Teachers (learn to) do research in Dutch secondary education

This article describes an empirical exploration of three Dutch projects in which secondary education' teachers (learn to) research their own practice in collaboration with research institutes within universities. These three projects are exemplary for a recent movement of doing research on education in close collaboration between teachers, schools, and universities. The article shows the results of the three projects for both teachers and schools, and how these results are related to organizational conditions within the three projects. Perceptions of revenues of 48 teachers and 17 managers of 11 schools were gathered with interviews. These data were analyzed using the criteria for practitioner research of Anderson and Herr (1999), consisting of five types of validity that together provided an indication of the quality of the teachers' research. The projects showed results mainly on the level of the individual teacher. Teachers reported development of their knowledge and skills with respect to doing research, a more critical attitude, and consciousness of and (intentions to) change of teaching performance. To a lesser extent results on school level were reported. Organizational conditions appeared to be related to results on school level, not to results on the level of individual teachers. The article concludes to state that, if these type of projects are about to lead to the collaborative development of more scientifically accepted knowledge, more attention needs to be paid to the dissemination of knowledge as well as to the quality assurance of the research performed.