1. Introduction: Positivistic Standards and the Bizarre Educational World of the Twenty-first Century 2. Teachers as Researchers, Good Work and Troubled Times 3. Connecting Knower and Known: Constructing an Emancipating System of Meaning 4. Exploring Assumptions Behind Education Research - Defining Positivism in a Neo-Positivist Era 5. What constitutes knowledge? 6. Purposes of Research: the Concept of Instrumental Rationality 7. The Quest for Certainty 8. Verifiability and the Concept of Rigor in Qualitative Research 9. The Value of the Qualitative Dimension 10. Values, Objectivity, and Ideology The Foundations of Teacher Research: A Sample Syllabus

This book urges teachers - as both producers and consumers of knowledge - to engage in the debate about educational research by undertaking meaningful research themsleves.Teachers are now being encouraged to carry out research in order to improve their effectiveness in the classroom, but this book suggests that they also reflect on and challenge the reductionist and technicist methods that promote a 'top down' system of education. The author, a leading proponent of qualitative research, argues that only by engaging in complex, critical research will teachers rediscover their professional status, empower their practice in the classroom and improve the quality of education for their pupils.Postgraduate students of education and experienced teachers will find much to inspire and encourage them in this book. Updated and revised for this new edition, it retains both its clarity and insistence on sound research practice.Joe L. Kincheloe is Professor of Education at the City University of New York Graduate Center and Brooklyn College. he is the author and editor of many books on critical pedagogy and qualitative research in education.Series Editor: Ivor F. Goodson.