Section archive - Research Methods

The central focus of this multilayered educational action research project was three-fold: (1) to provide opportunities for public school student leadership activities grounded in participatory and youth participatory action research; (2) to support a group of teacher-researchers in practicing and innovating in participatory action research frameworks; (3) to practice linking an educational action research project in a local region to the larger movement for democratizing education knowledge production and dissemination. Project participants included 11 teacher-researchers, a staff-developer, a consultant, a university-based faculty member, and students in K-8 schools in the Lehigh Valley region of Eastern Pennsylvania USA. To move from a traditional top-down administrative and curricular decision- making model to a distributed and more democratic model of leadership, the team argues that (1) children must be permitted to play a leading role in their own learning, leading, and researching; (2) teacher offers significant advantages over traditional in-service based professional development models; and (3) in an era of increased deskilling and deprofessionalization, teachers must have the opportunity to reclaim their profession as they conduct research, create new knowledge, and share their findings publicly.

This literature review aims to examine the use of action research in higher education. It examines pedagogical research as a field of study. It also considers student engagement. The authors conclude that action research has produced important changes in practice. However, it needs to continue to evolve and respond to the limitations identified in this review.

This paper explains what clinical research is and why it is necessary. The author argues that the term ‘clinical’ refers to an academic way of solving practical problems. The author wonders whether clinical research contribute to knowledge for the teaching profession. She suggests that the (tacit) knowledge acquired in classrooms enables researchers to perceive more relevant factors in practice and enables them to understand the problems of teaching better. She concludes that clinical research is a type of action research in the sense that it acknowledges the epistemic function of doing, thus emphasizing the need for integrating scholarship and craftsmanship.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether using Lesson Study with preservice secondary mathematics teachers might better prepare students to be teachers. The main finding of this action research is that Lesson Study can have a strong influence on the efficacy of preservice mathematics teachers. In addition, it was found that a key factor in establishing the confidence of the preservice teachers was the direct connection from the field-experience school to the methods classroom.