Educational action is a species of praxis in both an Aristotelian sense and a post-Marxian sense: in the first, it involves the morally informed and committed action of the individual practitioners who practise education; in the second, it helps to shape social formations and conditions for collectivities of people. In this paper, it is argued…

Responding to Bulterman-Bos (2008), the author argues that the effort to make education research more relevant is counterproductive. Teachers and researchers have different orientations toward education that arise from different institutional settings, occupational constraints, daily work demands, and professional incentives. These are not…

Highlights relationships between theory and practice and the genesis of professional action in clinical nursing and among researchers. Suggests that clinical nurses learn from context, including each other, and are active producers of knowledge, not merely recipients. Concludes there is no research-practice gap as argued in the dominant barrier…

Addresses the issue of intention in action research, suggesting that researchers ask who will be the first-level beneficiaries and what will be the first level of change. Discusses ethical questions regarding consent and justification of research steps. (SK)

Asserts the need for good research is common for people involved with performance and instruction issues, and stresses interdependence of research and field workers. Discusses principles of objectivity, precision, and empiricism in good research. Examples illustrate how methods of practitioners are improved through application of these principles.…

Educational researchers and practitioners seem to be involved in the same endeavor without real contact. To remedy this distance, the best research should focus on practice, and the best practice should be informed by research. (SLD)

Presents the role of human resource development practitioners as organizational researchers. Describes a model for validating instruments, constructs, and strategies, based on communication theory. Cites common errors and issues in the validation of measurement and demonstrates uses of the heuristic validation model. (SK)

Examines American Indian communities' attitudes toward social science research and Anglo social science researchers. Discusses the positive role that Indian social scientists can play in improving the quantity and quality of research conducted in Indian communities. (Author/GC)

Argues that the meetings of the National Council of Teachers of English and the Conference on College Composition and Communication should focus on improving the literacy skills of students rather than promulgating superficial results of poorly conducted research. (RS)

The role of the researcher is reviewed, along with definitions of the higher education research constituency, the structure of higher education research, and the emphasis on research strategy. Researchers are encouraged to develop concept and theory first, and to deal with real issues involving practitioners and constituents. (Author/LB)

Presents a case study of a curriculum project in an Ontario school board to illustrate how researchers can intervene appropriately in the policymaking activities of practicing educators. After discussing and rejecting two traditional models of involvement, illustrates and justifies two practical principles to guide researchers in these situations.…

The social scientist has certain responsibilities in reporting the results and implications of research. S/he must consider: 1) the importance of the audience and the decisions they might make; 2) the complexity of the social findings; 3) the likelihood of practical impact of research findings; and 4) the possibility of harm to a distinct group in…

Practitioner-researchers are emerging in many fields in response to rapid change and a view of research as systematic and rigorously controlled learning. The gap between theory and practice widens because of variations in practice settings, making practitioner knowledge important. Commentaries by Paul Yerrell, David R. Thompson, Philip Burnard,…

Ethnography has raised various issues for the educational research manager (the person responsible for directing a large-scale research and/or evaluation project). These include selection and management of ethnographers, negotiation of ethnographers' onsite roles, communication and coordination of ethnographers, and ethnographic data processing…

The paper deals with the contribution of empirical psychology to the problems of instruction and proposes a conceptual framework to promote helpful interactions between experimenters and teachers of children with learning difficulties. Both groups share a common concern, the definition of tasks by testing instructions in action. (Author/DB)