This article highlights the complexity of participatory action research (PAR) in that the study outlined was carried out with and by, as opposed to on, participants. The project was contextualised in two prior-to-school settings in Australia, with the early childhood professionals and, to some extent, the preschoolers involved in this PAR project…

Curriculum aims often remain unrealised aspirations. This is because the values and principles implicit in them fail to get articulated in forms that can effectively inform and guide the practice of teaching. Ideas such as "learner-centred education", "independent/autonomous learning", "self-directed learning",…

Since its establishment through the Smith-Lever Act, the Cooperative Extension Service has sought to use non-formal education programs centered on community needs to provide research-based information. However, the onset of the information age has transformed the way knowledge is shared and as a result altered the way people access information.…

The use of digital media by adolescents living in out-of-home care raises safeguarding and risk-management concerns, creating challenges for practitioners in how to control risk while promoting independence. This article explores how professionals working in residential care negotiated their own and adolescents' use of ubiquitous digital…

The participatory learning and action: PLA was the process used for empowering in this program. This process has four steps: 1) create awareness, 2) specify problems or needs, 3) act and 4) present and reflect or monitor. The purposes of this study were: 1) to investigate the conditions of communities in terms of context and problems or needs in…

Purpose: This study focuses on the implementation of entrepreneurship education in non-business education at the basic education level and in class-teacher education in Finland. The subject to learn was music, which did not include any entrepreneurial content. Accordingly, this study looks closely at the way learners behave when studying music.…

In this paper, we explore what is known about teachers' engagement in and with educational research with a special emphasis on teachers' voice evoking their experience of participating in research. This will draw upon international contexts in order to suggest ways of utilising the benefits of research in practice. Our review is framed around five…

This paper is a narrative of my personal experiences of conducting action research in Kenyan primary schools. It highlights the opportunities, successes, challenges and dilemmas I encountered during the process: from the school hunting period, to the carrying out of the actual research in two schools, with four teachers. This study reveals that…

Recognising that the theory-practice gap remains problematic in the preparation of physical education (PE) teachers, this study sought to explore three undergraduate students use of jigsaw learning teaching gymnastics during a secondary school placement. Specifically, the research attempted to identify those issues that arose using this learning…

The recent growth in crowdsourcing technologies offers a new way of envisioning student involvement in the classroom. This article describes a participatory action research approach to combining crowdsourced content creation with the student as producer model, whereby students' interests are used to drive the identification and creation of…

At-risk students are oftenn unmotivated and disengaged from literacy activities. They are sometimes below grade level and feel inadequate to accomplish the complex reading tasks with which they are confronted in high school; therefore, they often will not even attempt to do the work (Bandura, 1986). Students who are assigned to a Disciplinary…

Reading engagement is like a puzzle consisting of many pieces to emplace for successful engagement to occur. The author, a French Immersion teacher/researcher, found that many of her grade one reluctant readers--those students who could read but chose not to--approached reading with some pieces of the puzzle. They had strategies and knowledge but…

School-university partnerships are widely promoted yet little is known about what contributes to their effectiveness. This paper presents a participatory formative evaluation of a state-funded school-university partnership. The study employed an empirically derived systems model--the Bergen Model of Collaborative Functioning (BMCF)--as the…

This paper will explore how a portfolio approach to teaching and learning can help the educator incorporate unique forms of reflective practice into his or her daily work. By being able to express ideas more clearly to himself, the educator can better promote the relational construction of knowledge in his educational communities. This paper, as…

Preliminary data was collected as part of the program assessment of a yearlong teaching residency program in rural California where preservice teachers conducted action research as the culminating activity for a Masters degree. Focus groups and survey data from program graduates were analyzed and compared to findings from the research literature.…