The way that employees feel about their workplaces and their jobs has implications not only for each individual but for the success of the workplace as well. In a school setting, investigating how teachers and other staff members feel about their jobs and their workplace and then seeking to improve employee morale may benefit schools. This action…

The main purpose of this paper was to describe how the author, Kuo-Chung Hsu, changed his teaching beliefs and science instruction through participating in a cooperative action research, which is conducted by the author, Jing-Ru Wang. Self-study was adopted to explain and interpret Kuo-Chung Hsu's experience of teaching science in Taiwan island.…

This mixed methods action research study explores the impact of a multilevel intervention on retention indicators of special education induction teachers and the leadership capacities of the special education induction coaches and coordinator. The purpose of this investigation was to understand the impact of developing and implementing an action…

This dissertation is an action research study that had as its primary goal to increase retention of honors college students at Arizona State University by implementing an additional advising session during the fifth semester of their academic career. Introducing additional, strategically-timed support for the honors thesis and demystifying the…

Peer group learning is the name we have given to a particular type of collaborative learning that has been implemented as part of an action research project designed to improve teaching and learning of first year university mathematics at James Cook University. Using an innovation-decision process model we analysed the response of academics to the…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of Pedagogical Action Research Projects on Egyptian EFL student teachers' teaching skills. Participants of the study--31 EFL students at Suez Faculty of Education, Suez Canal University--were pretested on teaching skills. Each participant completed a Pedagogical Action Research Project as…

This paper discusses preservice teachers' use of action research in a Professional Development School setting. Preservice teachers were placed in a PDS site that focuses on internationalizing education and on teaching languages. The teacher candidates were in charge of planning, teaching, and assessing language instruction in their classrooms. The…

Today's youth are increasingly spending more time indoors and less time outside. As a result, many children have a "nature deficit" (Louv 2005) and little awareness of their role in nature. In this article, the first author describes how she shared her passion for nature with her sixth-grade students through nature journaling and how her…

The study examined the role of action research in promoting critical reflective thinking among twenty preservice teachers engaged in a year-long middle level program. Data from collaborative discussions, final written documents, presentations, and follow-up surveys revealed that conducting action research (a) engaged them in inquiry into their own…

For marginalised secondary school students, mainstream education may no longer appear to be an inviting place. While proposed solutions to problems of disengagement and marginalisation appear to concentrate on finding ways to coerce students back to mainstream education through, for example, "learning or earning" legislation, this…

Trainee teachers undergo a complex series of changes as they move through their training, from subject specialists to teachers of their subjects. This paper considers the results of a small-scale action research project, part of which used blogs as a medium for developing students' understanding of geographical concepts, and as a space for…

Teacher education programs across North America are transforming. What were once piecemeal programs consisting of often unrelated courses are now becoming coherent and intertwined trajectories toward teacher certification. Part of this transformation can be attributed to the weaving of "signature pedagogies" throughout overarching…

This paper tells the story of how a model of action research was used to examine my own development and emerging identity as a researcher through the Master of Research programme at my employing university in Scotland. It is located within a context of increasing expectations on academics within vocational training departments of UK universities…

This paper is about: developing critical understandings about the nature and origins of one's personal and professional identity; learning how to transform uncritically internalised and potentially damaging conceptualisations of identity and identity formation; saying why it is important to do so; and considering what kinds of texts can show the…

Systematic documentation and analysis of educational practice can be a powerful tool for continuous support to the professionalism of early childhood education practitioners. This paper discusses data from a three-year action-research initiative carried out by a research agency in collaboration with a network of Italian municipal "nido"…