The textbook for CASTLE is Classroom Research: Implementing the Scholarship of Teaching by Cross and Steadman.  All CASTLE faculty are given a copy of the text at no charge. 

The following notes give a working definition of Classroom Research:

“Teachers have an exceptional opportunity to engage actively in the scholarship of teaching by using their classrooms as laboratories for the study of teaching and learning.”

“Classroom Research may be simply defined as ongoing and cumulative intellectual inquiry by classroom teachers into the nature of teaching and learning in their own classrooms."  This is a tremendously freeing idea, that what we are being asked to do is what we do anyway, intuitively, anecdotally, implicitly as part of our own teaching.  All Cross & Steadman are asking here is that we make it a little more systematic, formal, explicit, accessible and thorough examination.

Characteristics of Classroom Research parallel those introduced in Classroom Assessment (Angelo & Cross, 1993):  learner-centered, teacher-directed, context-specific, and continual, plus some others are introduced here.  Characteristics of Classroom Research are:

• Learner-centered:  “focuses its primary attention on observing and improving learning rather than on. . . teaching.”
• Teacher-directed:  proposes that, “teachers are capable of conducting useful and valid research on classroom learning.”
• Collaborative:  “requires the active engagement of students and teachers . . . benefits from full discussion and participation by all [stakeholders].”
• Context-specific:  “is conducted to shed light on the specific questions of an identified classroom” and “involves the teaching of a particular discipline to a known group of students.”
• Scholarly:  “intellectually demanding and professionally responsible.  It builds on the knowledge base of research on teaching and learning.  It requires the identification of a researchable question, the careful planning of an appropriate research design, and consideration of the implications of the research for practice.” 
• Practical and relevant:   “The questions selected . . . are practical questions that the teacher faces in teaching the class. . .the primary purpose . . . is to deepen personal understanding  . . [and make a] contribution to the knowledge and practice of the teacher.” 
• Continual:  ongoing, and can “raise new questions, leading to cascading investigations.”

Classroom Research shares goals with traditional educational research.  However, it also diverges in several ways:

• It questions the heavy dependence on the “scientific method” as the only or most valid approach to knowledge.
• Supports inclusion of individual observations and insights, and supports the struggles and triumphs of teaching and learning as valid and important.
• It supports individual applications, in contrast to “generalizable” findings and applications.
• It supports the challenge of a positivistic set of truths about education.
• It asserts, with Cronbach (1975) that the pursuit of generalizable truths might be set aside in favor of “working hypotheses” to be tested in new contexts.

Some principles of Classroom Research:

• The study should be relevant and important to the real-life needs of the teacher, or there is no point.
• The strength of the researcher lies not in technical methodology, but in their closeness to the learning needs and realities of the classroom.
• Small, local studies of real, relevant needs are most useful and relevant to stakeholders and policy makers.
• There is equal interest in how the majority may confirm a hypothesis and how a minority may depart from it.
• Don’t try to save the world—just find out something important to improve your teaching and your students’ learning.
• You don’t have to have earth-shaking, quantitatively-solid data.  Almost any kind of information that adds to your understanding of teaching and learning is important.
• Remember that the focus is on students and their needs primarily.

Chickering & Gamson’s (1991) Seven Principles of good teaching practice in undergraduate education.  According to these authors, good practice:

• Encourages student-faculty contact
• Encourages cooperation among students—and colleagues
• Encourages active learning
• Gives prompt feedback
• Emphasizes time on task
• Communicates high expectations
• Respects diverse talents and ways of learning—and teaching

Ernest Boyer (1990) discussed four forms of scholarship:  the scholarship of discovery, the scholarship of integration, the scholarship of application, and the scholarship of teaching.  Again, a freeing idea, taking us away from the hard line view that only large-scale, empirical, quantifiable research studies really count as credible and important “scholarship.”

• the scholarship of discovery:  “contributes to the stock of human knowledge and also to the intellectual climate o the college or university”
• the scholarship of integration:  making connections across disciplines and making interpretations that fit research into larger intellectual patterns, “to foster the integration and synthesis of knowledge rather than learning discrete bits of information”
• the scholarship of application:  addresses the question, “How can knowledge be responsibly applied to consequential problems?”
• the scholarship of teaching:  “not only transmitting knowledge but transforming and extending it as well”

Most teachers can come up with dozens of insights into something that really works for them.  Making connections between successful teaching approaches and searching the underlying cause constitutes a personal theory of learning.  Connecting a teacher's insights with those of colleagues in the formal study of learning leads to the gradual building of a framework that suggests new Classroom Research experiments for validation (Angelo).

Classroom Research is a promising approach to professional development because of its emphasis collecting data and reflecting on its implications for adding to faculty knowledge about teaching and learning (Cross and Angelo).

Classroom Research does not necessarily refer to traditional notions of rigorous scientific study often associated with social science empirical research (Cross and Steadman).

Classroom researchers are teachers interested in learning, not methodologists with technical research competence in the social sciences, and their strength lies in their understanding of the classroom context (Cross and Steadman).

Classroom research opts for relevance over rigor (Cross and Steadman).

Works Cited

Cross, P. K. & Steadman, M. H.  Classroom Research:  Implementing the Scholarship of Teaching, 1996.