The value of masters study to teachers' professional practice: Contradictory discourses within the workplace

Abstract

Postgraduate study provides teachers with opportunities to become critical consumers of research as well as generators of their own knowledge, enabling them to fulfil the mandate of teaching being a research informed and evidenced based profession (Robinson, 2003). This article pays attention to 18 practicing teachers' reasons for undertaking a master's degree and the type of workplace support offered during their enrolment. Findings suggest that teachers' reasons for undertaking academic study were very much tied to their perceptions of what it means to be a teacher and how teaching and learning can be improved. As such teachers' professional identity seemed to reflect the discourse of teaching as a complex and professional activity. Such an identity seemed contradictory to those of many of their workplace colleagues and senior managers who provided the teachers with subtle messages regarding the importance and value of study and research to teachers' professional practice.