New Teachers and Practitioner Research: Willing; Able; Irrelevant

This article presents some of the key findings of a mixed-method exploratory case study investigating the perceptions and realities of new teachers’ engagement in and with research. Newly qualified teachers are well prepared to engage with research literature for the development of practice, and to employ the research skills which they develop during their undergraduate degrees and their initial training programmes. In school, their research knowledge and skills are seldom put to good use, however. Should initial teacher education therefore abandon research methods modules and focus on developing the skills which enable new teachers to access and critically evaluate existing research evidence? The study employed a hybrid analytical framework (Fereday & Muir-Cochrane 2006), a three-stage process of inductive and deductive theme-generation and scrutiny.