Journal for Educational Research Online (JERO): Issue Comparing Pre-Service Teachers’, In-Service Teachers’ and Educational Researchers’ Evidence- Informed Reasoning About Classroom Situations:

Pre-service teachers rarely engage in evidence-informed reasoning when they are confronted with problematic classroom situations. We argue that interventions that target pre-service teachers’ acquisition of evidence-informed reasoning skills should be informed by research that compares pre-service teachers’, in-service teachers’, and educational researchers’ evidence-informed reasoning. We asked N = 55 pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, and educational researchers to think aloud about a written classroom scenario and complete a retrospective interview on their evidence-informed reasoning. Results indicate that educational researchers describe problematic events more often than pre- and in-service teachers but do not seem to differ on a number of other reasoning activities. However, educational researchers more often refer to academic knowledge than pre-and in-service teachers. Pre- and in-service teachers do not seem to differ from each other, neither with respect to their reasoning activities nor concerning their use of academic knowledge. Additional qualitative analyses illustrate these findings.

Keywords
Evidence-based practice, pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, educational researchers, mixed methods research