The goal of the university professional development course BINE is to encourage participants to address education for sustainable development (ESD) in a reflective way. The main aims are for the participants to learn about action research and to reflect and implement ESD in their work and institutions. This paper briefly describes the concepts of…

This chapter describes networking for education for sustainable development within the Austrian ECOLOG-schools network. It discusses theoretical concepts of Education for Sustainable Development and school development from an Austrian perspective, as well as networks in education in general and the organization of the ECOLOG-network in particular.…

In this paper, the author analyzes 89 studies published from 1990 through 2020 that focused on literacy preservice teachers' involvement in action research as part of learning to teach. In doing so, the author provides an example of why critical reflexivity is necessary in qualitative literature review methods. The author relies on a social…

Forum Theatre is an interactive theatrical form of the 'Theatre of the Oppressed' (TO). I refer to Forum Theatre in this contribution as a dramatic and participatory research approach which -- despite its specific nature -- shares many similarities with approaches taken in action research and participatory research. Procedures and methodological…

The authors of this article each present the current situation of their respective educational systems regarding music teacher education, schools and professional development: all of which have undergone massive changes in the last decades. In the UK, this lead to a shift of teacher education away from universities toward school-based training and…

The current study focuses on the concept PPS-PR (Personalized Professionalization in Pedagogical Fields through Practitioner Research), an approach that integrates practitioner research projects during internships. A central aim is to encourage teacher students´ professional learning (Bachelor of Primary Education). 312 Austrian teacher students…

This report describes the opportunities, challenges and limits of evidence-based quality improvement in university language teaching. Using "treffpunkt sprachen"--Centre for Language, Plurilingualism and Didactics at the University of Graz as an example, it provides a brief explanation of the centre and then presents the prioritization…

This case describes networking for education for sustainable development within the Austrian ECOLOG-schools network. The article presents theoretical concepts of networks in education in general, and the organization of the ECOLOG-network in particular. Based upon these foundations, the concept and results of a participatory evaluation study are…

This paper presents the main findings of an action-research study that took place in seven European countries in order to develop effective educational responses to prevent and combat discrimination. The study entailed the design of media and citizenship education activities, their implementation in the different educational contexts and the…

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…

For about two decades only marginal relevance was attributed to action research as a research strategy by large sections of the German social science community. The growing international debate on key concepts such as community participation, community-based participatory research and participatory action research were largely ignored. In this…

Most histories of the discipline of community psychology attribute its beginning to the Swampscott Conference that occurred in the mid-20th century. The author argues that recognition of the community perspective on human behavior and on its positive as well as pathological characteristics arose far earlier and is reflected in the work of European…

From October to December 2005, six biology associates were employed to progress the connection between curriculum implementation and the continuing professional development of teachers at regional level. The associates worked with one hundred biology teachers in Teacher Design Teams (TDTs) and together they produced eighteen innovative classroom…

Reports an action research project at the State College of Education in Vienna, Austria, in which a sociology course for prospective teachers used English as the language of instruction. Evaluation indicates benefits for the students, the institution, and the instructor. Stresses the importance of institutional support for such efforts in…

Describes an inservice training course for science teachers that is based on the view that most issues of classroom practice are issues of pedagogy, methodology, and subject knowledge. Teachers selected issues of direct concern to their daily work, performed research by methods of action research, analyzed their findings, took appropriate action,…