action research study in education

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How Teachers Can Learn Through Action Research

A look at one school’s action research project provides a blueprint for using this model of collaborative teacher learning.

When teachers redesign learning experiences to make school more relevant to students’ lives, they can’t ignore assessment. For many teachers, the most vexing question about real-world learning experiences such as project-based learning is: How will we know what students know and can do by the end of this project?

Teachers at the Siena School in Silver Spring, Maryland, decided to figure out the assessment question by investigating their classroom practices. As a result of their action research, they now have a much deeper understanding of authentic assessment and a renewed appreciation for the power of learning together.

Their research process offers a replicable model for other schools interested in designing their own immersive professional learning. The process began with a real-world challenge and an open-ended question, involved a deep dive into research, and ended with a public showcase of findings.

Start With an Authentic Need to Know

Siena School serves about 130 students in grades 4–12 who have mild to moderate language-based learning differences, including dyslexia. Most students are one to three grade levels behind in reading.

Teachers have introduced a variety of instructional strategies, including project-based learning, to better meet students’ learning needs and also help them develop skills like collaboration and creativity. Instead of taking tests and quizzes, students demonstrate what they know in a PBL unit by making products or generating solutions.

“We were already teaching this way,” explained Simon Kanter, Siena’s director of technology. “We needed a way to measure, was authentic assessment actually effective? Does it provide meaningful feedback? Can teachers grade it fairly?”

Focus the Research Question

Across grade levels and departments, teachers considered what they wanted to learn about authentic assessment, which the late Grant Wiggins described as engaging, multisensory, feedback-oriented, and grounded in real-world tasks. That’s a contrast to traditional tests and quizzes, which tend to focus on recall rather than application and have little in common with how experts go about their work in disciplines like math or history.

The teachers generated a big research question: Is using authentic assessment an effective and engaging way to provide meaningful feedback for teachers and students about growth and proficiency in a variety of learning objectives, including 21st-century skills?

Take Time to Plan

Next, teachers planned authentic assessments that would generate data for their study. For example, middle school science students created prototypes of genetically modified seeds and pitched their designs to a panel of potential investors. They had to not only understand the science of germination but also apply their knowledge and defend their thinking.

In other classes, teachers planned everything from mock trials to environmental stewardship projects to assess student learning and skill development. A shared rubric helped the teachers plan high-quality assessments.

Make Sense of Data

During the data-gathering phase, students were surveyed after each project about the value of authentic assessments versus more traditional tools like tests and quizzes. Teachers also reflected after each assessment.

“We collated the data, looked for trends, and presented them back to the faculty,” Kanter said.

Among the takeaways:

• Authentic assessment generates more meaningful feedback and more opportunities for students to apply it.
• Students consider authentic assessment more engaging, with increased opportunities to be creative, make choices, and collaborate.
• Teachers are thinking more critically about creating assessments that allow for differentiation and that are applicable to students’ everyday lives.

To make their learning public, Siena hosted a colloquium on authentic assessment for other schools in the region. The school also submitted its research as part of an accreditation process with the Middle States Association.

Strategies to Share

For other schools interested in conducting action research, Kanter highlighted three key strategies.

• Focus on areas of growth, not deficiency:  “This would have been less successful if we had said, ‘Our math scores are down. We need a new program to get scores up,’ Kanter said. “That puts the onus on teachers. Data collection could seem punitive. Instead, we focused on the way we already teach and thought about, how can we get more accurate feedback about how students are doing?”
• Foster a culture of inquiry:  Encourage teachers to ask questions, conduct individual research, and share what they learn with colleagues. “Sometimes, one person attends a summer workshop and then shares the highlights in a short presentation. That might just be a conversation, or it might be the start of a school-wide initiative,” Kanter explained. In fact, that’s exactly how the focus on authentic assessment began.
• Build structures for teacher collaboration:  Using staff meetings for shared planning and problem-solving fosters a collaborative culture. That was already in place when Siena embarked on its action research, along with informal brainstorming to support students.

For both students and staff, the deep dive into authentic assessment yielded “dramatic impact on the classroom,” Kanter added. “That’s the great part of this.”

In the past, he said, most teachers gave traditional final exams. To alleviate students’ test anxiety, teachers would support them with time for content review and strategies for study skills and test-taking.

“This year looks and feels different,” Kanter said. A week before the end of fall term, students were working hard on final products, but they weren’t cramming for exams. Teachers had time to give individual feedback to help students improve their work. “The whole climate feels way better.”

