Research-Oriented Learning in Teacher Education—An Exemplary Reconstruction of an Arc of Work of Student Research

Abstract

This article is based on a research project about reflection in teacher education that was conducted at the Center for Research on Teaching and Education (CeBU) of the University of Hildesheim (project director: Prof. Dr. Una DIRKS). Our project focused on smaller research studies, which were carried out by teachers and students at different public schools. The aim of the project was to generate findings about students' research practice, paying particular attention to its biographical implications and its potential to enhance development. Therefore, narrative interviews were conducted with the teacher students, explicating the respective "arcs of work" (the concept "arc of work" had been coined by Anselm STRAUSS). In this article we present one exemplary arc of a student's research work. We will focus on reflexivity as a core-category of professional work in the research process. In the respective case being presented here, reflexivity is located on two different levels: on the one hand as a "first-order reflexivity," as part of the research studies themselves, on the other hand as a type of "second-order reflexivity," that refers to the research process itself from a meta-perspective. Finally, we discuss the results in terms of improving future teacher student research. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0801551