Teachers who frame the curriculum around purposeful playful activities that allow children to work at their own pace and allow children to make choices rather than be coerced into their work are indirectly committed to becoming researchers in their own classrooms. The art teacher-researcher is a participant observer of what goes on in the classroom, detects children's needs, interests, and possible weaknesses in his/her own teaching practices, and takes action. This article discusses action research in education in order to emphasize the important role of the art teacher as researcher in the classroom. Action research is supported by paradigms from socioconstructivist theories and is in favor of the argument that this type of research empowers both the art teacher and the children. Any teacher's attempt to situate learning through the method of emergent curriculum for project development and negotiated meaning and problem solving requires initially descriptive case studies and action research. (Contains 1 endnote.)