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Methodology

• What Is Action Research? | Definition & Examples

What Is Action Research? | Definition & Examples

Published on January 27, 2023 by Tegan George . Revised on January 12, 2024.

Table of contents

Types of action research, action research models, examples of action research, action research vs. traditional research, advantages and disadvantages of action research, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about action research.

There are 2 common types of action research: participatory action research and practical action research.

• Participatory action research emphasizes that participants should be members of the community being studied, empowering those directly affected by outcomes of said research. In this method, participants are effectively co-researchers, with their lived experiences considered formative to the research process.
• Practical action research focuses more on how research is conducted and is designed to address and solve specific issues.

Both types of action research are more focused on increasing the capacity and ability of future practitioners than contributing to a theoretical body of knowledge.

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Action research is often reflected in 3 action research models: operational (sometimes called technical), collaboration, and critical reflection.

• Operational (or technical) action research is usually visualized like a spiral following a series of steps, such as “planning → acting → observing → reflecting.”
• Collaboration action research is more community-based, focused on building a network of similar individuals (e.g., college professors in a given geographic area) and compiling learnings from iterated feedback cycles.
• Critical reflection action research serves to contextualize systemic processes that are already ongoing (e.g., working retroactively to analyze existing school systems by questioning why certain practices were put into place and developed the way they did).

Action research is often used in fields like education because of its iterative and flexible style.

After the information was collected, the students were asked where they thought ramps or other accessibility measures would be best utilized, and the suggestions were sent to school administrators. Example: Practical action research Science teachers at your city’s high school have been witnessing a year-over-year decline in standardized test scores in chemistry. In seeking the source of this issue, they studied how concepts are taught in depth, focusing on the methods, tools, and approaches used by each teacher.

Action research differs sharply from other types of research in that it seeks to produce actionable processes over the course of the research rather than contributing to existing knowledge or drawing conclusions from datasets. In this way, action research is formative , not summative , and is conducted in an ongoing, iterative way.

As such, action research is different in purpose, context, and significance and is a good fit for those seeking to implement systemic change.

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Action research comes with advantages and disadvantages.

• Action research is highly adaptable , allowing researchers to mold their analysis to their individual needs and implement practical individual-level changes.
• Action research provides an immediate and actionable path forward for solving entrenched issues, rather than suggesting complicated, longer-term solutions rooted in complex data.
• Done correctly, action research can be very empowering , informing social change and allowing participants to effect that change in ways meaningful to their communities.

Disadvantages

• Due to their flexibility, action research studies are plagued by very limited generalizability  and are very difficult to replicate . They are often not considered theoretically rigorous due to the power the researcher holds in drawing conclusions.
• Action research can be complicated to structure in an ethical manner . Participants may feel pressured to participate or to participate in a certain way.
• Action research is at high risk for research biases such as selection bias , social desirability bias , or other types of cognitive biases .

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Normal distribution
• Degrees of freedom
• Null hypothesis
• Discourse analysis
• Control groups
• Mixed methods research
• Non-probability sampling
• Quantitative research
• Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Research bias

• Rosenthal effect
• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Selection bias
• Negativity bias
• Status quo bias

Action research is conducted in order to solve a particular issue immediately, while case studies are often conducted over a longer period of time and focus more on observing and analyzing a particular ongoing phenomenon.

Action research is focused on solving a problem or informing individual and community-based knowledge in a way that impacts teaching, learning, and other related processes. It is less focused on contributing theoretical input, instead producing actionable input.

Action research is particularly popular with educators as a form of systematic inquiry because it prioritizes reflection and bridges the gap between theory and practice. Educators are able to simultaneously investigate an issue as they solve it, and the method is very iterative and flexible.

A cycle of inquiry is another name for action research . It is usually visualized in a spiral shape following a series of steps, such as “planning → acting → observing → reflecting.”

Sources in this article

We strongly encourage students to use sources in their work. You can cite our article (APA Style) or take a deep dive into the articles below.

George, T. (2024, January 12). What Is Action Research? | Definition & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved July 10, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/action-research/

Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2017). Research methods in education (8th edition). Routledge.

Naughton, G. M. (2001).  Action research (1st edition). Routledge.

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Neag School of Education

Educational Research Basics by Del Siegle

Action research.

An Introduction to Action Research Jeanne H. Purcell, Ph.D.

