Linking Faculties of Education with Classroom Teachers Through Collaborative Research

Abstract

It almost goes without saying that a major reason for promoting closer relations between classroom teachers and faculties of education is to improve educational practice in the schools. Some educational observers, noting that the process of educational reform in developed societies has been extraordinarily difficult, might quip, "we've tried everything else, why not university/school collaboration." It is true that reform has been slow. Cuban, after a review of documentary sources spanning ninety years concluded that there is a stubborn continuity in the nature of instruction '' 1 And he cites only a few examples of close collaboration between practicing teachers and university faculty members in these nine decades.