The Purpose of ISATT

1. to promote, present, discuss and disseminate research on teachers and teaching;
2. to gain more insight into these aspects of education;
3. to add to knowledge and contribute to theory formation in this field;
4. to enhance the quality of education through improved teaching and forms of professional development at all levels of education.

A central intention for this research is to focus on the way teachers themselves understand teaching and their own roles in it. Research is not limited to studying what teachers do but tries also to understand how they think and feel about what they are doing and the cultural contexts in which their work is embedded. Consequently, research is individually as well as socially, psychologically and culturally based.

There is an increasing acceptance of the value of research carried out by researchers from complementary research traditions. Researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds at all levels of teaching from different educational sectors have come to study such diverse phenomena as teacher planning, decision-making, reflection, teacher understanding of subject matter and of curricula, their judgement of students’ work, their beliefs, attitudes, conceptions, implicit theories and thought processes as well as their principles of action, criteria and dilemmas of teaching. Insights from this wide variety of studies have informed teacher education programmes and curriculum development, contributed to teachers’ self reflection and professional awareness, and provided a growing data bank from which educational policy makers may draw.

The growing interest in research from Teacher Thinking and Action Perspectives is an international trend. As an organisation, ISATT is at the forefront. It draws its membership from teacher-researchers worldwide at every academic level and from a range of disciplines publishing in several countries and in their respective languages.