'Changing Play' is an ongoing project initiated by education curators from the Serpentine, a prestigious London art gallery, working with the Portman children's centre nursery. Viewed by curators as a collaboration between artist, children's centre staff and parents, and the gallery, Changing Play combines art and action research, and expands the…

The article proposes and illustrates a methodological framework that aligns with the action-research models and utopian methodology in particular, although it represents a more substantial leap forward, especially regarding the distributed nature of decision making in the different processes of research/intervention, and its multiple and…

This article focuses on the double role of the academic action researcher working as facilitator and researcher in democratic professional development projects. The inquiry is based on three partnership projects: "research circles" in Sweden, "dialogue conferences" in Norway and "tailored professional development" in…

As higher education has shifted from an elite to an internationalised and massified system, we can no longer assume that students entering Western universities are familiar with the multiple literacy expectations of the university and professional worlds. Students are required to negotiate between different literacy practices, imbued with…

Based on two case studies of Third Sector Organizations (TSOs) working with schools and parents in Catalonia and London, this paper aims to discuss some of the implications of "participative" programmes aimed at involving those migrant families seen by schools as "hard to reach". First, we describe how an ambiguous notion of…

This paper reports on the first year of an innovative Postgraduate Certificate (PGCert) in Advanced Education Practice, designed to meet the specific staff and development needs of one school in the North West of England. The programme is underpinned by three strands of practice based learning: learning about practice (theory), learning in…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the concept, methods of implementation, results and experiences from the first stage of the three-year project on school staff health promotion carried out within the framework of the health-promoting school (HPS) network in Poland. Design/methodology/approach: The project was implemented in 2012 in…

This paper describes the process of school capacity building in Hong Kong's early childhood education at a time when there was a quest for quality education. A local preschool was selected for the study, which took part in a university-school support programme through which consultancy was hired from a university to provide school-based support.…

Over the past few decades, the pursuit of teachers-as-researchers has become an ideal for developing teacher autonomy to which many in the world of curriculum development and language teacher education try to promote (Benson, 2001). Nevertheless, research into how teachers learn to do research has been scarce, and there are pressing needs for…

In a rapidly changing world of knowledge exchange, innovation and technological advancements, entrepreneurship continues to fuel economic growth in both developed and developing countries. In the developed world, an increased influx of graduate entrepreneurs sustains economic growth whilst, in contrast, developing countries continue to suffer from…

Within the background where education is increasingly driven by the economies of scale and research funding, we propose an alternative online open and connected framework (OOC) for building global learning communities using mobile social media. We critique a three year action research case study involving building collaborative global learning…

The focus of the article is on Phase I of an American-Slovenian collaborative research project that was aimed at investigating effective classroom teaching-learning performances. The international project involved Dowling College and its first Professional Development School (PDS)--the Belmont Elementary PDS--and the University of Primorska at…

This paper examines the practice of participatory evaluation through an exploratory single case study of the Evaluation Team of Books & Beyond, a co-curricular service-learning program of the Global Village Living-Learning Center at Indiana University. The paper, which is authored by three undergraduate members of the evaluation team and their…

In this paper we focus on lessons learned from developing information systems (IS) higher education in an inter-organizational (IO) network focusing possibilities and challenges. Developing higher education is one area among others where organizing joint efforts in networks are possible. An IO R&D project is described and analyzed in this…

The Learning Partnership (TLP) initiated a Family and Community Engagement Strategy (FACES) initiative in three Ontario communities to foster active and responsive relationships among community partners and enhanced family engagement in transitions to school. A case study research design, grounded in participatory action research, was used to…