What can we learn from teachers’ reflection on implementation of problem solving in middle school?

Overview & Synopsis

Implementation research often entails two parallel goals – researching implementation in a naturalistic setting while maintaining a commitment to the quality of the implementation. We are investigating models of research-practice partnerships to reconcile these potentially conflicting goals. Here we investigate affordances of teachers’ reflective questionnaires on their implementation of Problem Solving as a tool for investigating and supporting the teachers’ work. Two questions guide this work. One, led by an education researcher, aims to describe and understand the implementation process, the other, led by a teacher-educator, aims to guide and improve implementation. We show how these two perspective, each valuable in its own right, inspire and enrich each other, thus suggesting a model for research-practice partnerships around challenges of implementation.