Challenges Confronting the Researcher : Teacher: Conflicts of Purpose and Conduct / E. David Wong.

Educational research conducted by classroom teachers can offer valuable insight into the experience of teaching and the nature of student learning. However, striving to be both a researcher and a teacher can present unique and serious challenges. An incident from the classroom experiences of a researcher/teacher is described that portrays much of what is difficult about being both a researcher and a classroom teacher. The Aristotelian distinction between the theoretical and practical sciences that provides a foundation from which the nature of teaching and research practices might be argued as conflicting is examined. In the second part of the analysis, the focus is on challenges that seem to possess a distinct moral dimension regarding issues of conduct. The researcher/teacher is frequently trying to get students to act and think in ways that are quite different from established classroom practices. It is tempting to classify the conundra that arise as dilemmas (no satisfactory solution), but it is argued that it is sometimes more productive to construe them as tensions between two unfair choices. Doing so provides an opportunity for moving ahead, in that the rules, values, or experiences that underlie the class's expectation of what is "fair" can be examined and changed. By contrast, with moral dilemmas, where both choices are somehow wrong, the teacher is left without recourse. One figure contrasts theoretical and practical disciplines. (SLD)

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