Describes an inservice training course for science teachers that is based on the view that most issues of classroom practice are issues of pedagogy, methodology, and subject knowledge. Teachers selected issues of direct concern to their daily work, performed research by methods of action research, analyzed their findings, took appropriate action,…

Describes a 4-year teacher action research project focused on whether student dialogue journals can provide documentation of student learning from a cultural unit taught in Spanish. Results are discussed. (Author/VWL)

Discusses community-based research (CBR) as a pedagogical strategy for courses in social science research to show how service learning enriches discipline-based learning. Explores how CBR engages students with epistemological debates by modeling alternatives to conventional assumptions about why research is conducted, how best to study people, and…

Discussion of professional development among academic staff focuses on a collaborative project between a lecturer and a subject specialist to develop learning materials for a new distance education course at the University of Queensland. Highlights include existing models of professional development; the needs-based component; and the action…

Case study of an English as a foreign language program in Central America that was based on linguistic theory illustrates how adherence to theory influenced learning expectations, motivation, and performance. Theory guided teacher training and curriculum design and gave learners concrete goals and a method of self-assessment. (Contains 22…

Four models of action-oriented research, a research approach that can inform policy and practice, are described: action, participatory, empowerment, and feminism research. Discusses historical roots, epistemological assumptions, agendas, and methodological strategies of each, and presents implications for family researchers. (JPS)

This article describes a special education preschool program that included four children without disabilities to serve as peer models to the eight children with disabilities. Results indicate that the peer models made a positive contribution to the program, as measured by their interactions with children with disabilities. (Contains references.)…

Reports on an action research project on ways and means of promoting learner autonomy in an English-as-a-Second-Language classroom. Focuses on the implementation of an autonomy-based English program with first-year university students at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The context and objective of the program are presented, classroom…

Elementary teachers in an interdisciplinary master's program in math, science, and technology conducted action research projects. Analysis of 40 projects involving design technology showed that teachers were transformed by the research experience, improved reflective practice, and moved toward student-centered learning. Students with special needs…

Argues that university faculty involved in teacher education should be conducting some form of action research intended to improve their own teaching. Suggests that much of the curriculum of language teacher education programs is based on intuition, and that it would be beneficial to subject intuitively-based practices to empirical evaluation…

This paper describes a one-year small-scale action-research project to identify the skills required by pupils (and teachers) to participate in individual program planning in a school for children with severe learning difficulties. A procedure was developed for the assessment of pupil readiness for full involvement in the target- setting process.…

Draws on experience with a transdisciplinary literacy project in writing development at the secondary level to address the sub-field of "writing-literacy," writing as a linguist working across an applied versus theoretical frontier. (Author/VWL)

Preservice English-as-Second-Language (ESL) teachers respond to various forms of feedback that they received in their TESL methodology course, and offer insights into how these individual response will shape their own evolving feedback practices. Results show that these preservice ESL teachers were pleased with the wide variety of forms of…

This article suggests possible applications of experimental analyses using analogues to empirically verify results of functional assessments in classrooms for students with autism and related disabilities. Analogue assessments involve creating conditions in which antecedents and consequences are held constant and specific variables suspected to…

Describes a recent national project focusing on involving teachers in carrying out action research in their teaching of vocabulary and the vocabulary learning of their own students. Teachers are given the opportunity to raise their professional knowledge and awareness of vocabulary issues and then to investigate their own classes. (Adjunct ERIC…