Supporting teachers for their professional development is important. Literature circle technique has a potential to create and support professional learning communities. The purpose of this research was to examine how the literature circle can be used between teachers in order to enhance their professional development. In this qualitative study…

The authors examined the research and activism of 10th graders (ages 15-16) involved in a youth participatory action research project in a course in qualitative research at their small public school in New York City, New York. The authors, a classroom researcher and a high school teacher, looked closely at how the youth researchers used…

This paper explores the ways in which collaborative action research can facilitate the development of inclusive practices and thinking in schools. The paper uses examples from a study that involved three countries and eight secondary schools to illustrate how the process of collaborative action research promoted inclusive thinking and practices.…

The present study is an action research in the field of education. The aim of the study was to see if immediate transfer of feedback and reinforcement can help to improve students' academic performance and help in the understanding and incorporation of feedback. The study was done on a sample of 15 psychology students of an international School in…

In this article, Melanie Bertrand explores the potential of using the concept of intertextuality--which captures the way snippets of written or spoken text from one source become incorporated into other sources--in the study and practice of youth participatory action research (YPAR). Though this collective and youth-centered form of research…

In this article the authors, who are both collaborators in this project, reflect on the challenges faced in developing and sustaining an emancipatory research framework approach to our research network in the context of radically shifting ideals and objectives for higher education in all partner institutions. The article is focused around…

Learning networks are a critical element of ethos of the community action research approach taken by the Early Learning Initiative at the National College of Ireland, a community-based educational initiative in the Dublin Docklands. Key criteria for networking, whether at local, national or international level, are the individual's and…

Benchmarks for career development services at tertiary institutions have been developed by Careers New Zealand. The benchmarks are intended to provide standards derived from international best practices to guide career development services. A new career development service was initiated at a large New Zealand university just after the benchmarks…

Action research began as an ambitious epistemological and social intervention. As the concept has become reified, packaged for methodology textbooks and professional development workshops, it has degenerated into a cure that may be worse than the disease. The point is not the trivial one that action research, like any practice, sometimes shows up…

University professional development funds, generally present for faculty, and often available for graduate students through grants or stipends, are seldom available to undergraduates. In this study, we assessed Giddens and Pierson's (1998) structuration theory in terms of how a professional development fund for undergraduates can impact the lives…

This paper offers a brief history and the characteristics of the research methodology known as Participatory Action Research (PAR). This paper also states how PAR can be utilized within an educational environment and describes the benefits to all stakeholders such as teachers and students when they are involved in a research project using PAR as…

Bringing a complex systems perspective to bear on classroom-oriented research challenges researchers to think differently, seeing the classroom ecology as one dynamic system nested in a hierarchy of such systems at different levels of scale, all of which are spatially and temporally situated. This article begins with an introduction to complex…

Purpose: The paper analyses the emerging role of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) universities in contemporary society via third- and fourth-mission activities. In particular, the paper investigates the potential contributions that SSH universities can offer in developing and enhancing capacities, supporting the changing conception of…

This article explores a case methodology of action research in Tennessee and investigates how library and information science (LIS) educators can extend their social responsibility to the state's small businesses and rural public libraries. Insights are drawn from a planning grant that was recently awarded by the Institute of Museum and Library…

Literature on the support of the First Year Experience (FYE) in institutions of Higher Education provides a range of modelled approaches. However, we argue that institutions still need to selectively plan which approach/es and attendant strategies are best suited to their particular contexts and institutional policy and practice frameworks and how…