What does it take to learn about teaching and learning in classrooms across cultures?

Abstract

Beginning in the 1960s and early seventies, classroom research contributed to understandings and insights concerning the complexities and diversities of teaching. In the late 1990s, classroom research began to also include student voices in the classroom. Socio-cultural theory turned the empirical focus toward student interaction, and methodological development made new insights possible. The impact of this paradigmatic change is still in progress. At the same time, a rapid growth in international comparative classroom studies emerged, where the two most recognized comparative classroom research initiatives have been the TIMSS Video Studies, the first one initiated in 1995 at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Learner’s Perspective Study (LPS), initiated in 1999, at the University of Melbourne’s International Center for Classroom Research (ICCR). In this paper, we ask what it takes to carry out successful international classroom research, using the LPS as an example. The analysis shows that the LPS project design made it possible for research groups from different countries and cultures to participate in building a sustainable community of research practice specialized in working with the complexities in the study of teaching and learning in classrooms. Of particular importance was the intense and sustained collaborative work on data, where researchers of varying seniority and experience met and carried out scholarly work in relation to a shared dataset. While also having disadvantages, the heavy emphasis on data was crucial for creating and sustaining a reflexive international research community.