Research-Based Teacher Education – What Finnish Student Teachers Think about Their Research Methodology Studies

From the end of 1970s, all teacher education programs have been a part of academic higher education in Finland. Thus, teacher education has been executed in universities and all Finnish comprehensive and upper-secondary school teachers have a master’s degree. Teacher education is based according to the principles in higher education, on one hand, on evidence-based teaching and, on the other hand, on research on one’s own work. In Finland all teacher-education programs include a research-based master’s thesis. Thus, from the beginning of the studies, continuous courses of research methods are organized, and the students study quantitative, qualitative, and integrative research methods. With this we are aiming at overall understanding of epistemological and methodological questions. Our aim is to find out whether students share similar views on research methods or do they differ in their views and also in their preferences for quantitative, qualitative, empirical, and theoretical methods. The sample size of the research project is 489. Publications in preparation: 1) Byman, R., Maaranen, K. & Kansanen, P. (2016). Research-Based Teacher Education – What Finnish Teacher Students’ think about Their Research Methodology Studies. Manuscript (A1) in preparation.
2) Byman, R., Maaranen, K. & Kansanen, P. (2016). Teacher Students’ Methodological Research Orientations. Manuscript (A1) in preparation.