To build new and better higher education systems, it is vital to consider all aspects of systems in the recent past. Measures should be taken to identify and address deficiencies, of which academic isolation and the prevalence of a silo mentality is a prominent example. The central question of this paper to be answered is how to effectively combat…

While measures of research quality are widely accepted in the education research community, there may be less agreement on what constitutes evidence of impact and on where to look for it. The aims of this symposium are to consider some key issues in undertaking the Australian government's national assessment of research engagement and impact, and…

Recent work integrating Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) with Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) forms a basis for systematizing action research in higher education. This basis strengthens what are often otherwise its methodological weaknesses, namely, the disconnection between analysis and subsequent plans for action and the…

The overall segregationist milieu of the educational enterprise serves to forestall movement in the search of a comprehensive theory of literacy and literacy instruction. Building such a theory mandates a democratically disposed, pluralistic research community. Sociologically, the theory-to-practice norm sustains an artificial hierarchy within the…

Draws on the Teachers Learning Collaborative (a network of three teacher study groups across southeastern Michigan) to illustrate the potential of teacher research for informing the field, as well as to demonstrate a particular model within which such research can be accomplished. (SG)

As educators seek to bridge the gap between research and practice, action research empowers teachers to inform others of the results found in their own schools. This paper describes a step-by-step approach to help teachers and administrators conduct classroom action research in their own schools. The five steps are as follows: (1) problem…

Narrative study of teachers and teaching is seen as sited at the intersection of many current intellectual and professional concerns. These include not only classroom practice and professional careers, but also the Self, Experience, Memory, Identity, Autobiography, Life History, Agency, and Structure. Narrative as genre presents post-modernist…

This collection contains four papers that describe action research projects in different settings. The first paper, "Action Research: An Approach Called DATA-DATA," by John M. Peters, is a guide to action research for practitioners. The DATA-DATA model integrates features of reflective practice and formal research methodology. The model, suited to…

The distinction between first-order and second-order research in action research is explored in the context of work on the Management for Organizational and Human Development (MOHD) project in Italy. Researchers worked with two groups of heads of primary schools in Italy to develop a path of reflection and research on their roles and functions and…

The relationship between research and autobiography is explored. The planned study was a qualitative study of literacy methods instruction at the college level, a case study of one class of students and their professor. The study was based on the premise that preservice teachers need experience-based learning opportunities in the classroom in…

Ethnography is increasingly appealing to those who want to study their own literate society and their own discourse communities. As sensitivity to the role of context in the social construction of knowledge increases, ethnography is viewed as a particularly relevant approach for research in schools and classrooms. The participant observer, who is…

This paper discusses some of the methodological and ethical issues that one educational researcher encountered throughout his work, focusing on the importance of understanding teachers' thinking from their perspective (an insider looking out rather than an outsider looking in). It highlights a collaborative research relationship that the…

Noting that teachers' research is found in personal journals, professional conversations, computer networking, formal research studies, and publications or presentations, this paper answers, in outline form, a series of questions on the expanding role for special needs educators. These questions are: what "teacher as researcher" means;…

This paper presents aspects of a study in progress on the legitimate function of fiction in research. A section on methodology describes how the study started with a project of narratives written in response to the black and white photographs of one of the collaborators. Analysis of the response process revealed a connection between fiction and…

For one educator, her career as a researcher probably began when she was 7 and arranged her own "library" on the back wall of the family laundry room. During the summer between her junior and senior years of college, she worked at a state institution for the mentally retarded and found herself questioning why the "clients" were…