When we picture a school, many of us will see a teacher, standing at the front of a classroom. When our children are at school, it’s their teachers we turn to with concerns. When we think back to our own school days, we think fondly about our favourite teachers, those who really stood out. Teachers have always been at the heart of education, at least in the popular imagination. It is particularly odd, then, that in much of the education research and policy discourse in low-income countries over the past 20 years teachers have been side-lined and presented as passive, generic (and often negative) inputs. While children’s engagement with education systems is increasingly framed in constructivist terms, with much attention given to the interrelation between their ideas and their experiences, these terms have been far less evident in research and policy around teachers’ engagement with these same systems.

This is slowly changing, and for the first time global goals recognise the central role of teachers. We intend to use this blog post – and the UKFIET September 2017 symposium it links to – to acknowledge and critically consider this change, what it signifies and how our work can support and strengthen this recognition: What do we do when, as educational researchers, we want to learn more about teachers’ knowledge and experiences, and the roles they inhabit? What methodologies can expand our understanding of the working lives of teachers? To what extent should we include teachers in the design and analysis of these methodologies? What ethical considerations do we need to undertake and what logistical and empirical challenges might arise? And crucially, how can we try our hardest to ensure that data collected will support and empower the teachers we study?