In this article, I critically reflect and describe how our Chess Development Project (CDP), initiated by pre-service teachers at a university in South Africa, helped create a safer, non-violent, and more supportive school environment. This participatory action research (PAR) project highlights the idea that higher education institutions should not…

In 2018 a teacher education program at a small research university implemented three initiatives to improve the practicum experience for teacher candidates. This program evaluation focusses on one of three initiatives, specifically, peer-oriented triads during practicum. The faculty members used the Spiral of Inquiry (Kaser & Halbert, 2017) as…

The value of weaving Indigenous perspectives into the mainstream curricula of Ontario teacher education programs is gaining prominence (Bell & Brant, 2015; Nardozi, Restoule, Broad, Steele, & James, 2014; Tanaka, 2016). Since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada's Calls to Action (2015), efforts are being made across Ontario…

Action research has the potential to reconstruct schools into professional learning communities that are able to identify educational issues and develop appropriate solutions for 21st century learning. Increasingly, teacher education programs are providing action research experiences to encourage analytical thinking and problem-solving skills…

The study utilized participatory action research and grounded theory methods and methodology to explore how critical pedagogy, as practiced by a small group of university education professors, shapes and influences the development of a critical consciousness among preservice teachers. Although there were some 'conscious raising' learning…

This study describes the use of worksheet activities based on alternative concepts from a two-tiered diagnostic assessment on chemical phenomena to remediate 37 first year non-major chemistry pre-service teachers' alternative conceptions about word chemical equations. The instruments for data collection were tiered assessments and group learning…

The paper reports an action research study that investigated pre-service teachers' beliefs about service-learning in a Makerspace lab at an elementary school. As part of the service-learning project requirement in an Educational Technology course, the pre-service teachers were asked to work in an elementary school to provide service to the…

Two post-secondary instructors and one K-12 Learning Commons teacher describe how interdisciplinary units of study were designed by undergraduate pre-service teachers and by in-service teachers in a junior high school. The interdisciplinary units focused on two or more disciplines and aimed to engage student learners in understanding a complex…

This paper describes a two-year action research study of 20 pre-service teachers (referred to in the context of this study as intern teachers) in their final 15-week practicum, during which they engaged in a type of action research known as collaborative inquiry. Over the course of their practicum, these intern teachers were interviewed monthly to…

This article summarizes an action research project undertaken at a teacher education institution in Canada. The action research was implemented in an effort to respond to initial observations related to some practicum limitations. In an effort to seek a "solution" to these limitations, a modified practicum model was piloted with a small…

Increasing student engagement through Electronic Response Systems (clickers) has been widely researched. Its success largely depends on the quality of multiple-choice questions used by instructors. This paper describes a pilot project that focused on the implementation of online collaborative multiple-choice question repository, PeerWise, in a…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that many US students are deficient in core knowledge in geography, civics and current events. In this paper, a professor of social studies methods describes an action research project developed to assess and improve teacher candidates' knowledge in these areas. The article explains how data…

This paper describes a research-based approach to creating a collaborative means for seeking educational change to benefit ESL learners and their teachers. We used a teacher education course as a boundary-spanning space for the sharing of expertise among teacher educators and pre-service and in-service teachers. The initiative involved the…