This submission contains the Proceedings of the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Mathematics Education Study Group (CMESG), held at the Universite de Sherbrooke in Sherbrooke, Quebec. The CMESG is a group of mathematicians and mathematics educators who meet annually to discuss mathematics education issues at all levels of learning. The aims of…

Background/Context: This study is based on prior research regarding the need for explicit social instruction for children with special needs, cooperative educational models, and the goals and relative successes of inclusive educational practices. The author refers to several studies on these subjects, including those by Kavale and Forness; Salend;…

This paper reviews methods for conducting and reporting teacher research. Through three cases, the paper explores common and diverse methods employed in classroom inquiry. The paper recounts the history of teacher research and discusses common methodological characteristics as well as context-specific features of teacher research. The first case…

A case study of an educational action research oriented project in Quebec--a continuing education project at the elementary level (EPEL)--is described to show the contributions of the case study method to human development, needs assessment, curriculum development, and innovative teaching. The case study method is suggested as a means to pinpoint…

The context of the emergence of action research is explored historically and comparatively. The primary focus is a description of the development of action research in the middle part of this century in the United States. Certain assumptions, intentions, and practices of educational action research as they emerged in the early stages of…

In this paper, action research is examined as a quintessential example of the relocation of the study of teaching from laboratory to classroom. Selected problematics in its practice, including the aims of inquiry, the nature of collaboration, and the anticipated audience for its outcomes are defined as inevitable challenges to be confronted.…

This paper presents a historical overview of the use of action research in education and describes the basic assumptions and expectations that continue to characterize collaborative research projects today. Action research was initiated in the 1930's by Kurt Lewin and adapted by educators in the 1940's. Interest in action research declined between…

Improving human-nature relationships is often a stated aim of outdoor education, yet this aim is not always made explicit in practice. This paper reflects on a pedagogical intervention which aims to find ways to explicitly develop students' connections with natural places through a tertiary outdoor and environmental education program. It describes…

Those who direct educational systems and institutions are losing public credibility. To reverse this trend educational planners must involve the public in educational decision-making. They can do this through the design and development of cooperative procedures for planning changes in education. (Author)

Neither the scientific nor the humanistic research paradigm is completely appropriate for the education field. Human service situations yield research results that are tentative descriptions or generalizations due to continuous change. An action research paradigm should reflect the ongoing need of the subjects to act without waiting for research…

EVALUATION OF HEADSTART HAS AS ITS GENERAL CRITERION OF EFFECTIVENESS THE RATIO BETWEEN COST AND BENEFIT. IF THE LATTER CAN BE DEMONSTRATED TO JUSTIFY THE FORMER, THE INTERVENTION PROJECT IS A GOOD INVESTMENT IN TERMS OF IMMEDIATE HELP FOR THE DISADVANTAGED PRESCHOOLER AND IN LONG RANGE BENEFITS FOR HIS FAMILY, COMMUNITY, AND SOCIETY. IN TERMS OF…

The authors define action or "on the job" research as a type of applied research undertaken by practitioners in order to solve practical problems and improve operations in the educational or institutional setting. Advantages and disadvantages of using action research are presented and procedures for conducting it outlined. Two tables list…

This 13th Yearbook is a handbook on classroom research, designed to guide industrial arts teachers in setting up small studies and analyzing the results. Major topics are: (1) Research and the Classroom Teacher, (2) The Research Process, (3) The Tools of Classroom Research, (4) Interpreting and Evaluating Research, (5) Selected Problem Areas with…

Discussed are the difficulties of implementing research findings in elementary schools; i.e. effecting a change at the level of interaction between teacher and pupil. An inherent difficulty is communicating research findings to the people in the local school systems who must act on them. The author states that even if this is remedied the…

The author plays the role of "devil's advocate," stating that present language teaching methods and techniques are not based on "linguistic theories." Transformation exercises, including conversations, transpositions, reductions, and expansions, were part of the language teachers' stock-in-trade fifty or a hundred years before a theory of…