This article describes a national school improvement project involving five compulsory schools for hard-of-hearing pupils, located in different parts of Sweden. Using action research, the teachers tried to change the communication patterns among the pupils by changing their own classroom practices, In this process the teachers tested and used…

Participation of the "target group" is a key concept in working on empowerment in health education. However, it raises many questions and is not without struggle. I will discuss the findings from a study into the state of the art of empowerment in health education, which includes a literature review and the analysis of eight Dutch health-promotion…

In the current climate of accountability, action research is one way for teachers to evaluate instructional changes designed to improve assessment results. It may become increasingly common for administrators to mandate teacher involvement in action research, yet few studies have been conducted in such settings. This article focuses on one middle…

The reflections developed in this text on the reconstruction of professionalism in teaching are located within a historical and social dimension, given that it is only within the boundaries of the coordinates of the spirit of historic time and the present culture ("Zeitgeist") that proposals for professional reconstruction can be fully understood.…

Queer theory and action research together offer possibilities for exposing the deep injustice of both homophobia and heterosexism. Underpinning identity categories of sexuality and gender, these forms of social injustice lurk in schools, families, religions, communities, and nation-states. For educators and educational researchers, addressing…

This paper discusses using action learning with different professional groups in the UK--nurses and educators. It addresses the question: To what extent is action learning an effective approach in relation to professional development, and, if so, in what way/s? The formulation and developmental processes of action learning sets are examined. The…

This article is centred on a preliminary phase of action research which the literature has not given much attention to. The initial stages are usually complex and the ideas on how to proceed are often unclear. Therefore, learning how different authors have dealt with them can serve as guidelines when initiating new research, which is why I have…

This paper reports on the challenges that were experienced as I engaged in an action research project in which I designed and enacted a cross-cultural unit of work entitled "Maintaining Health". George has advocated the use of traditional knowledge as a strategy for increasing the relevance of science curricula within the Trinidad and Tobago…

Writing across the curriculum (WAC) is a way of integrating the teaching of writing into specific academic disciplines. A problem faced in the WAC literature is how to develop a process that integrates the skills of multi-disciplinary teams. In this project, action research was used to develop a team comprising faculty from the applied sciences…

This action research project on critical literacy in a high poverty area in Toronto, Canada becomes the practical backdrop for examining how critical literacy can be developed and applied in regular classroom situations. Educators identifying patterns within classrooms that prevent students from participating fully in all aspects of a democratic…

A new research approach, related to action research and new paradigm research, has been emerging in recent years. This is (service) user-controlled research. It challenges positivist values of "neutrality", "distance" and "objectivity" in research and explicitly values subjectivity and experiential knowledge. The author examines how his personal…

The relevance of action research to organisational change within contemporary health services in the United Kingdom is discussed in this article. Two examples of collaborative community-based studies are presented: one exploring ways to encourage community participation within a health and regeneration programme and the other considering the types…

This article advances the consideration of resilience as an important concept in the transitional process of learning to adapt to life with chronic illness, by utilising interactional processes inherent in participatory action research (PAR) that may strengthen a person's capacity to live well with long-term illness. Sharing experiences and…

An effective mode of reflective practice and reflexivity is through personal professional narrative and story exploration. All professional and personal experience is naturally storied; telling or writing stories are prime human ways of understanding, communicating and remembering. Narratives of vital or key areas of professional experience can be…

This article discusses the use of action learning as a structured and deliberate learning process to support practitioners to implement change in an action research project. It discusses both action learning and action research before describing the context of the study. The article then goes on to discuss how the process of action learning…