Chapter 19: Teachers and Research: Gatekeeper, Participant, and Partner Roles

In this quotation from a panel presentation at a Head Start National Research conference, Irving Sigel was speaking to issues inherent in establishing researcher-practitioner relationships. Clearly, he assumed in these remarks that there are responsibilities that researchers should fulfill—but often do not—when conducting studies in classrooms. He implied that researchers who do not work effectively with teachers are responsible for teachers’ future reluctance to engage with researchers. Conner (2012) described findings that confirm Sigel’s assumptions. He noted that years after publication of an article in which a high school was named in a description of the effects of budget cuts, institutional memory characterized by negativity persisted at the school within its lore. On the contrary, there was little ongoing memory of the experience at the university from which the research was conducted.