This paper demonstrates the importance and implications of Hannah Arendt's theory of action for action research. Using examples from my teaching experience I demonstrate the relevance of her ideas in understanding the purpose and aims of action research in the classroom.

Teachers' classroom-based action research is sometimes misunderstood by those who undertake it and support it, in three respects. First, it is wrongly assumed to fall into either positivist or interpretive paradigms (or perhaps a mixture of both) or to be critical. Second, there is little understanding as to why action research is necessarily…

The dominant approach to research in learning disabilities utilizes experimental and quasi-experimental designs to identify the most effective instructional strategies for students with learning disabilities. Research is always undertaken from a point of view, yet the discourse on "what works?" is generally silent on how theoretical frameworks…

Language teachers spend much of their time providing corrective feedback on students' writing in hope of helping them improve grammatical accuracy. Turning to research for guidance, however, can leave practitioners with few concrete answers as to the effectiveness of written corrective feedback (CF). Debate in the literature continues, reflecting…

Are you using interviews in your classroom? Carolyn Frank's new book on interviewing is a powerful tool for teachers and educational researchers. Through an anthropological frame, this book explains techniques for ethnographic interviews and observations in and out of the classroom. Carolyn Frank shows how teachers in particular can use…

The very first edition of "Primary Science Review" included an article entitled "Teaching primary science--how research can help" (Harlen, 1986), which announced that a section of the journal would be for reports of research and particularly for teachers reporting their classroom research. The intervening 24 years have seen…

Although teacher research has gained increased attention as a promising approach to improving teachers, many teachers find it challenging to research their own classrooms. Video has great potential to support teacher research because of its unique capability to capture the elusive classroom practice. In this article, we documented the role of…

Policymakers and educators are increasingly expressing concerns that the U.S. is lagging behind other countries in educating the next generation of mathematicians and scientists. In response, the federal government, private foundations, and many "institutions of higher education" (IHEs) are encouraging STEM (science, technology,…

Techniques emerging from the considerable research on cognitive aspects of survey methodology include various forms of probing and cognitive interviewing. These techniques are used to examine whether respondents' interpretations of self-report items are consistent with researchers' assumptions and intended meanings given the constructs the items…

Neuroscience and cognitive science relating to education are hot topics. They receive extensive but simplified coverage in the mass media, and there is a booming business in "brain-booster" books and products, which claim to be based on the research. Eric Jensen advocates more collaboration among scientists from the full variety of disciplines…

Researching language teachers requires intensive involvement of both the researcher and the researched. Yet, the available methodological literature in the field often paints a blurred picture of the nature of such involvement and provides little advice on dealing with challenges inherent in this type of research. Our doctoral research projects…

Implications and suggestions for using combinatorial mathematics in the classroom through a survey and synthesis of numerous research studies are presented. The implications revolve around five major themes that emerge from analysis of these studies.

Use science to improve teaching. This idea has surfaced repeatedly in education literature since the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), where the term "scientifically based research" appears more than 100 times. Yet despite all the attention that has been given to the idea of applying science in the classroom, principals and teachers often…

Scholars conducting research in classrooms face a myriad of ethical issues somewhat unique to the educational setting. While the Code of Federal Regulations (45 CFR 46) generally provides that educational research be classified as exempt from review by Institutional Review Boards, those same regulations provide a host of special conditions under…

Introduces the topic of the journal issue--how college students learn--linking traditional educational research and contextual classroom research. The cognitive-mediation model of college student learning is briefly described in combination with some research that supports it. The article presents some implications for faculty development within…