Researcher-teacher collaboration occurred during the design and implementation of self-management instruction for two middle school students with different disabilities and for two different target behaviors. One student with physical disabilities was taught to increase safe hall travel during school transitions, and the other student with…

In the current climate of accountability, action research is one way for teachers to evaluate instructional changes designed to improve assessment results. It may become increasingly common for administrators to mandate teacher involvement in action research, yet few studies have been conducted in such settings. This article focuses on one middle…

For six years, teachers in a study group at a Denver inner-city middle school have enjoyed intellectual stimulation, collegiality, and professional growth. In this article, the authors present the success of the endeavor as proof that teachers are more than happy to stretch themselves when they are given the opportunity to direct their own…

One goal of professional development is to improve student achievement through improved teacher practice. The middle school philosophy, which supports the rationale that student learning is inextricably interwoven into the fabric of an active learning environment, contains many promising practices that "mirror" what is often considered to be high…

In this article, the authors describe how they collaborated to learn how children in their classroom make sense of a mathematical idea. One discusses their new knowledge from the perspective of a large-group discussion, and the other discusses it from the perspective of her small-group investigation. They also discuss how this collaboration has…

The Aplusix system has been designed for helping students to learn algebra. Its capacity to tell the students whether their calculations are correct or not, to provide families of exercises of a chosen level, and to give scores after tests allows this system to be used in the regular functioning of the class. Its capacity to record the students'…

This paper reports some methodological approaches to the analysis of argumentation discourse developed as part of the two-and-a-half year project titled "Enhancing the Quality of Argument in School Science" supported by the Economic and Social Research Council in the United Kingdom. In this project researchers collaborated with…

Functional behavioral assessment (FBA) has been suggested for facilitating the development and effectiveness of behavior intervention plans. In this study, the researchers examined whether behavior intervention plans based on FBA information (function-based) were more effective than behavior intervention plans not based on FBA information…

Much has been written about the value of teacher research for inservice teachers. Despite the existence of several studies affirming these words, studies that richly describe how student teachers learn to do teacher research and then investigate the impact of inquiry on student teachers and teacher educators, particularly in culturally and…

President Bush says that the No Child Left Behind Act is working, pointing to student-achievement results from a single subsection of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and tentative Reading First data. But the evidence available to support his claim is questionable. The data Mr. Bush cited are from just the "long-term…

This essay provides a window into an eighth-grade class engaged in a legislative curriculum drama. The author, an eighth-grade social studies and literature teacher at a private New York City elementary school, describes her use of a legislative curriculum drama to make an eight-week study of the legislative branch of government a more dynamic and…

The qualitative educational research literature is increasingly advocating the use of literary/artistic techniques. This article describes and evaluates educational action researches by three art teachers, and questions why they have not capitalised methodologically on their artistic expertise. Analysis of commonalities in practitioner-based…

This paper explores auto-photography as a form of research practice in the area of identity and self-esteem research. It allows researchers to capture and articulate the ways identity guides human action and thought. It involves the generation and examination of the static images that participants themselves believe best represent them.…

Interactive immersive entertainment, or videogame playing, has emerged as a major entertainment and educational medium. As research and development initiatives proliferate, educational researchers might benefit by developing more grounded theories about them. This article argues for framing game play as a "designed experience." Players'…

This study examined the mathematics experiences of talented children in an impoverished rural school district located in a coal-mining area of Appalachia. Using interview methods, the researchers explored the children's ideas about the nature of mathematics, their perceptions of the mathematics instruction they received at school, and their…