Need for Collaboration Between Teachers and Academic Research: Implications for Pedagogy, Knowledge Production and Quality Assurance in Nigerian Schools’ Social Studies Curriculum

Abstract

This paper discusses issues of power, privilege, voice and status in educational research and the need for collaborative research between world of Teachers and Academics. Most of the involvement of academics in the teachers’ research movement has been to produce an academic inter programme. Despite the so called revolution in teachers’ research around the world today, where there is a lot of talk about teachers as producers of knowledge, there is still the perception that Academic research is the superior to that of Teachers. Teachers still research in Nigerian schools as an activity conducted by those outside the Nigerian secondary schools classroom for the benefit of the Teachers and Pupils at the primary and Secondary schools in Nigeria. While Teachers feel that academic research is irrelevant to their lives and the pupils, many academics in higher schools in Nigeria dismiss teachers research as trivial, theoretical and inconsequential and hence incapable of addressing the numerous problems facing the education industry in Nigeria. The point here is that both teachers and academics till today in Nigeria still see their enquiries as essentially irrelevant to one another. The political economy of knowledge production and utilization which has accorded a high status and rewards to certain forms of knowledge Production used by teachers sometimes deny the legitimacy of their own knowledge that they have generated through their school based inquiries. Research to most Academics use a specialized language that is outside purview of teachers. Teachers on the other hand feel that academic researchers are largely insensitive to the complex circumstances with which they are faced in their works and frequently feel oppressed and exploited by higher school researchers. The paper therefore discuss the need to correct the present imbalance in knowledge generation and the need to bridge the gap between teacher research and academic research in Social studies using four hypotheses and four questions. Recommendations were made.