A principal recounts her year-long journey to pull a southern Oregon school community together. She used two problem- solving strategies (Situation-Target-Plan and force-field analysis) to alter cultural norms, guide the community through planned change, and integrate staff development, organization development, and action research. (MLH)

Summarizes a three-year action research project in a Norwegian upper secondary school, which used drama techniques and role playing to support learning for at risk students. Discusses finding a place for their program in the school context and getting this population of students to learn to trust one another, take risks, and ultimately take…

Compared the effects on teachers of two common teacher-development methods (skills training and action research) for teaching students how to self-evaluate in cooperative-learning groups. Teachers received training and implemented their strategies. Pretests and posttests of students in both groups indicated that action research made a more…

Describes an action research project conducted in eighth-grade algebra and prealgebra classes. Suggests ways in which students can use their creativity to progress from a simple solution method to a method that produces a generalization and a formula. (AIM)

Examined the opinions of students, parents, and teachers regarding the transition from a Montessori elementary school to a junior high school. Found that almost all the Montessori students made a smooth transition to junior high and were well-prepared. All three groups rated former Montessori students above average on all measures of success in…

Based on a teaching and learning experience that infused a service-learning project into a community college English as a Second Language (ESL) course curriculum, discusses the tangible benefits that ESL students gained as a result of participating in the service-learning project. (Contains 24 references.) (KS)

Reports on the Improving Education Quality Project in Uganda, which sought to improve primary education by using participatory action research to involve and empower teacher and community participants. Discusses the complexities and dilemmas of moving toward participatory ways within the context of Ugandan society, and how dialogue among all…

Describes an action research project designed to experiment with alternative forms of feedback and to circumvent the less helpful aspects of written marking. As part of the project, four writing teachers formed an action research group to investigate the feasibility of offering audiotaped feedback in a systematic fashion to groups of students. (15…

Describes an attempt to strengthen connections between teacher development and school improvement in a required preservice action research course. Students in the course were full-time instructional assistants whose action research projects involved school improvement. Results indicated that students were unable to engage in research that…

Discusses the benefits of having students do research with other students and having teachers do research with other teachers. Recommends connecting topics for the investigative process with issues from students' real life experiences. (DDR)

The National Latino/a Education Research Agenda Project, an initiative developed at the Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos at Hunter College, aims to give voice, perspective, and a research knowledge base to such issues as school reform and to improve academic outcomes and the long term life chances of Latino students and their families and…

Describes the experiences of an elementary teacher who collaborated on a science action research project with an action research group involving four teachers and a university researcher. The project allowed her to critically examine and change her instructional and assessment practices. She attributed her personal and professional growth to the…

Presents an overview of the types of research on community colleges. Proposes that research literature falls into four, often overlapping categories: informative and promotional research (with little or no analysis), advisory research (what "should" be done), descriptive research, and scholarly research. Concludes that variations in the literature…

Argues against a unidirectional model of foreign language learning whereby only theories and hypotheses generated from second language acquisition (SLA) research influence language teaching and classroom practice. Suggests that the voices of developing practitioners can shed new light on the question of focus on form versus focus on meaning.…

Explores the relationship between practice at reading, student reading performance, and organizational features using data from a computer-assisted student self-assessment of reading comprehension program (The Accelerated Reader). Finds student reading ability strongly positively related to amount of in-school reading practice; amount of reading…