Can mentoring and coaching really improve professional practice? How can research and inquiry improve mentoring and coaching practice? "Mentoring and Coaching in Schools" explores the ways in which mentoring and coaching can be used as a dynamic collaborative process for effective professional learning. It demonstrates how the use of practitioner…

This paper investigates how the use of Pupil Views Templates (PVTs), a tool designed to elicit, record and analyse the development of students' awareness of their own learning processes, supports teachers' professional learning. This paper reports on a three-year collaborative practitioner enquiry project involving more than 30 primary and…

This article, written in narrative form, represents a data-based analysis of what I have learned about myself as a teacher of prospective teachers and as a teacher education researcher from Fall 2000 through Fall 2008 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The data for this analysis consist of three related data sets: notes on 13…

This article presents a study exploring the beliefs, knowledge, and practices of four middle and secondary science teachers participating in a collaborative curriculum action research project. Using a case study methodology, the views and practices of these teachers were described and analyzed as they investigated novel ideas about scientific…

Throughout our enquiry-based teaching course, we realized that, while our trainees performed well during the course, they could not actually meet the objective of the course, "being able to design and conduct classroom enquiry." In this article, using a case study, it is intended to illustrate how some crucial factors of a course could help…

Increasing numbers of music education researchers have begun to use qualitative methods to examine research topics using interviews, observations, documents, and archival data. In this article, I review qualitative research methodology and its origins and methods, discuss topics that have been studied by music education researchers using…

In this book, two teachers share their experiences as researchers to confront and address the current disagreements about whether empirical research or narrative recounting is a better research model. In the book they seek to transcend these disagreements by endorsing an integrative approach that covers all aspects of practitioner inquiry, joining…

This guide defines action research and provides historical and theoretical contexts for its use. Specific advice is given for the teacher-researchers engaging in action research, and a case study provides an extended example of the action research process. The chapters are: (1) "Understanding Action Research"; (2) "Deciding on an Area of Focus";…

Based on studies conducted by teachers and graduate students at Northeastern University, this book offers a comprehensive overview of the kinds of research being conducted by writing teachers, as well as extensive information on how this research has affected their professional lives. The chapters are divided into five parts dealing with the…

Based on a research project that sought to train instructors to conduct action research in a real-life context, this handbook was created to help literacy instructors to use action research in workplace education programs. The handbook is organized in three parts. The first part describes action research as a type of practice-based research. It…

Surveying a project that was conducted through the Center for the Study of Writing at Carnegie Mellon University, this book details the classroom inquiries conducted during the 4-year project (1988-1992) by 33 teacher-researchers from secondary and postsecondary classrooms. The articles and their authors are: (1) "Teachers as Theory…

This book extends ethnography beyond the work of university researchers to include classroom teachers, student teachers, and teacher educators. It provides ways for student teachers and others to develop lenses for seeing the patterns and practices of life within classrooms. The book describes how developing "ethnographic eyes" can help student…

There are students whom teachers always seem to remember, primarily because they provide special insight into teaching and learning. These students, most of whom usually have learning difficulties in school, teach important lessons to teachers about determination, survival, and about becoming readers and writers. One such student is Kimberly,…