’ movement emerged to suffocate the long standing tradition of ‘technical rationalist’ thinking in the field of teacher education. This thinking posits teacher candidates as mere recipients of knowledge from teacher educators and associate teachers. Meanwhile, research on educating teachers as researchers has addressed such important questions as why, what and how we should cultivate and support educating teachers as researchers. Effective policy framework and structure of teacher education programmes have been reported as important factors for enhancing teachers’ research capacity. Proceeding from this existing research, in this paper we clarify what aspects of policies for educating teachers as researchers have been found to be effective. We draw such lessons from comparison of country cases of Japan, Thailand and Malawi. Following Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1993) definition, teacher research is understood as the "systematic and intentional inquiry carried out by teachers” (Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 1993 in Santa 1996). The paper responds to the following questions: Why do the countries in this study launch ‘teachers as researchers’ policy? What are differences and similarities in policy and implementation among the countries? What outcomes have been achieved from the policy implementation? In answering these questions, we use Randolph (2009) methodological framework for a (qualitative) literature review to analyse existing literature, policy documents and education reports.