Much of the history of educational research is characterized by researchers developing new methods of teaching and then recommending these for teacher use. These researchers continue to assume that teachers will simply accept and implement their recommendations and then are frustrated when teachers don't. I believe that researchers who hold this view miss an important point. We are now coming to realize that much of this previous research and development work was done without appropriate appreciation of what the task of teaching involves.
Classrooms are incredibly complicated workplaces.
For example, among all the professions, only air traffic controllers rival teachers in the number of interpersonal communications required in a typical day's work. My research is aimed at discovering how teachers understand their work, how and why they come to teach as they do, and how they can be helped to improve their own teaching. I am convinced of the importance of carefully considering the context within which teachers work before any effort is made to improve that work. I am working to uncover the implicit but important understandings that good teachers depend upon and also to discern the processes of professional development by which good teachers develop these understandings. My coming to this present research focus has, itself, been an evolution, from my time as a junior high school history teacher and coach, through my graduate work at the University of Notre Dame and my work as a young professor in the Teacher Education Program here at UCSB, to my work in recent years on understanding the workings of classrooms and on applications of technology to educational purposes.