BEING A TEACHER-RESEARCHER?

Adriana Norato y Sandra Milena Romero

Publicado en Capital Letter No. 2

Octubre de 2002

Does society need research to progress? Is research one of the goals of the Educational System? Does research depend only on the Educational System? or Does it belong to Educational institutions and their participants? Does a teacher need to be a researcher? All these questions deal with the field of Education and have been a very important aspect to be reflected upon and researched.

However, those have become like political aspects in society. In this sense, what has been made is to create work groups in several areas that involve teaching and research. It is possible to say that what has been found about it is that the teacher is one of the most important participants in shaping a society.

If society needs research, teachers must be research ers. But, can a teacher be a researcher at the same time? Yes. What this question implies is a very big effort from the educational institution that educates and employs teachers, from the teachers and of course, from the stu dents who must take advantage of their teachers' experi ence.

Besides, what is needed is that the teacher-re searcher loves teaching, loves what he teaches and who he teaches. So by interacting with students, the teacher can build knowledge, learn from his/her students, can find the sense of teaching and finally, help students to reach a thinking skill to be critical thinkers.

Research in teaching is also important because the teacher can be recognized as part of a scientific commu nity, in which s/he could promote and work on a better environment for teacher's team working. So, the scien tific and academic community can be working on an interdisciplinary research to create and re-create scientific knowledge in terms of pedagogy and the subjects that are being taught. To do so, the teacher must reflect on the conceptualization of the educational field, on what is hap pening in the classroom, on students and society's atti tudes and needs. In this way, the teacher is a very strong influence on students.

This influence is due to the fact that students are usually very critical with teachers. If a student realizes that his/her teachers are also researchers it will become a motivation to coming through the research field, espe cially when students desire to become teachers. In this way, teacher-researcher affects students' beliefs and indi rectly creates a new type of student that will be a future researcher, contributor to society and builder of educational systems. Unfortunately in our society there is a lack of con sciousness of research in education.