This study sought to inform, guide, and facilitate improvements in organizational practice and the management of change at Northbrook College in the United Kingdom. Using an action research approach, it sought to develop a management culture which celebrates creativity and innovation and which recognizes the value of individual change agents and…

In the context of a professional-development reform movement in Quebec, the Ministry of Education asked universities to participate in the training of school principals so that they could implement a culture of continuous learning in their own schools. The university researchers used a bottom-up approach to initiate collaborative inquiry with 37…

Action research is a way to examine purposes and practices in teaching. One way of conducting action research is to engage in participant observation, which may be seen as a systematic attempt to discover the knowledge that a group of people has learned and is using to organize the group's behavior. Participant observation has a great deal of…

Preservice teachers enter formal studies of teaching with an array of personal history-based beliefs and about teaching, classrooms, and students. This report traces the interactions between preservice teachers' personal history-based lay knowledge and their decisions about the potential value of coursework-based principles of content area reading…

For decades, educators have been concerned with the problem of truancy. Accordingly, this report focuses on an absentee improvement program at a rural, lower-middle class, predominantly white elementary school with 722 students that had a history of high truancy, as verified by teachers, the administration, the school counselor, staff, and…

Many Native Americans are reluctant to work with researchers who have not demonstrated a sense of obligation to their community. Research that has proven to be valuable has trained American Indians to collect data, incorporated participatory research methods, and supplemented quantitative data collection with qualitative research. The tension…

Four Native American communities in Manitoba (Canada) known as Hollow Water devised a healing system for sexual abuse--the Hollow Water First Nation Community Holistic Circle Healing (CHCH). While integrating elements of a number of federal and provincially funded services, the 13-step CHCH healing process is based on the seven Midewin teachings…

Story-telling, an oral tradition of the indigenous peoples of Australia, was recorded on video as a vehicle for conveying health promotion messages in several urban Aboriginal (Koori) communities in Sydney, Australia. The video was made by a group of Koori women Elders and two female Aboriginal academics. The Elders integrated their personal…

Thirty-four representatives of the Department for Education and Employment and other national organizations in the United Kingdom, researchers and educators in the fields of career education and guidance, and guidance practitioners from careers service companies and higher education institutions explored ways of developing a research culture in…

Analyzes one teacher's attempts to implement innovative assessment practices and a meaningful science curriculum that encouraged learning, in the face of traditional assessment expectations. Focuses on three dilemmas: maintaining student accountability in cooperative learning situations, evaluating lower-ability students on fixed standards while…

Three educational programs for personal and social change--community development with Aboriginal people, cultural awareness and antiracism in Alice Springs, and preparation of adult educators at the University of South Australia--illustrate the risks and limits of intervention, the importance of clarifying teacher and learner interests,…

Teachers can contribute to educational improvement by conducting classroom research concerning teaching and learning processes. Action research as staff development advances professional inquiry, improves education, and promotes teacher development. The article lists seven conditions necessary for the school environment for action research to…

Considers experiences of over 200 women, in eight countries, involved in nonformal education, and results of selected nonformal education programs offered by governments, nongovernmental organizations, and educational institutions across the Caribbean and South Pacific. Uses a participatory approach in order to involve the women in analysis of the…

Academic fieldworkers in language-endangered communities must be able to undertake all aspects of linguistic work, elicit linguistic information from speakers, document naturally occurring speech data, present research results in a comprehensible manner to the community and to academia, and develop cooperative programs based on mutual trust.…

To successfully maintain endangered Native American languages, Native communities must collectively recognize their language's vulnerability and commit to its continuity. Linguists need more experience with fieldwork and pragmatics, knowledge of various language transmission practices in cultures other than their own, an understanding of cultural…