A study of participatory action research as professional development for educators in areas of educational disadvantage

The main aim of this article is to explore the ways in which teacher educators can improve levels of reflection in postgraduate student teachers. The author argues that postgraduate student teachers are able to reflect on their practice in schools, and that the insights gained are useful in clarifying their own beliefs about teaching and learning. The outcome of such reflection at an early stage of their career may have implications for their ability to engage with the development opportunities made available to them as they move through their teaching careers. Using a qualitative approach, data from the learning journals and reflective writing assignments of student teachers, and a focus group interview, are examined in order to evaluate students' ability to engage in reflective writing at various stages over a 1 year course. The support given to students over the course of the year is examined with a view to evaluating its impact on students' abilities to reflect on their practice and their own learning. A number of recommendations are made for possible improvements to supporting student teachers in this important area of work.     

The role of action research in the development of learning networks for entrepreneurs

Developing sustainable learning networks for entrepreneurs is the core objective of the Sustainable Learning Networks in Ireland and Wales (SLNIW) project. One research team drawn from the Centre for Enterprise Development and Regional Economy at Waterford Institute of Technology and the School of Management and Business from Aberystwyth University has contributed to the understanding of how to create sustainable business learning networks for entrepreneurs. The research findings are attributed to action research by the conduction of two separate cycles in the forum of research projects. The first cycle, called Female Entrepreneurs in Ireland and Wales, produced findings that were reflected on and investigated further by the research team through the establishment of the second cycle named SLNIW. This paper discusses the two action research cycles through the action sets of planning, action, observing and reflecting and the contribution of the development of understanding and practice of networking for entrepreneurs through the production of guidelines for establishing sustainable learning networks.     

Participatory action research and the public sphere

Some action research today lacks a critical edge. This article identifies five inadequate forms of action research, and argues that action research must be capable of ‘telling unwelcome truths’ against schooling in the interests of education. It reasserts a connection between education and emancipatory ideals that allow educators to address contemporary social challenges. It suggests how educational trends in recent decades may have led to the domestication of educational action research, and concludes with three messages about quality in educational action research. It re‐thinks educational action research initiatives as creating intersubjective spaces for public discourse in public spheres.     

Sharpening a tool for teaching: the zone of proximal development

Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) provides an important understanding of learning, but its implications for teachers are often unclear or limited and could be further explored. We use conceptual analysis to sharpen the ZPD as a teaching tool, illustrated with examples from teaching critical thinking in zoology. Our conclusions are the following: teachers should assign tasks that students cannot do on their own, but which they can do with assistance; they should provide just enough assistance so that students learn to complete the tasks independently and, finally, teachers can increase learning gains by providing learning environments that enable students to do harder tasks than would otherwise be possible and by assigning the hardest tasks students can do with assistance. This analysis provides a sharp and useful tool for supporting learning across all curriculum areas.     

Exploring the teaching of culture in the foreign language classroom within the context of collaborative professional development: a critical participatory action research study

ABSTRACT

This article describes the experience of French language teachers as they explored interculturality within a collaborative professional development environment. Participants studied how to design culture lessons for their classrooms through the lens of Intercultural Communicative Competence with the support of theoretical frameworks for intercultural learning. The findings underscore a need for teacher professional development that creates space for teachers to explore topics of interest in an in-depth and collaborative manner, that makes time for exploration of theoretical frameworks, and that models practical strategies for embedding interculturality in curricula. Furthermore, this study reveals that explicit examples of intercultural lessons taught while using the target language are needed in order for language teachers to gain confidence in this area.     

The complementarity of formative intervention research,action research and action learning

ABSTRACT

Background

This article focuses on the complementarity between formative interventions research conducted within the framework of cultural historical activity theory, action research and learning, as well as how this complementarity influences the researcher’s role.     

