The English education system has recently seen something of a revival of enthusiasm for the use of research both to develop educational practices and to gather evidence about their effectiveness. These initiatives often present action research as a model of individual problem-solving, which, we argue, communicates a limited conception of action…

This article examines an action research project on inter-faith dialogue within the sensitive context of Catholic pupils being taught Catholic religious education in state-funded secondary schools. Twenty pupils in S3 and S4 (Year 10 and Year 11) participated in a series of three paired conversations that focused primarily on science and religion,…

Inspired by Whitehead and McNiff's "living theory" approach and the "Thinking Schools International" programme, this paper focuses on issues surrounding self-evaluation practices in schools and research aimed at school improvement, with specific consideration given to grounded theory and action research. Specifically, the…

This study provides insight into the quality of practitioner research and the impact of this on the professional development of the individual teacher and the school as a whole. We examined the quality of practitioner research in relation to the goals of the research. We operationalized the quality of the research in terms of the validities…

The empirical basis of this article is the reconciliation process in a destructive conflict between students of different cultural and religious backgrounds in upper secondary education in Norway. The Dialogos approach to dialogical philosophizing was tried out through an action research process in order to bring about reconciliation, letting the…

In this case study, two high school teachers, a university researcher, and 10 high school students (ages 16-19 years) were part of an action research group that addressed an issue--smoking on school grounds--identified by a high school population as being problematic. The research was guided by the following research questions: "Within a…

Often girls are the objects of the camera's lens and subjects of the researcher's gaze. This article describes a qualitative study using a collaborative, creative and critical methodology to explore girls' perspectives on gender, citizenship and schooling. The seven adolescent girl participants used Photovoice to engage with their…

This paper explores how a learning theory enriched a collaborative teacher inquiry discourse where lesson study was adopted as the educational action research model to promote teacher professional development. Four Grade 9-10 biology teachers in Singapore drew from variation theory to collaboratively plan and teach new genetics content as part of…

In a culture of performativity, action research offers teachers an opportunity to step back and reflect on their practice. This paper reports on a collaborative project carried out between a university and a secondary school in England, in which the university staff supported an action research project within the school. Five school teachers…

This article presents and problematizes a peered and tiered model of creative and educational knowledge transfer piloted in Culture Shack, a community-based arts education program in Melbourne, Australia. Drawing on Eisner and Sefton-Green and Soep, I argue the value of this approach as a potential new pedagogical strategy in both secondary…

In this paper we propose that taking time before the work begins to develop agreements about how to work together in participatory action research enables researchers to directly address several ethical issues that can be problematic in this type of research: gaining fully informed consent; in-group confidentiality; cultural misconceptions; and…

This article focuses on the challenges and opportunities a researcher may encounter in practice, and presents four narratives that take the reader into situations which may arise when the researcher steps into the practice field. Episodes that challenge the researcher both cognitively and emotionally are depicted in the narratives. The authors…

This article analyzes how participation in teacher-led, semester-long, action research projects influences early career teacher (fewer than three years of teaching experience) perceptions of support and learning. All teachers at an urban, newly developed, small high school participated in action research projects as a result of the…

In 2011 we, a group of English-as-a-foreign-language teachers at a secondary school in Argentina, decided to investigate our teaching practices through collaborative action research so as to improve our students' learning opportunities and thus revitalise English-language teaching in our context. We implemented and evaluated the integration of…

The focus of the Education Works Personalization Project was to facilitate teams of teacher action researchers whose goal was to personalize their teaching with the support of university partners including doctoral students in education. The subsequent apprentice-like research experience within this university-school partnership provided an…