 Your Options

• Review Related Literature
• Examine the Impact of an Experimental Treatment
• Monitor Change
• Identify Present Practices
• Describe Beliefs and Attitudes

Action Research Is…

• Action research is a three-step spiral process of (1) planning which involves fact-finding, (2) taking action, and (3) fact-finding about the results of the action. (Lewin, 1947)
• Action research is a process by which practitioners attempt to study their problems scientifically in order to guide, correct, and evaluate their decisions and action. (Corey, 1953).
• Action research in education is study conducted by colleagues in a school setting of the results of their activities to improve instruction. (Glickman, 1990)
• Action research is a fancy way of saying Let’s study what s happening at our school and decide how to make it a better place. (Calhoun,1994)

Conditions That Support Action Research

• A faculty where a majority of teachers wish to improve some aspect (s) of education in their school.
• Common agreement about how collective decisions will be made and implemented.
• A team that is willing to lead the initiative.
• Study groups that meet regularly.
• A basic knowledge of the action research cycle and the rationale for its use.
• Someone to provide technical assistance and/or support.

The Action Research Cycle

• Identify an area of interest/problem.
• Identify data to be collected, the format for the results, and a timeline.
• Collect and organize the data.
• Analyze and interpret the data.
• Decide upon the action to be taken.
• Evaluate the success of the action.

Collecting Data: Sources

Existing Sources

• Attendance at PTO meetings
• + and – parent communications
• Office referrals
• Special program enrollment
• Standardized scores

Inventive Sources

• Interviews with parents
• Library use, by grade, class
• Minutes of meetings
• Nature and amount of in-school assistance related to the innovation
• Number of books read
• Observation journals
• Record of peer observations
• Student journals
• Teacher journals
• Videotapes of students: whole class instruction
• Videotapes of students: Differentiated instruction
• Writing samples

Collecting Data: From Whom?

• From everyone when we are concerned about each student’s performance.
• From a sample when we need to increase our understanding while limiting our expenditure of time and energy; more in-depth interviews or observations may follow.

Collecting Data: How Often?

• At regular intervals
• At critical points

Collecting Data: Guidelines

• Use both existing and inventive data sources.
• Use multiple data sources.
• Collect data regularly.
• Seek help, if necessary.

Organizing Data

• Keep it simple.
• Disaggregate numbers from interviews and other qualitative types of data.
• Plan plenty of time to look over and organize the data.
• Seek technical assistance if needed.

Analyzing Data

• What important points do they data reveal?
• What patterns/trends do you note? What might be some possible explanations?
• Do the data vary by sources? Why might the variations exist?
• Are there any results that are different from what you expected? What might be some hypotheses to explain the difference (s)?
• What actions appear to be indicated?

Taking Action

• Do the data warrant action?
• What might se some short-term actions?
• What might be some long-term actions?
• How will we know if our actions have been effective?
• What benchmarks might we expect to see along the way to effectiveness ?

Action Plans

• Target date
• Responsibility
• Evidence of Effectiveness

Action Research Handout

Bibliography

Brubacher, J. W., Case, C. W., & Reagan, T. G. (1994). Becoming a reflective educator . Thousand Oaks: CA: Corwin Press.

Burnaford, G., Fischer, J., & Hobson, D. (1996). Teachers doing research . Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Calhoun, Emily (1994). How to use action research in the self-renewing school . Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Corey, S. M. (1953). Action research to improve school practices . New York: Teachers College Press.

Glickman, C. D. (1990). Supervision of instruction: A developmental approach . Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Hubbard, R. S. & Power, B. M. (1993). The art of classroom inquiry . Portsmouth, NH: Heineman.

Lewin, K. (1947). Group decisions and social change. In Readings in social psychology . (Eds. T M. Newcomb and E. L. Hartley). New York: Henry Holt.

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Article contents

Participatory action research in education.

• Anne Galletta Anne Galletta Cleveland State University
•  and  María Elena Torre María Elena Torre Graduate Center, City University of New York
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.557
• Published online: 28 August 2019

Participatory action research (PAR) is an epistemological framework rooted in critiques of knowledge production made by feminist and critical race theory that challenge exclusive academic notions of what counts as knowledge. PAR legitimizes and prioritizes the expertise and perspectives that come from lived experience and situated knowledge, particularly among those that have been historically marginalized. In education research, a PAR approach typically centers the wisdom and experience of students (or school-age youth) and educators, positioning them as architects of research rather than objects of study. This form of participatory inquiry and collective action serves as a countercurrent in schools, where democratic inquiry and meaning making contradicts the top-down knowledge transmission practices bounded by prescribed curriculum and high-stakes standardized assessments. Like all scholars, those engaged in PAR contend with questions regarding standards of scientific practice and what counts as evidence even as they co-generate knowledge and solidarity with communities in which they may be members or allies that are outside the academy.

PAR projects frequently emerge from a critique of dehumanizing structural arrangements and alienating, often pathologizing, cultural discourses. These critiques spark a desire for research that questions these arrangements and discourses, documenting and engaging critical interpretive perspectives, all with the hope of producing findings that will create cracks and fissures in the status quo and provoke transformational change. PAR builds inquiry in the spaces between what is and what could be, with the assumption that dissonance and/or clashes of meaning with ruptures are generative in the possibility for reframing social problems and reconfiguring human relations. When discordance within the research collective, or between the collective and the outside world, is engaged rather than denied or smoothed over, new and different ways of seeing and being emerge. More than simply a method, critical PAR reflects a philosophical understanding of knowledge as socially produced through history and power, an epistemology that recognizes the liberatory impulse of critique and its potential for transformation. PAR projects privilege standpoints that have been traditionally excluded and excavate operations of power within the research in order to inform analytical lenses necessary to understanding dynamics within the issues and experiences being studied.

Examining the potential of PAR in education requires particular attention to the context of what children and youth encounter on a daily basis. Schools have been and continue to be spaces of struggle and contestation for students, in terms of learning and development, mental health and well-being, and physical safety. Federal policies have hollowed out protections for the most marginalized students, particularly youth of color; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth; and immigrant and undocumented youth. The rampant privatization of public education, narrowing of public governance, and the deceptive branding of corporate reform as “equity” is sobering. PAR in education troubles this very context, offering a research praxis of countervailing power, agitation, and generative ways of knowing, and being in relation. This encyclopedic entry details the ways in which participatory spaces bring people together, through inquiry, across a continuum of privilege and vulnerability to make meaning of the conditions under which we are living, with each other, for our collective liberation.

• participatory action research
• education reform
• participatory contact zones
• generative dissonance

Introduction

Participatory action research (PAR) is an epistemological framework that reconfigures ways of knowing and being in relation—it marks an ontological shift from conventional research practices within the academy. Rooted in critiques of knowledge production made by feminist and critical race theory, PAR challenges exclusive academic notions of expertise, legitimizing, and prioritizing the expertise and perspectives that come from lived experience and situated knowledge, particularly those that have been historically marginalized (Collins, 1998 ; Harding, 1991 ). In education research, a PAR approach typically centers the wisdom and experience of students (or school-age youth) and educators, positioning them as architects of research rather than objects of study (Torre & Fine, 2006 ). Youth and educators are invited as colleagues to design research programs, determine research questions, gather and make sense of relevant literatures/existing knowledge, decide useful methods, collect and analyze data, and create meaningful research products. PAR may draw from a qualitative research approach or it may include quantitative research within a mixed methods approach.

While PAR does not need the participation of the academy, it is often constructed as a collaboration between university-based researchers and youth and sometimes adults outside of the university who are concerned about injustice in a number of public spheres. Together, these research collectives of differently positioned members across institutional and social hierarchies of power—of youth, academics, and, sometimes, elders, educators, artists, lawyers, and policymakers, for example—create what María (Torre, 2009 ) has called “participatory contact zones.” Each member/co-researcher brings her/his/their own reservoir of experiential knowledge and differing angles of vision to the table, into a participatory inquiry space committed to using and infusing these differences throughout the research process. A deeply relational praxis, PAR understands the diverse range of standpoints, and the potential dissonance and/or clashes that come with them, as an important and generative contribution to the research. When discordance within the research collective, or between the collective and the outside world, is engaged rather than denied or smoothed over, new and different ways of seeing and being emerge. For these reasons, PAR engages power and difference as part of an ethical and methodological stance within research. 1

To lay the groundwork for a discussion of the complexities of carrying out PAR projects in and around educational spaces, we begin by establishing some of the contemporary tensions within public education. We then introduce a project with the hope of illustrating some core theoretical, methodological, and ethical commitments of a critical PAR praxis, paying particular attention to the relational and structural dimensions of PAR as well as generative possibilities opened by PAR’s embrace of discontinuities and dissonance. At the heart of what we hope readers will take away from this article is an understanding of participation in PAR as an inherently ethical commitment to redistribute power and legitimacy. This commitment is complexly woven throughout all steps of the research process. In education, like many institutions, decentering privilege and questioning power threatens existing structural arrangements and is often met with hostility by those historically in control. While these challenges tear at the institutional fabric of what has been , the conflicts generated by participation have the potential to create openings and “break with what is supposedly fixed and finished, objectively and independently real” (Greene, 1995 , p. 19) and thus reframe research questions, introduce alternative interpretations, and reposition relations of power toward what could be .

In the next section, we outline the theoretical genealogy of PAR and consider philosophical underpinnings of critical participatory methodologies.

Theoretical Genealogy of PAR

The origins of critical PAR developed in the disciplinary margins of social psychology, education, and sociology. Many of its roots can be traced to community settings and contexts where academics, organizers, and residents gathered to address community problems and political oppression (Fals-Borda, 1977 ; Lewin, 1948 ; Rahman, 1985 ; Wormser & Selltiz, 1951 ). Social psychologist Kurt Lewin, Claire Selltiz, and Margot Wormser stretched the methodologies of their discipline in the 1940s and early 1950s, adapting and developing a practice of action research for problem-solving on issues of racial and ethnic discrimination in the aftermath of World War II (Cherry & Borshuk, 1998 ; Torre & Fine, 2011 ). Lewin ( 1948 ) argued for an action research methodology maintaining a “constant intense tension,” where one “keep[s] both theory and reality fully within his field of vision” (p. 10). Fals-Borda and Rhaman ( 1991 ) describe the use of PAR in Bangladesh, Columbia, India, Nicaragua, Peru, Sri Lanka, the United States, and Zimbabwe where a number of academics in the late 1970s and early 1980s left positions within the university to engage in participatory community research. Some later returned to the academy, committed to the bumpy task of inserting PAR methodologies within rigid disciplinary views of science. This involved altering conventional conceptions of science, challenging the academy’s exclusive hold on “expertise,” and expanding notions of who can legitimately produce knowledge to those outside universities. This shift in power toward collective community efforts investigating human problems signified a recognition of the deep reservoirs of cultural knowledge and local expertise within communities confronting these problems. Further, the emphasis on the urgency of community inquiry in turn deemed action to be an integral part of knowledge production. The commitment to action insisted on a praxis research aimed at disrupting relations of oppression. Embracing Marx’s call to move from interpretation to transformation (Engels, 1886/1946 ), an epistemology emerged around the globe that braided knowledge production, struggles for justice, and participation of the people.

More Than a “Method”

Central to a critical praxis of PAR is a framework that reconfigures relational, structural, and cultural arrangements of power in order to collectively alter ways of thinking about conditions of lived experience. Embodying the spirit of Gramsci (Hoare & Smith, 1971/2000 ), it involves a research process in which social givens are upended, “common sense” is critiqued (p. 637), and the “spontaneous’ consent” by which we participate in everyday structures of oppression is surfaced and troubled (p. 145). More than simply a method, critical PAR reflects a philosophical understanding of knowledge as socially produced through history and power, an epistemology that recognizes the liberatory impulse of critique and its potential for transformation. Projects privilege standpoints that have been traditionally excluded and excavates operations of power within the research in order to inform analytical lenses necessary to understanding dynamics within the issues and experiences being studied. As Morrow and Torres ( 1995 ) note, the experience of privilege and exclusion, sometimes veiled, “is never fully secured, remains precarious, and must be continually negotiated” (p. 278), providing potential for counterhegemony and resistance. In this sense, a PAR approach is both a “rigorous search for knowledge” and what Fals-Borda called a “ vivencia ,” a “progressive evolution toward an overall, structural transformation of society and culture, a process that requires ever renewed commitment, an ethical stand, self-critique and persistence at all levels” (Rahman & Fals-Borda, 1991 , p. 29).

Critical collective participatory methodologies create ways to explore inconsistencies between the external reality of those marginalized by poverty and the consciousness through which the reality is understood. Paulo Freire’s work in Brazil in the 1950s before his incarceration powerfully illustrates the link between the struggle for emancipatory knowledge and the constraints of social reproductive forces in education. He argued for a pedagogical praxis that was “forged with , not for , the oppressed (whether individuals or peoples) in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity” (Freire, 1970/2016 , p. 48). For Freire, key to the struggle for liberation was a movement toward awareness. Within PAR, researchers committed to justice “must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which they can transform” (p. 49). Freire critiqued education as typically reliant on cultural transmission of knowledge that is widely privileged and credentialized, which he referred to as the “banking theory and practice” which “fail[s] to acknowledge men and women as historical beings” (p. 84).