The value and valuing of continuing professional development: current dilemmas,future directions and the case for action research

This paper explores and challenges the rationale for current, mainstream approaches to teachers’ continuing professional development (CPD) within schooling systems. Such approaches are significantly influenced by neoliberal and managerial pressures, evident in advocacy for generic, individualistic models of teacher learning, often focused on specific state-sanctioned domains. The paper draws upon a précis of recent action research literature, and empirical research from Sweden, to argue for an alternative paradigm, based on the practices and principles of participatory and collaborative action research. Action research is not presented as a simplistic ‘method’ which can be ‘applied’ regardless of context, but is explicitly focused on situated, specific, local sites. While more managerial and neoliberal practices can close down debates necessary for effecting real improvements in practice, evidence suggests action research, in its emancipatory iterations, enables a rich conception of educational practice which cannot be ‘managed’ into existence by a simplistic application of ‘what works.’     

Narratives and activity theory as reflective tools in action research

Narratives and activity theory are useful as socially constructed data collection tools that allow a researcher access to the social, cultural and historical meanings that research participants place on events in their lives. This case study shows how these tools were used to promote reflection within a cultural–historical activity theoretically shaped research project on multi-professional collaborative practice. The tools are shown to individually and jointly aid insight, understanding and action. The participants generated data through narratives and analysed the data with an activity theoretical framework. These were then interpreted as cultural historical artefacts by the researcher. The socially constructed paradigm within which they are situated, their participative use, and their creation of insight, understanding and action make them ideal as action research tools.     

An action learning approach to partnership in community development: a reflection on the research process

Green space offers a significant environmental resource that can improve the individual experience of health and quality of life. However, barriers exist that prevent the use of green space, and partnership (multi-agency) working has the potential to overcome these. Current public health policy aims to broaden the range of environmental public health intervention through effective partnership working. In response to this, a community development partnership project (Stepping Stones to Nature) was established in the south west of England to improve green spaces in neighbourhood communities through engagement and consultation. Integral to this project was an initiative to research the process and experience of partnership working. The aim of this paper is to report the experience of the multi-agency group guiding the research process and how they used an action learning approach to explore their experiences and guide the research process. Halfway through the project a ‘formal’ focus group discussion was arranged in order to capture the reflective thinking and learning that had taken place. The focus of this paper is on the data from that group discussion. Four main themes were evident from the data: expectation/perceptions; stakeholder involvement; tensions (at organisational and individual levels); and reflection and learning (through the partnership and research process). This paper reflects the different expectations of the research process that need to be identified early in partnership research in order that they can be appropriately managed.     

Teachers in action research: assumptions and potentials

Research literature has long indicated that action research may stimulate practitioners themselves to actively evaluate the quality of their practice. This study is designed to report the use of action research for the development of early years professional practice by analyzing the pre‐project and the post‐project video‐filmed teaching events. The finding was that action research might support knowledge development in the teacher profession. However, the teacher's ability to accommodate outside knowledge might be limited by one's inside knowledge. The study helps to clarify the assumptions and potentials of action research for teachers learning to teach.     

A new model of collaborative action research; theorising from inter-professional practice development

The development of pedagogies to meet the needs of diverse communities can be supported through inter-professional practice development. This article explores one such experience, that of speech and language therapists developing a new video-based coaching approach for teachers and teaching assistants in multi-cultural settings with high numbers of children learning English as an additional language. To support them in developing and trialling the coaching approach, the expertise of a teacher-educator and educational researcher was provided through a university business voucher. It is this working relationship that the article has as its practical focus, as it transformed to one of collaborative action research. The action research is described, providing the context for a discussion of the characteristics of collaborative action research and the proposal of a new model. This model offers a way of conceptualising collaborative action research through time, and of recognising the importance of the partners’ zones of proximal, contributory and collaborative activities in sustaining change and knowledge-creation.     

Exploring the complementarities between complexity and action research: the story of Technology Together

This paper takes up an ongoing dialogue in the educational literature regarding the relationship between complexity theories and action research. Recognising the contributions of other writers in this field and building on arguments made previously by the authors, this paper argues that there are multiple synergies between complexity and action research, and that action research can be a valuable and congruent meta‐methodology for those researching from complexity‐based perspectives. The paper illustrates these arguments through the example of a large action research initiative, Technology Together, which aimed to investigate the metacognitive influences on teachers' use of information and communications technology (ICT) and the implications of these for teacher professional development within a whole‐school context.     

