Consuming, Producing, and Justifying: Finnish Student Teachers’ Views of Research Methods

From the end of the 1970s, all teacher education programmes have been a part of academic higher education in Finland. Thus, TE has been implemented in universities and all Finnish comprehensive and upper-secondary school teachers have a master's degree. Research methods courses have been an essential part of teacher education courses for over 40 years. Our results revealed that students in all educational programmes seem to prefer empirical methods to theoretical methods as a way of acquiring educational knowledge. In line with previous studies, an aversion to quantitative methods was also found in the present study. However, there were some exceptions to this overall view. Most of the students in our study recognized that teachers need research skills in their practical work. The students acknowledged that these kinds of skills are especially important when acquainting themselves with new research results in their professional field.