The CRESS Center’s Teacher Research Program supports groups of
teachers who are interested in investigating their own classroom
practices. Most groups are school-based; some groups confer
around a particular discipline or topic area. Following the
academic year calendar, teacher researchers engage in a personal
and professional process of classroom-teacher inquiry driven by
the interests, questions and issues of the teachers doing the
research.
Teacher research groups provide a community context for educators
to systematically explore, investigate, dialogue and write about
their daily work—it is enmeshed in the context of the classroom.
By the end of the year, teacher researchers will have prepared a
final product—a completed study suitable for presentation or
publication. Sharing what is learned with the broader educational
community allows teachers to contribute to a knowledge base from
which others might draw.
What We Do
Teacher research provides professional development under what is
often referred to as a job-embedded model, meaning that it is
located within a school, program, or other local context as part
of an effort to support ongoing professional communities.
Participants typically work together over extended periods of
time, and rather than having outside experts facilitating the
work, the teachers learn from each other.
