- Some educators and researchers are now attempting to fundamentally alter methods of teacher professional development so that teachers assume control of classroom decisions and actively participate in their own instructional improvement on an ongoing basis (cf. Knight & Boudah, 1995). - Participatory teacher research is a collaborative process by which teachers themselves critically examine their classrooms, develop and implement educational interventions, and evaluate the effectiveness of those interventions (Knight, Boudah, & Groce, 1998). - Teacher self efficacy is one of the main mechanisms that lot of studies use to measure. These are linked with positive teacher behaviour and student achievement. - Teacher research is defined as the systematic and intentional inquiry carried out by teachers. It is a process of actively engaging teachers in the reflective investigation and critical evaluation of their own practice. - Dewey in 1903 said that every teacher should have some way to register judgment upon matters of educational importance so that their judgment will somehow affect the school system. - Types of teacher research agenda - Technical action research - addresses concerns and issues on effectiveness of practice - Practical action research - encourages collaboration interactions toward mutually determined goals - Emancipatory action research - engages teachers in a social-construction of ideas in an effort to transform institutions - These three can also be thought of as professional, personal and political. - One research study measured teacher efficacy by noting number of positive interactions with students and found that participatory research increased that number. - It is difficult to tell whether teacher efficacy is a cause or a consequence of the adoption of more powerful teaching techniques. - Teacher efficacy is impacted by what they call "triadic reciprocal causation" or in simpler words what sounds like multi directional connections between behaviour, 2interpersonal factors and environmental factors. This makes it really hard to study and understand what the causes are and what the consequences are. But what this also means is that programs like teacher action research could lead to virtuous cycles. - Teacher empowerment involves teachers' perceptions of whether they have a sense of control over their work in the classroom and the opportunity to pursue meaningful courses of action. - Some scales metrics they used in this research - The Teacher Efficacy Scale (TES) was used to measure GTE and PTE. GTE or General teaching efficacy refers to one's belief about whether teachers in general can influence learning and PTE refers to Personal Teacher Efficacy on whether the individual believes that they can influence learning. The TES is a 16 item six point likert scale. - School Participant Empowerment Scale (SPES) - 38 item five point likert format. Unlike the TES it doesn't separate out GTE and PTE constructs and measures an affective response to one's teaching. - School Level Environment Questionnaire (SLEQ) is a 56 item five point likert scale to measure the teachers perception of the school environment. - They implemented the participatory research and development model through six formal study team meetings and small group meetings. - Teachers first brainstorm to identify challenges. - They then devise data based methods to corroborate or refute their perception of the challenges. - They discuss as a group, review literature and develop intervention studies. - The main result the study found was that teacher efficacy both general and personal improved significantly but the school environment, collaboration levels didn't really change as much. Results were noted both quantitatively and qualitatively. - Generally more experienced teachers expressed less impact than newer teachers. - Another interesting point is that there was no relationship between degree of implementation and gains in any of the variables. Just reasonably implementing was good enough. ---- Henson, Robin K. "The effects of participation in teacher research on teacher efficacy." _Teaching and Teacher education_ 17.7 (2001): 819-836. - [Link](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0742051X01000336?via%3Dihub)