The Research Component in Graduate Teacher Education Programs: Asking the Stakeholders.

The growing movement of teacher-as-researcher and the increasing emphasis on qualitative research paradigms call into question the traditional curricula in teacher education programs, which emphasize the teacher as consumer rather than as producer of research. In this study, college faculty and students, and school teachers and administrators were surveyed to find which research skills they thought should be included in graduate teacher education programs. The sample consisted of 146 students and 37 faculty members from a Midwestern private college of education, and 40 teachers and 44 administrators from area school districts. Each group of respondents was asked to complete a survey that included a list of 15 research skills with a Likert-style response rating scale. Respondents were asked to explain the rating they assigned to each skill. The three skills found to be most important by the respondents were: the ability to use library resources; the ability to conduct action research in a classroom setting; and the ability to critically analyze professional literature. The three skills rated least important were: the ability to compute and interpret intermediate and advanced statistics; the ability to publish research findings; and the ability to carry out a formal thesis study. The respondents' explanations of their responses, the complete ratings of all 15 skills by the four stakeholder groups, and a comparison of the ratings assigned by the respondents are presented. It is recommended that teacher education courses prepare students to become reflective practitioners, generators of knowledge, and systematic observers; however incorporating action research into graduate programs may be problematic for students because they do not have their own classrooms. (Author/LH)