Primary School Teachers’ Educational Research: Educational Practice and Professional Development Context

Abstract

Teacher research activity is an important complex part of their work. Therefore, alongside with the other, their important professional competences, teacher research activity competence becomes a significant one. Teacher’s activity space has widened a lot. Carrying out various research, the teacher uses the obtained information firstly for their activity improvement. It is obvious that there is a lack of reliable research on this question. A deep gap exists between educational research and educational practice. This research aimed to ascertain primary school teachers’ position on educational research question. The research was carried out in 2019, in which 106 primary school teachers from various Lithuanian schools took part. A two-part research instrument was applied, which consisted of open-ended and closed-ended questions. A descriptive qualitative and quantitative content analysis was carried out. Though most of the teachers thought that educational research was important for their practical activity, however, the biggest gap between educational research and educational practice is most frequently determined by the lack of teacher competence in this sphere. There exists an obvious teacher support need as well as teacher professional development needs in the aspect of research availability/accessibility and its use in educational practice.