Combining classic articles that have been key markers in recent debates with new and influential material, this book addresses the problems involved in educational research and the issues surrounding its contribution to policymaking and practice. The authors examine the diverse approaches within qualitative research and address some of the key…

A small-scale action research project was carried out on students' feedback histories on one undergraduate module. Old grades and comment sheets were collected and analysed by staff for recurring advice to individual students on the target module. This advice was then synthesized to create simple individual learning plans for the students'…

Parent drug education is considered a key aspect of drug prevention. Effective communication acts as protective factor for drug misuse in young people. This study is a Participatory Action Research study of "Drugsbridge", a drug education programme that has an emphasis on facilitating intergenerational communication about drugs between parents and…

The authors implemented an action research project to help teacher education candidates to reflect upon, assess, and ultimately strengthen teacher candidate dispositions through the Reflective Dispositional Coaching Model. The teacher education faculty agreed that candidate dispositions should address four areas: (a) professionalism, (b)…

The aim of this paper is to outline a theoretical and methodological framework for the understanding, design and creation of teachers' collective capacity through the implementation of knowledge cities in educational institutions which are registered in the context of a fourth generation of Knowledge Management. The authors suggest four pillars on…

In this action research study, 24 preservice middle level educators participated in simulated interdisciplinary teams for a semester. The impact this authentic pedagogy had on preservice teachers' developing knowledge of middle school teaming is documented through student artifacts (e.g., journals, assignments), tape-recorded interviews, and field…

Based on action research of the Information Processing (IP) course at the bachelor programme HA/DOK at Copenhagen Business School, we investigate which barriers students experience when learning holistic systems development and why. HA/DOK has been developed to educate students who can facilitate between users and programmers and navigate within…

Collaborative approaches designed to increase writing productivity (amount written) as well as writing quality were implemented over a period of six months with a small group of 12 six-year-olds in a Primary School in Newcastle, NSW, Australia. The study demonstrated the positive nature of peer interactions with an increase in quality and…

This paper reports an action research case study in which a traditional lecture based, face to face "Network Management" course at the University of Lapland's Faculty of Social Sciences was developed into two different course versions resorting to case based teaching: a face to face version and an online version. In the face to face…

An $11 million executive-training course for principals, modeled after best practices used in the corporate, medical, engineering, and military worlds, is starting to gain traction among states. Developed by the National Institute for School Leadership, or NISL, a for-profit company based in Washington, the program is now used widely in…

This article reports findings from a critical ethnographic action research project at a US Midwestern high school in the 2004-2005 academic year. The project engaged seven teacher inquirers in an intercultural peace curricula development process. Data collected from participant observation, from personal interviews and from focus group meetings…

Research lauds the benefits of parent involvement in the schools, yet many schools and communities have not achieved desired levels of involvement. Underlying expectations and methods soliciting parent involvement may be rooted in cultural misperceptions. This study, based on Epstein's (1987) Overlapping Spheres of Influence model, explored the…

Thermodynamics, specifically energy and heat, is a major concept in the foundations of physics and physical science. To determine a strategy to teach thermodynamics meaningfully, the authors conducted classroom action research using interviews to determine secondary physics students' current conceptions of thermodynamics. On the basis of the…

This inquiry investigates action research as a tool to facilitate reflective practice in undergraduate preservice teachers. Typically utilized in graduate programs, action research is a viable tool for increasing preservice teachers' systematic classroom-based inquiry. This process is examined through a theoretical framework of narrative inquiry,…

Mr. Hartman is an honors-level and Advanced Placement science teacher in a diverse, urban high school where he has been teaching for the last 20 years. In recent years, Mr. Hartman has become increasingly more concerned with the lack of ethnic/cultural diversity in his advanced science classes. On the other hand, Mrs. Rodriguez is a principal in a…