 Voices of Practitioners—Teacher Research: Nurturing Professional and Personal Growth through Inquiry Andrew J. Stremmel The Value of Teacher Research: Nurturing Professional and Personal Growth through Inquiry nyone who has ever been a teacher knows that teaching is a complex, chal- lenging, and often uncertain process. There are no absolute answers for how best to teach young children. However, research has shown that students of teaching tend to believe there is some set of “right answers” to the problems of teaching, and they hold fast to the image of teachers as consumers and disseminators of information (e.g., Stremmel et al. 1995). If there is one thing confirmed by both the professional literature on teaching and the anecdotal experiences of many teacher educators, it is the assertion that teaching is more than technique (Schön 1983; Ayers 1993; Cochran-Smith & Lytle 1999). Teaching is a process involving continual inquiry and renewal, and a teacher, among other things, is first and foremost a questioner (Ayers 1993; Hansen 1997). The conventional and restricted vision of the teacher as technician—consumer and dispenser of other people’s knowledge—has been reinforced, however, by No Child Left Behind and its focus on high-stakes accountability and standards-based instruction (Liston, Whitcomb, & Borko 2007). Nevertheless, Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999) suggest that the narrow notion of teacher as technician has been a catalyst for the current teacher-as-researcher movement in the United States. This movement has helped reunite two complementary and natural sides of teaching— reflection and action (thinking and doing). The teacher research movement also has helped teachers reclaim inquiry as a legitimate means of gaining knowledge and insights about teaching and learning. In this article, I paint a more promising and encompassing view of teaching as an inquiry process, a view that sees teachers as researchers who take seriously the study of self with the aims of bringing about personal, social, and educational change (Dewey [1933] 1985, [1938] 1997; Meier & Henderson 2007). What is teacher research? Teacher research is a form of action research, research designed by practitioners to seek practical solutions to issues and problems in their professional and communi- ty lives (Corey 1953; Stringer 2007). The ultimate goal is change or the improvement of the problematic situation. In the education literature, teacher research and action A voices of practitioners Andrew J. Stremmel, PhD, is professor and department head of human development, consum- er and family sciences at South Dakota State University in Brook- ings. His writing and research fo- cus on inquiry-based early child- hood teacher education and transformation through refective inquiry. This is a revised and updated version of a Research in Review article published in the Septem- ber 2002 issue of Young Children (57 [5]: 62–70). The original was edited by journal research editor Diane Horm-Wingerd, professor and director of the Child Develop- ment Centers at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston.