MEZIESBLOG

1. Introduction
   Extensive school research worldwide illuminates different change processes and different innovative research models of teaching and learning practices, including teachers’ professional development. Findings from educational research reveal a contradiction between educational theory and educational practice. Accordingly, the gap between theory and practice indicates a lack of credibility between researchers and practitioners. Qualitative research approaches frequently used are lesson study, learning study and action research, to mention a few. Educational inquiries investigate the continuous global change processes of classroom teaching, teachers and students learning, teachers’ professional development and development of school organization and management at local and national level. Persistent issues in educational research are the gap existing between theory and practice and the lack of involvement of teachers as researchers (Biesta, 1994, 2007; Dewey and Bentley, 1945; Elliott, 1978; Nuthall, 2004; Stenhouse, 1975).
   Educational policy makers demand evidence-based practice (Slavin, 2002) and scientific knowledge of “what works” in solving classroom problems and school problems in general. The demands yield educational research results that give technical solutions to practical teaching problems and learning problems. De Vries (1990) argues that on the one hand results of educational research can have a technical role and give solutions to problems and a cultural role aiming for improvement of practice. To bridge the gap between theory and practice, a direct link to classroom realities is needed, since “the teacher requires an explanatory theory of how different ways of managing the classroom and creating activities are related to student learning outcomes” (Nuthall, 2004, p. 274).
   PER, and its cooperative and collaborative interaction forms, is not a new trend in educational research (Biesta, 2007; Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 1990; Hanfstingl et al., 2019; Korthagen, 2007; Pieters and Voogt, 2016; Pieters and De Vries, 2007). Previous scholars have investigated how theory and practice are intertwined (Schatzki et al., 2001) and how the machineries of knowledge construction (Knorr Cetina, 1999) develop social science research (Runesson, 2019). Moreover, scholars have suggested change of teachers’ roles in classroom research so that teachers become researchers of their own teaching practice (Dewey, 1910/1974; Elliott, 1976, 1978; Stenhouse, 1975).
   Notably, the intentions behind educational research as in PER are here taken to correspond to the intentions behind Participatory Action Research (PAR) (Chisholm and Elden, 1993; Elliott, 1978, 2007, 2012, 2015; Greenwood et al., 1993; Kemmis, 2009; Posch, 2019) with regard to research focus on participants’ actions and change processes in context:
   The intentional focus on collaborative research, action for social change and participant education shifts inquiry from an individual to a collective endeavor, intentionally aimed at transformative personal, organizational, and structural change.

(Brydon-Miller and Maguire, 2009, p. 79)

Action research according to Elliott (1978) is an open concern with the everyday practical problems experienced by teachers unlike the “theoretical problems” defined by researchers within a discipline of knowledge. When teachers are engaged in solving a practical problem, they take part in a form of practical reasoning using their practical wisdom, phronesis, with collaborators (Oxenberg Rorty, 1980):

In this form of action research, teachers develop their understanding of what constitutes educational action by reflecting about their actions in the light of their aims and their aims in the light of their actions.

(Elliott, 2007, p. 231)

Kemmis (2009, p. 470) asserts that action research aims to change practices, people’s understandings of their practices and the condition they practice. Three forms of action research enhance this aim, technical action research (focused on improving control over outcomes); practical action research (focused on educating practitioners to act more wisely and prudently); and critical action research focused on emancipating people and groups from irrationality (Kemmis, 2009).

In the analyses of the PER studies and PAR studies, the focus is on actors, the degree of actors’ participation in change processes, data collection, analysis of results and in making findings public. PER and PAR studies include change processes in teaching practices, i.e., of individuals and their understanding of their practices and the conditions under which they practice. To identify preconditions of PER and PAR studies, and to enhance the possibilities of knowledge creation, scholars have emphasized the importance of including in the studies: teachers’ professional practice knowledge; teachers’ conditions under which they teach in the classroom; and teachers’ understandings of their practices.

The aim of this paper is to open a reinvestigation of the theory and practice gap and its consequences on teachers’ participation in research of their own practice. Further, to explore if the gap is partly an artifact of the underlying epistemology made visible in the institutional practices of education and teacher training in PER. Accordingly, the overarching purpose is to gain deeper understanding of classroom teaching as PER. PER studies afford knowledge on how theory and practice are integrated and the complexity of problems of learning and teaching practice in classroom contexts.

An open call in the International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies (IJLLS) invited researchers and practitioners to make contributions on the following themes related to PER:

contribute to deepening our understanding of methodological and philosophical aspects of PER – more generally called developmental research;

elucidate aims, purposes, knowledge claims and knowledge interests of different practice-based research approaches and abolish the gap between research and practice;

articulate how different approaches can contribute to make teachers’ conceptual and professional knowledge explicit, public and divisible beyond the local context; and

make visible strategies for the assessment of ethical aspects and quality criteria in practice-based research.

Seven of those contributions are included in this special issue. These submissions represent educational research accomplished in Niger, Sweden, the UK and the USA. PER is here understood as an umbrella term for qualitative research approaches in social science, used to investigate sustainable and improved teaching practices, improved student learning outcomes and improved professional development of teachers’ professional knowledge. Enacted transformations and changes, local and global, indicate sustainable and improved school systems, new curriculum reforms that concern the entire school organization and the entire school environment, not only teachers’ teaching practices or students’ learning outcomes.

In the studies submitted, different theoretical perspectives are applied in order to investigate the gap between theory and practice by involving teachers in research on teachers’ practice. This paper is intended to open a discussion of the PER studies in the seven contributions, without addressing specific details of the research process in each of the seven contributions. First, the studies are investigated as developmental research with a focus on methodological and philosophical aspects for improved intentional teaching practice. Second, the focus is on how the studies bridge the gap between theory and practice in teaching and education. Third, the focus is on how to make teachers’ knowledge visible and shareable (disseminated) beyond the local context. The paper draws some conclusions, implications and suggestions for future research.