In this paper, we present an argument for Practitioner Inquiry (PI). We briefly introduce PI, and we indicate how PI recasts the professional and political role of the Early Years Practitioner (practitioner). At the core of this article is the work of the early childhood pioneer, Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852). Froebel provided principles to…

This article provides a conceptual discussion of 'ownership' in various forms of participatory research. The discussion is grounded in our experiences from three research projects in science education. We seek to understand how and why ownership may be distributed between teachers and researchers at different stages in the research process.…

What is the relation between research and teaching? Are they entirely distinct activities -- and should they remain so? What is the relation between research and teachers? Should teachers be positioned as either the objects or the recipients of research that is conducted by specialists, researchers who possess categorically different forms of…

Consistent with recent calls to bridge the research-practice divide in second language acquisition, this article reports on the findings of a collaborative autoethnographic study that we, authors of this article, conducted as critical second language teacher educators. Conducting a series of constructive dialogues among ourselves for a semester,…

Ethics committees have an important role to play in ensuring ethical standards (e.g. BERA, ESRC, RCUK recommendations) are met by educational researchers. Balancing obligations to participants, society, institutions and the researchers themselves is not, however, easy. Researchers often experience the ethics committee as unsympathetic to their…

Research ethics reviews are an integral component of the research process in education, but little is known about educators' perceptions of and experiences with this process. This exploratory study examines educators' perceptions of and experiences with the reviews of research ethics and, in this way, it contributes to a better understanding of…

As we become increasingly acquainted with the rich opportunities that analytics systems can provide, there is a commensurate need to consider the extent to which analytics tools are effectively integrated, with proper training, into the day-to-day functioning of higher education professionals. This chapter explores the extent to which predictive…

Whilst within universities, research on rather than with children/pupils is a well-established methodology, this paper reports on teachers' responses to a schools and university-based partnership project, 'Pupils as Research Partners in Primary (PARPP), which works to co-create pupil-led research opportunities for pupils in research projects…

The notion of the "teacher as researcher" has been in the education lexicon since the mid-1970s. School-based research, we suggest, is currently enjoying something of a renaissance, flourishing within the emerging, complex school landscape. This empirical research engages with 25 school leaders to explore the ways in which…

In 2016, Dalhousie University's Research Ethics Board created an interdisciplinary working group to identify the key ethical challenges of SoTL research, with the overarching aim of recommending best practices and communicating these to researchers in order to support and expand the conduct of ethically sound SoTL research. This essay reflects on…

The act of engaging in sound and ethical practitioner research, regardless of context, encourages and indeed demands an alignment between the ethical framework employed in the research enterprise and the "everyday ethics" of practice. This paper explores the ethical dimensions of what Cochran-Smith and Lytle have termed the dialectic of…

Practitioner inquiry provides a powerful tool for improving practice and addressing critical issues in classrooms, schools, and broader communities. However, it also raises unique ethical challenges that often go unrecognized and unresolved. Structured Ethical Reflection (SER) provides teacher researchers with a process for identifying core values…

The ubiquity of mobile devices and their use for collecting and sharing data require a reconsideration of approaches taken to managing ethical concerns in the educational research context. In the mobile age, the concept of educational research extends beyond traditional understandings and contexts due to: the wide range of mobile learning research…

It is generally acknowledged that novice researchers may not be adequately prepared to engage in/with research and that an increasingly widening divide exists between researchers and teachers, and therefore between research and practice. To explore this gap, this paper addresses ten of the most popular misconceptions novice researchers hold in…

This paper challenges the approach that we traditionally take to research (in the realm of Early Childhood) within our colleges and universities. It asks why we have obediently adopted an outmoded and entirely inappropriate approach to research which disempowers and alienates the practitioners that we are working with. This paper calls for Early…