Saint Xavier University in Chicago, Illinois offers a Master of Arts in Teaching and Leadership (MATL) degree program for certified teachers in the state of Illinois. This professional development program is provided through a partnership with Pearson Achievement Solutions. The program employs an action research model to guide teachers in…

The idea of teachers and teacher educators engaging in research is not, in itself, new, but in recent years the propagation of this idea seems to have become really popular. This growing popularity brings the risk that practitioner research will degenerate into an increasingly vague and obscure "container concept". The aim of this article is to…

This article examines how a group of seven post-graduate students, enrolled in an action research course, improved the structure and the content of the course by helping make it truly participatory and hands on. Participants expressed to the instructor their desire to learn action research by doing it. Action research became the pedagogy as the…

We attempt to answer "where" the social justice is in service-learning by probing "what" it is, "how" it looks in the process of being institutionalized at a Jesuit university, and "why" it is important. We develop themes about institutionalizing service-learning from a social justice perspective. Our themes were developed through an analysis of…

This study examined infants' use of object knowledge for scaling the manipulative force of object-directed actions. Infants 9, 12, and 15 months of age were outfitted with motion-analysis sensors on their arms and then presented with stimulus objects to examine individually over a series of familiarization trials. Two stimulus objects were used in…

A response to calls for more self-reflective and inclusive pedagogy, this article considers pedagogical and teaching possibilities offered by Photovoice--a community and participatory action research methodology developed by Wang and Burris. Extrapolating Photovoice to the context of the diversity classroom, the authors discuss how the methodology…

Current research evidence suggests that metacognitive monitoring decisively affects learning. More specifically, it appears to affect the learner's tasks and learning strategies. However, the way this skill can be developed in schools has not been thoroughly examined. This article discusses the development and application of an intervention…

This paper describes an arts-based Action Research project in which Forum Theatre (FT) was used to explore classroom management issues with pre-service teachers. Both participants and author were engaged in inquiry: the pre-service teachers tested different management strategies, immediately experiencing the consequences of their actions; the…

This article proposes a developmental model to socialize teachers at all levels (preservice, novice, and experienced) and in all positions (general education, special education, elementary school, middle school, and high school) in the methodology of action research. A process for advancing professional understanding is theorized to include the…

This collaborative action research study of pedagogy examines an introductory high school visual arts curriculum that includes artworks pertinent to labor studies, and their impact on students' understanding of the power of art for social commentary. Urban students with multicultural backgrounds study social realism as an historical artistic…

In 2006, a 9th-period program and an A, B, C, Incomplete grading policy were implemented as high school reform initiatives in a rural high school in the Midwest. The purpose of this qualitative research study was to determine how teachers interpreted the effect of the A, B, C, Incomplete grading policy and the 9th period reform initiatives at the…

This study explored rural middle-school students' participation in an online summer reading course. The research question explored the patterns and practices of the student's participation in an online reading course and the instructional moves made by the teacher. Data were gathered from a small group (n = 4) of rural middle school students…

The students of the targeted fourth, fifth, sixth, and ninth grade classes exhibited difficulties with number sense that interfered with understanding and recall of basic math facts. Evidence for the existences of the problem included teacher observation, test scores, and student and teacher surveys. The research participants included 42 children…

This action research study investigates children's perceptions of and feelings about musical performance. The participants were 41 children from two intact third-grade classes at one private school in the southwest region of the United States. The study occurred over nine weeks, including preparation for performance, the performance, and the…

Delaware Technical and Community College online courses are not properly focused to ensure instructors are effective in improving student achievement. First time online students are not given the proper tools when navigating online courses at the college. The focus at Delaware Tech should be on improving the format which students use when…