In participatory action research (PAR), university-based researchers often take foundational concepts such as transformation, empowerment, critical consciousness, and mutual understanding for granted as desirable or necessary outcomes or achievements. We discuss the danger of this and suggest that researchers recognize these as processes that…

This article focuses on an out-of-school youth participatory action research project to better understand both how schooling emerged and was challenged in a liberatory space. This project explores the entanglement of schooling, learning, and youth in a youth participatory action research (YPAR) setting. There were six youth and one academic…

Despite the value of reading, research documents declining reading rates among American adolescents - a decline that exacerbates student dropout rates and academic performance. As a high school English teacher in a public, regional, suburban school, increasing the number of students who deeply read the assigned texts for class has been a…

This study explored the use of collaborative action research (CAR) in a year-long professional development (PD) for global climate change (GCC) education. The purpose was to understand how high school science teachers' engagement in CAR affected their classroom practice. The teachers exchanged stories of practice, shared and tried out new ideas in…

This paper is an account of a developmental action inquiry research project in which teachers from 13 secondary schools were trained to philosophize the Dialogos way with their 8th-grade students, as part of ongoing curriculum reforms in Norway. In the reforms, and in this paper, the themes of life skills and democratic citizenship are in the…

This study examined in-service teachers who engaged in a year-long professional development (PD) course that focused on conducting participatory action research (PAR) related to mathematics and science instruction. We focused on how the teachers perceived the PAR process and its impact on their practice and performance throughout the course. A…

The learning environment plays a crucial role in the promotion of school science. Redesigning the science classroom into a metacognitive learning environment is imperative in developing students' 21st century skills -- communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creative thinking. In this study, we exposed the students to a variety of…

Youth participatory action research (YPAR) projects are powerful developmental contexts for important lessons in identity, power, stereotypes, and bias. African American girls develop in a society that devalues and often stigmatizes their racial and gendered identity. Although studies have shown that African American girls score high on…

The Collaborative Action Research Network (CARN) held its first American study day on the east coast of the United States in conjunction with the Action Research Network of the Americas (ARNA) 2014 conference in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA. Study day participants visited three American secondary schools, one each in Pennsylvania, New York, and…

Context-based science courses stimulate students to reconstruct the information presented by connecting to their prior knowledge and experiences. However, students need support. Formative assessments inform both teacher and students about students' knowledge deficiencies and misconceptions and how students can be supported. Research on formative…

Teenage pregnancy among school-going youth is a concern worldwide, but in socially-economically challenged environments it is a result of, and contributory factor to, a complex web of social injustice. In South Africa, most of the school-based prevention interventions to date have been adult-designed and imparted, with the voice of the target…

This article reports on a two-year study of one principal's professional learning practices in "Transform," a professional learning program in Edmonton Catholic Schools, Alberta, Canada. Transform was designed to be a bottom-up, morally-oriented professional learning approach in which principals and teachers worked as partners on…

Schools are increasingly seen as having a promising role to play in reducing adverse health and wellness outcomes among young people. This paper uses a collaborative action research approach to examine the effects of one school's efforts to change its students' eating habits by implementing a "junk-food free campus." By engaging school…

Often girls are the objects of the camera's lens and subjects of the researcher's gaze. This article describes a qualitative study using a collaborative, creative and critical methodology to explore girls' perspectives on gender, citizenship and schooling. The seven adolescent girl participants used Photovoice to engage with their roles as…

This article analyzes how participation in teacher-led, semester-long, action research projects influences early career teacher (fewer than three years of teaching experience) perceptions of support and learning. All teachers at an urban, newly developed, small high school participated in action research projects as a result of the…