The paper reports the findings of a small-scale qualitative investigation into academic staff perceptions of research cultures across 10 English and Scottish university education departments. The study sheds light on four interrelated issues: the nature of research cultures, perceived facilitators, perceived constraints and the emotional landscape…

This article describes a collaborative action research project that followed two teachers and their students in a primary school in the Paro valley of Bhutan as they began to implement the Project Approach and promote children's use of visual representation. The article begins with a description of the primary education system and teacher…

Inquiry-based instruction requires a deep, conceptual understanding of the process of science combined with a sophisticated knowledge of teaching and learning. This study examines the changes in classroom instructional practices and corresponding changes to knowledge and beliefs about inquiry instruction for eight high school chemistry teachers.…

Drawing from a two-year ethnographic study of Latino high school students engaged in youth participatory action research (YPAR), this article describes students' quest for freedom in schools, locating their struggle within a larger effort to realize the democratic ideals of public schooling. Using Latino/a Critical Race Theory as a theoretical…

High school chemistry teachers' experiences learning science through lectures and verification labs make it difficult for them to transition to inquiry-based approaches called for in the U.S. National Science Education Standards. Unfortunately, widely implemented approaches to teacher professional development (PD) aimed at reform, such as…

Headteachers working under conditions of severe hardship in Africa face tremendous challenges, often exacerbated by a sense of hopelessness and lack of agency to effect improvements within their school. This paper focuses on notions of leadership agency and "social justice" within an African educational context, with a specific focus on…

This study focused on teacher perceptions of the long-term impacts of engaging in collaborative action research on professional identity and practice. This qualitative, phenomenological study focused on understanding the lived experiences of 10 teachers before, during, and after engaging in action research. Each teacher was interviewed before…

In the present study, we test the effectiveness of a teaching intervention aiming at acquainting children aged four to six years with the concept of the sphericity of the earth and the causes of the phenomenon of day and night. The treatment comprised three units of activities that were developed collaboratively by a researcher and early years…

The primary objective of this paper is to report on two teacher educators' development and assessment of a framework and workshop to introduce student teachers to social justice and peace education ideals within the domains of teachers' work during student teachers' first full-time experience of teaching in diverse schools in a major city in the…

This paper reports the outcomes of a set of action research projects carried out by teacher researchers in 14 local education authorities in England, working collaboratively with university tutors, over a period of three years. The common aim of all the projects was to explore practical ways of nurturing the gifts and talents of children aged…

Youth and adult partners participated in youth asset mapping, a form of action research, to assess community assets and youth involvement opportunities. Qualitative data were analyzed to examine youths' feelings of empowerment and experiences with adult partners. Asset mapping contributed to youth empowerment, especially when adults were engaging…

We describe and analyse the action research process carried out by us as teachers in a general didactics course in the University of Malaga (Spain). The course methodology combined lectures to the whole class and small-group work. We were in charge of guiding small-group work. In the small groups, students researched on an educational innovation…

For several decades, management educators have discussed the difficulty of accommodating the competing values of academic rigor and organizational relevance. Only a few articles, however, consider approaches for integrating theory and practice in educational programs for working managers. Building on 15 years of experience in executive education,…

The question as to how action research (AR) is related to cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) is not answerable in categorical terms. Both CHAT and AR have been variously interpreted and much depends on the individual biographies of those who pronounce on their relationship. The aim of this paper is to show how action research, conducted…

This article offers a critical examination of aspects of a practice- and theory-developing intervention in the teacher education setting in England designed as a variation of Developmental Work Research. A positive case is argued for the distinctiveness of such cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT-) informed interventions and some points of…