A graduate university workshop on action research helped kindergarten through twelfth grade teachers improve their approach to teaching writing. The article examines classroom research as staff development and introduces one action research plan, giving an example of one teacher's use of the plan to improve instructional writing practice. (SM)

Describes the Parent-Teacher Action Research Project, a multisite collaborative action research project involving eight schools that are part of the national reform network, the League of Schools Reaching Out. In project schools, teams of parents, teachers, and, in some cases, principals and students collaborate on family-school-community…

Illustrates how teacher action research can be the ammunition for teacher advocacy and the cornerstone of empowerment through the example of the New York City Accountability Project. The goal of the project is to support teachers' efforts to introduce better assessment strategies that support instruction. (SLD)

This study with a second-grade child with multiple disabilities in an inclusive setting applied (1) self-management instruction, (2) generalization methodologies (general case programming and multiple exemplars), and (3) a high level of teacher involvement in designing and monitoring the self-management plan. Implications for researchers and…

During an eight-week field experience, six preservice teachers designed and facilitated an integrated inquiry unit for fifth graders. During this experience, they investigated their effectiveness in implementing the inquiry approach to teaching based on pupils' learning responses. Reflecting on teaching behaviors through reflective classroom…

Recounts the complications that arose when the author's teacher research began to focus on issues of institutional racism within the school in which she worked. Discusses the politics of studying one's own site, and the dilemmas and risks in that process. Explores the issues involved in teacher research that is oriented toward school change and…

Directed to improve administrative leadership effectiveness, the Philadelphia School District's new regional superintendent determined that participant research and practitioner inquiry would encourage principals, teachers, and support staff to become a community engaged in thinking, learning, and working together to educate urban learners. Staff…

Discusses how writing and analysis of life histories, identification and analysis of personal teaching metaphors, and action research can be powerful means for encouraging professional development in teachers. Recommends that teacher educators engage in self-study and life-history analysis to encourage students to do the same. (SM)

Describes the Teacher-as-Ethnographer inservice training program, an anthropological model for training Israeli educators to diagnose and cater to the learning needs of culturally diverse students. Participants, including teachers of all levels and other school staff, learned and used ethnographic methods of data collection and analysis to conduct…

This article describes an action research project that tracked the progress of under achieving fourth-grade students throughout the school year. The project used a collaborative problem solving and planning guide in an inclusive classroom to enhance students' productive work and produce gains in student achievement and student social skills.…

In 2004, the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology at the University of Tasmania undertook a project to evaluate students' information literacy skills and to get a picture of how and where information literacy is taught in the faculty. This paper outlines how relationship-building between the Science Library and faculty led to the…

Few research examples or discussions about successful and practical application of environmental education within teacher education programs exist (UNESCO-UNEP, 1990). Meaningful environmental education experiences for preservice teachers need to incorporate the processes of inquiry, implementation, and reflection. In this article, we describe an…

This article briefly describes a curriculum study that had two main purposes. The first purpose was to develop and reflect upon a new energy technology curriculum at the lower secondary school level using an action research method. The second purpose was to determine the effect of collaborative activities, with the families of the pupils enrolled…

The paper discusses the utility of constructing causal models in focus groups. This was experienced as a complement to an in-depth ethnographic research on the differing perceptions of caretakers and health professionals on child's growth and development in Peru and Bolivia. The rational, advantages, difficulties and necessary adaptations of…

Children and adults in communities of color and low-income communities face disproportionately high exposures to environmental hazards and, consequently, greater risk of experiencing adverse health impacts from these exposures. Almost two thirds of children under 6 with elevated blood lead levels are children of color living in disadvantaged…