Many educators focus on the cognitive and/or cultural/contextual deficits that students bring to learning tasks, which are oftentimes used to explain poor academic performance. Metacognition that can be taught and learned for improving learning performance is regarded as an alternative. The purpose of this year-long collaborative action research…

Nutrition education at school can contribute to developing healthy nutritional behaviours in schoolchildren. This paper critically reflects on how participatory action research (PAR) empowered university researchers and a school community to co-develop a school-based nutrition education programme (SBNEP) that promotes healthy nutritional…

In our pursuit to broaden and deepen understandings of what it means to engage in an assessment activity, we explored the designing and implementing of a geometry performance task as an instantiation of authentic assessment to assess elementary school students' mathematics learning. Using participatory action research, we incorporated a…

This study aims to present the potential of Participatory Action Research (PAR) to bring together the experiences of teachers and researchers with the intention of improving teaching practices and students' learning outcomes. Participants in the study were 7 teachers, their 160 fifths grade students, and researchers (authors). Teachers and…

This article explores the possibilities of the use of eco-san in the school garden in the Nepalese community school, focusing on transformative pedagogical impacts on the social learning environment of the school. In particular, the use of urine as a fertilizer in the school garden through eco-san and linking pedagogical alignment to provide a…

This storied account details a reflective inquiry of dance as an instructional tool in a preservice teacher training program. The case study follows a children's literature class as they use movement/dance as a way of making meaning in teacher selected literature. Student teachers learned basic movement concepts through BEST (Body, Energy, Space,…

This action research reports on a three-year collaborative learning process among three teachers. We used current literature and a critical reflection framework to understand why our teaching approaches were not resulting in increased student learning. This allowed us to examine our previously unrecognized and uninterrupted--and often,…

Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service provided elementary school students with a program that included a noncompetitive physical activity component: circuit training that combined cardiovascular, strength, and flexibility activities without requiring high skill levels. The intent was to improve fitness without focusing on body mass index as an…

Objective: To identify the effects of a structured and multifaceted physical activity and recess intervention on student and adult behaviour in school. Design: Mixed-methods and community-based participatory approach. Setting: Large, urban, low-income school district in the USA. Methods: Data were collected at three time points over a 1-year…

Teacher research (practitioner inquiry) is an effective form of professional development for middle level teachers. Through teacher research, classroom teachers develop the skills needed to demonstrate mastery of the performance standards for middle level master teacher candidates. Using well-established research methods, middle level educators…

Using participatory action research, the first researcher functioned as co-teacher in a fifth-grade class in a large northeastern city public school. The researcher and classroom teacher guided 28 students working in book clubs to compose digital stories in response to historical fiction. The research questions were: (a) What interpretations did…

Background: Many elementary schools have policies requiring a minimum amount of physical education (PE). However, few schools comply with local/state PE policy and little is known about how to improve adherence. We evaluated changes in PE among fifth-grade classes, following participatory action research efforts to improve PE quantity and policy…

In this participatory action research study, we answered the question, How can we improve attitudes toward science education of the African American girls at an elementary school? Girls in grades 3-6 completed the Modified Attitudes toward Science Inventory. A purposeful sample of 30 girls participated in several focus-group interviews throughout…

This article reports the findings of a school-based intervention project conducted in the Southern Province of Sri Lanka 15 to 18 months after the December 2004 Tsunami. The work responds to the need for culturally relevant programming to address long-term psychosocial recovery of children and adolescents affected by large scale disasters. Program…