Examples

Examples of teacher research are somewhat plentiful on the Web, but here is a selection that I have run across or that others have recommended to me.

Implementing Instructional Standards

The NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics--but don't stop reading and lose the techniques described just because you don't teach math) website includes several "vignettes," or examples, of how teachers are using research or other tools in their own classes to find out more about their students and their teaching and to make wise changes.

The 1991 standards page, for instance, describes (6.1) how and why a teacher has her students "keep a journal or notebook in which to record strategies and reflections" for problem-solving. In 6.2, the teacher tries providing a set of instances for students so that they can inductively realize how and when a principle applies (using examples and nonexamples). In 6.3, a teacher uses specific information from a student's journal to reflect on how the student's attitude has changed (or not) about the subject field. In 6.4, a teacher records her class and designs a specific observation task that she asks a colleague to help her on aimed at her encouraging a specific set of students to participate more in class by changing and monitoring her own in-class behaviors toward those students.

Making an Instructional Decision

In the 1995 standards vignettes, the bottom example shows a teacher who is planning out the work of a course using an assessment early in the term to decide which unit to exclude (because she knows time won't allow adequate coverage of all topics). She deduces her students' needs based on observations of why they got a problem wrong--seeing a common pattern in weak answers and strong (but still incomplete) answers.

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