Critical reflection writing in teacher education programmes is often undertaken without appropriate learning support despite the contribution it makes to informing meaningful changes in the early stages of their teaching careers. Students' attempts at writing critical reflections often lack discursive depth when connecting theory to practice.…

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of Lesson Study on reconstructing students' practical knowledge during initial training as prospecting teachers. This case study sets out the voice and opinions of a student taking part in a lesson study process. The aim was to further understand how the student's opinions around teaching…

The first part of the paper positions the action research movement in the context of other research and development concepts and describes its rationale and some basic quality criteria. Action research is regarded as an umbrella term defined by two generic characteristics: substantial practitioner control of both the practice situation…

This paper reports the results from a second-order action research process, accompanying a continuing professional development (CPD), the "Pedagogy and Subject Didactics Programme" (PFL). PFL is a 2-year-postgraduate university course that focuses primarily on subject didactics, action research methods and peer group learning. This study…

This article describes how research-based knowledge was used in practice in an action research project which examined student dropout. The research was conducted as 'research circles' and involved systematic and organised cooperation between researchers and practitioners, in this case college teachers. Based on interviews with the teachers, we…

This qualitative educational action research study aimed to gain knowledge about nursing students' learning from participating in a developmental project that included human-like manikins. 23 second-year Bachelor of Nursing students, one teacher, and one researcher participated in the study conducted at a Norwegian university. In collaboration,…

In this article I reflect on my experiences facilitating teachers as researchers and reflective practitioners and the importance of enhancing the dynamic and complementary relationship between theory, research, practice and reflection at every step of action research. Given the complexity of teachers' participation in action research, I drew on a…

The process of engaging in classroom research provides teacher candidates with opportunities to enter into the kind of deep, self-reflective work that we believe is an important capacity to build in teachers as they begin to engage in the construction and transformation of theory and knowledge within their own unique contexts. Our Action Research…

Working with ethnoracially diverse student groups is a reality in most K-12 classrooms. However, studies of the impacts of professional development for cultural responsiveness have tended to use a range of approaches such as action research, video reflections, and coaching, making it difficult to tease apart the effects of each one. The purpose of…

Our collaborative action research addresses a challenge in initial teacher education pertaining to the lack of theoretical coherence between teacher candidates' understandings of teaching and learning. The group comprised of three science teacher candidates (Authors 2 and 3) and a university faculty member (Author 1). Through a loosely adapted…

The purpose of this article is to provide an educational, theoretical, and methodological framework for using a special kind of action research, namely PALAR (participatory action learning and action research). This integrated methodology of lifelong action learning (AL) and participatory action research (PAR) has been developed over the past…

This paper describes how an action research process, centred around a professional development program for teaching critical thinking, enabled teachers in a specialised program for high-achieving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students (Solid Pathways) to develop their pedagogical practices to support student cognition. It argues that a…

This article explains what clinical research is and why it is necessary. The term "clinical" refers to an academic way of solving practical problems. Clinical research starts from a view of science that not only acknowledges the value of rational analysis and empirical research, but also acknowledges the need for human skills and…

Reflection in action research is a complex matter, as is action research itself. In recent years, complexity science has regularly been called upon in order to more thoroughly understand the complexity of action research. The present article investigates the benefits that complexity science may yield for reflection in action research. This article…

Teacher education is often criticised for not being relevant and for there being a lack of continuity between practice teaching and the university coursework. In the literature, action research is presented as a way to bridge the gap and connect the two. The present article explores, through a qualitative study, how research-based knowledge…