Researching the impact of teacher professional development programmes based on action research,constructivism, and systems theory

This paper deals with the topic of professional development programmes’ impact. Concepts and ideas of action research, constructivism, and systems theory are used as a theoretical framework and are combined to describe and analyse an exemplary professional development programme in Austria. Empirical findings from both quantitative and qualitative studies regarding the programme’s impact are provided and discussed. Moreover, implications for future programmes’ planning and implementation are provided.     

From marginality to the mainstream: learning from action research for sustainable development

Education for sustainable development establishes the need for change within education; in particular, teacher education is recognised as a priority for reorientation towards sustainability needs. The Ubuntu Network is an action research programme, focusing on supporting teacher educators to explore the integration of development education and education for sustainable development into their programmes and professional practice in Ireland. From 2006 to 2008, 22 action research projects were implemented within nine post-primary teacher education programmes in Ireland and collectively published in an e-book. A systematic review of these projects was undertaken to identify emerging themes with a view to informing future work of the Ubuntu Network, and to guide the practice of mainstreaming education for sustainable development. These themes are described in this paper and demonstrate an evolution of pedagogical approaches, centring on ethical values and identity work.     

Collaborative action research between schools,a continuing professional development centre for teachers and the university: a case study in Spain

This article describes a collaborative action research project developed over the course of the 2011/12 academic year in the Faculty of Education at Cordoba University (Spain). The RIECU school–continuing professional development centre for teachers–university learning network is part of this research process. The aim is to create and consolidate a community of practice made up of continuing professional development advisers to teachers, infant education teachers, university students who are training to become infant education teachers and university teaching staff. The most relevant findings, which respond to the questions raised, are: the action research conducted indicates that teamwork between teacher, adviser, researcher and university student is an effective strategy to facilitate the acquisition of professional competences among student teachers; and student-teachers involved in the case study have evolved in their conception and approach to childhood and have had the opportunity to learn by modelling the professional conduct of their mentor teachers.     

Facilitating democratic professional development: exploring the double role of being an academic action researcher

Abstract

This article focuses on the double role of the academic action researcher working as facilitator and researcher in democratic professional development projects. The inquiry is based on three partnership projects: ‘research circles’ in Sweden, ‘dialogue conferences’ in Norway and ‘tailored professional development’ in Finland. In a self-study and through the lens of practice architectures, we, as action researchers, explore how our practices are enabled and constrained in, as well as are enabling and constraining, professional development partnerships with teachers and educational leaders. A critical perspective is provided on how and what democratic practices evolve. The inquiry opens up understandings about how the academic action researcher’s practices entails multi-faceted ways of working to be able to accomplish different and somehow contradictory objectives, yet at the same time enacting democratic working methods. Furthermore, the act of recognition as a connecting aspect between prefiguring arrangements and evolving practices will be elaborated on to supplement perspectives offered by the theory of practice architectures.     

Living at the Border: between multiculturality,complexity and action research

The author looks into the phases of her personal experience in order to present the difficulties as well as the richness of ‘living at the border’ and of building bridges between different worlds. The prevailing Anglo-Saxon culture, above all in the world of research, obliges those who do not belong to this culture to undergo a form of tension between adaptation to language rules and ways of thinking that are foreign to them, and the need to maintain cultural and personal differences while trying to communicate. The experience of ‘contagion’ between ideas and ways of representing the world, that was seen within the Environment and School Initiatives Project (ENSI) project and that the author had the opportunity to share with John Elliott, shows the possibilities offered by these encounters. Issues such as those of the complexity and quality of learning have interweaved with those of action research and evaluation, and have crossed and enriched the values and cultures of which we were implicitly and explicitly the bearers. In the final section the author makes an attempt to illustrate the risks of today's globalisation and the tendency to eliminate borders, viewed as obstacles to individual freedom, for a kind of equalisation which, by eliminating the differences, also eliminates the possibility of development and of creativity.