Teaching Practice from the Practitioners Perspective. Final Report.

Researchers investigating the improvement of teaching have given little attention to the nature of teaching--the sort of work it is, how it is learned, and its essential skills and knowledge. Research incorporating the teacher's perspective and experience would be useful in any research analysis with the goal of improving teaching. Reported in this document is research conducted from a perspective which takes into account teachers' skills, knowledge, and work environment. This report makes use of teachers' comments, made to the researchers conducting the study, about the teaching profession, teacher research, and their individual work. A chapter on generic features of teaching considers teaching in the context of many human practices, in an effort to identify the family of practices to which teaching belongs. Social features of teaching and their implications for teacher performance are discussed in the next chapter. The next major section analyzes teacher performance and the features which make teacher performance "joint," or dependent, upon other factors such as students. The last section further discusses the "joint" performance of teachers and students and examines the implications of "joint" teacher evaluation, by students and teachers. (CJ)