This article examines the possibilities and challenges in turning a top-down action research project led by high-level public authorities into a shared and collaborative, multi-site and multi-professional bottom-up action research project. For this purpose, the article explores the initial stages of a European level action research project called…

Participatory Action Research (PAR) is often applauded for creating a more egalitarian relationship between researchers and research participants. Nonetheless, PAR studies, particularly those involving young people, have been critiqued for their claims about its benefits, particularly the assertion that PAR is 'more' empowering and/or morally and…

The UFR Lansad (Language centre teaching languages to specialists of other disciplines) was created in 2014 at the University of Lorraine. The process leading to its creation was led by a small number of teachers and researchers, from the pre-existing teams of the previous Lorraine universities (Molle et al. 2019). It is the result of didactic…

This paper draws upon learning from three action research projects conducted as part of a Europe-wide project exploring young people's social and political participation. Challenging dominant discourses about what 'counts' as participation and what does not, the paper explores how, through the action research projects, young people engaged in…

Key studies in history education (from France and the USA) are discussed and compared in order to explore their methodological issues in terms of the types of knowledge they can generate about teaching and learning. An epistemological framework that relates the history of historians as an inquiry to that of the classroom provides the criteria for…

This paper is based on work done at IdeaSquare, a new innovation experiment at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The paper explores the translation of fundamental research into societal applications with the help of multidisciplinary student teams, project- and problem-based learning and design thinking methods. The theme is…

One way to foster active social inclusion is to enable students to develop a positive attitude to "foreignness". Creating a situation where mainstream students are less wary of foreign languages and cultures, and where newcomers feel their linguistic background is being valued, provides favourable conditions for the inclusion of these…

This chapter presents and discusses the results of a large-scale pilot study carried out in the context of a task-based, blended-learning Business English programme in the Foreign Languages and International Trade department of a French University . It seeks to explore the effects of pre-task planned Focus on Form (FonF) on accuracy in students'…

When trying to analyse a LANSOD (LANguage for Specialists of Other Disciplines) training course, the elements that have to be taken into account are numerous and complex, and many questions are raised. For example, in the case of the English course in the undergraduate programme of musicology at the University of Lille SHS (France), how can high…

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 article describes the discovery of action research by a "conscious incompetent" in higher education. The influences on the development of an action researcher's individual philosophy are discussed. These shape a specific investigation into the implementation of international staff exchange in a post-1992 UK university from the…

In this article we consider the importance of reflective practice and research attitude for the professional development of in-service teachers. Nine teachers engaged in an international master's course (in a Belgium and French university) were interviewed to obtain self-narratives. The two year full-time master's course aims to develop skills in…

This paper presents the "Multi-Role Project" method (MRP), a broadly applicable project-based learning method, and describes its implementation and evaluation in the context of a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) course. The MRP method is designed around a meta-principle that considers the project learning activity…

This contribution gives an account of the results of an action research in which a task-based plurilingual programme was implemented with postgraduate students of Foreign Languages and International Business. Using a mixed-methods approach, combining questionnaire, interview and observation data, we sought to explore the degree to which the…

In an age of transnational mobility, there has been a growing recognition of the need for both English and French mainstream classroom teachers to be trained to teach increasingly plurilingual student populations. In this article, I begin by describing the context for an exploratory comparative and collaborative ethnographic action research study…