In this article, we focus on students and teachers as practitioners of learning, a powerful notion seminal to Exploratory Practice, which is a form of practitioner research developed by working to understand local puzzles, by integrating research and regular pedagogic activities, and by emphasizing practitioners' understandings of the quality of…

Research on statistical education in childhood is recent in Brazil. The research has been mainly driven by curriculum reforms and the creation of research groups that investigate teaching, learning, and teacher education practices. The present paper emerges from this scenario and has the aim of investigating practices of creative insubordination…

It is through the daily construction of teaching supported by research strategies that the teachers constantly learn and promote their professional development. As they teach, they learn about themselves, their students and the social context. By taking on the task of investigating their own practice, the teacher also learns the art and challenges…

This article uses an existing poem, "Árvore" (Tree in Portuguese), coupled with our diary entries, as a methodological innovation in poetic self-study. The self-study aimed to understand the aesthetic link in the development of being a teacher-researcher. This was a departure from positivist rationality and affirmation of an…

Although Brazilian governmental documents have conceived language teaching from a critical perspective, the recent scenario points to a backlash towards critical perspectives on teaching, which have been socially perceived as indoctrination. Since we understand critical pedagogy in additional language classrooms as a necessary emancipatory…

This article discusses the scientific research work on environmental education presented during the last decade in three Brazilian conferences: the meetings of the National Association of Graduate Research on Education (Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Educação, ANPEd), the National Association of Graduate Research on Environment…

Although women's representation in higher education nears parity with men at the undergraduate level, this representation diminishes as one ascends the academic ranks. Because gender gaps in the "elite" activity of international research collaborations might contribute to the underrepresentation of women in the upper ranks, we ask if…

This paper is related to an investigation carried out by researchers from a Brazilian public institution (Federal University of São Carlos) and experienced elementary school teachers. It adopts a research and intervention methodology developed in an online continuing teacher education programme, whose aims were the development of mentoring…

Focuses on the key mechanism of "puzzling" in Exploratory Practice (EP), a form of practitioner research, and the critical issue of sustainability in the context of volunteer teacher development work in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Investigated puzzles (concerns) of language teachers and grouped them into six categories; motivation, anxiety,…

The "ISSS Annual Conference Proceedings" is a peer-reviewed professional publication published once a year following the annual conference. The following papers are included in the 2013 proceedings: (1) Teaching About Asia in a Social Science Education Program (Cyndi Mottola Poole and Joshua L. Kenna); (2) Teaching Students about…

Illustrates Exploratory practice (EP), a form of practitioner research, in action in two classrooms in Brazil. Examines a key mechanism of EP--puzzlement--and presents two different puzzling processes. (VWL)

Describes the implementation and evaluation of a constructivist course for science teachers in which teachers are inducted into "critical constructivism" through their own action-research projects. Illustrates the induction process and professional development of one biology teacher of 13- to 15-year olds in Brazil. Contains 23…

Predicated on the fact that most school and state curricula for upper grades include a study of other cultures and that one method for examining Latin American countries and their culture is through an in-depth study of one specific country, this report details a summer travel seminar for 18 U.S. elementary and secondary school teachers to Brazil,…

We reflect on methodological issues arising in two of our own research projects as a form of practice, as a way of engaging in a praxis of project research. The projects chosen for this purpose are themselves concerned with teacher education and curriculum development in environmental education: they include participatory "reflective…