The work of Lewin, Wormser and Selltiz, Fals-Borda, Rahman, Freire, and others around the globe has continued to inform generations of PAR driven by emancipatory struggle (Zeller-Berkman, 2014 ). Challenging the idea that expertise exists solely within the academy or professions, community leaders of color in the urban United States, alongside interracial solidarity collectives and indigenous peoples from rural and urban communities, have brought their local knowledge and practices to the research table, along with a multiplicity of skills and understandings to new knowledge and alternatives to oppressive structural arrangements (Ayala et al., 2018 ; Cahill et al., 2017 ; Galletta, 2019 ; Smith, 2012 ; Torre et al., 2017 ).

We turn now to a discussion of PAR specifically within the realm of education with the hope of marking important ideas, tensions, and ethical considerations. Our discussion should not be understood as exhaustive since the body of participatory research in education is rich with variation. We should note that the context from which we write is primarily, though not exclusively, within the United States.

Historicizing the Context of Education

It feels impossible to begin a discussion of PAR in education without reflecting first on the ideological, epistemological, geopolitical, and racialized geographies within contemporary philosophical and political trends in PK–12 public education. What does it mean to engage students, teachers, and school communities in a transformative process of democratic inquiry and meaning-making when such communities have been placed in the straightjackets of high-stakes testing and neoliberal restructuring? A second important reflection must attend to the field of educational research itself and the ways the academy has historically privileged and valued particular ways of knowing over others. What then does it mean to engage in open-ended mixed method research in which untraditionally trained researchers determine questions, design methods, and analyze and interpret data? In the following section, we open each of these areas and encourage readers to think about the challenges and tensions these realities produce for a sincere engagement with PAR in education.

Philosophical and Political Trends in Public Education

Deeply constrained by the parameters of individual economic mobility and the neoliberal press for dominance within a global competitive market, the current context of education philosophically and politically is engaged in the transmission of knowledge through standardized curriculum and high-stakes testing. Furthermore, the obligation to facilitate the learning and well-being of children and youth stems from a narrow commitment to investment conditioned on the rate of return for the degree of resources invested. In the late 1980s and 1990s, as school districts were released from desegregation rulings, the move toward resegregation took hold, with increased isolation of poor and working-class students of color and immigrant students. In the mid-1990s and early 2000s, and again in 2015 , federal policy reconceptualized equity. The movement toward atomized standards and measures of achievement and quality in education through state testing, most evident in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, shifted the equation from input to output equity (Rebell & Wolff, 2008 ) absent scrutiny on gaps in opportunity, capacity, and access to resources. The current moment in education could be described as being under the tyranny of “new managerialism” characterized by a drive for “evidence-based practice” (Davies, 2003 ) with substantial imposition of philanthropic directives and business interests tied to funding (Ball & Junemann, 2012 ; Giridharadas, 2018 ).

Given these political and policy trends, the landscape of public education is saturated in a discourse and materiality reflecting an audit culture of high-stakes standardized testing (Koretz, 2017 ) and corporate education reform (Au & Ferrare, 2015 ; Fabricant & Fine, 2012 ; Lipman, 2004 ). Educational reform in the United States is argued as opportunity through race- and class-neutral individualized school choices that has as its consequence the furthering of the racialization and economic isolation of children and youth in schools “branded” by particular curriculum and outreach to families (Cucchiara, 2013 ; Kimelberg, 2014 ; Lareau, 2014 ; Pattillo, Delale-O’Connor, & Butts, 2014 ; Posey-Maddox, 2014 ). Within education and the connective tissue of the health, legal protection, and criminal justice systems, there is ongoing dispossession of public assets and the accumulation of those assets by private entities (Fine & Ruglis, 2009 ; Harvey, 2004 ; Lipman, 2016 ).

As a result, in terms of learning and development, mental health and well-being, and physical safety, schools have been and continue to be spaces of struggle and contestation for students. This has been evidenced most recently by federal policies that have hollowed out protections for the most marginalized students, particularly youth of color; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth; and immigrant and undocumented youth. In 2018 , the U.S. Department of Education and Department of Justice withdrew support for legal guidance discouraging schools from suspending and expelling students (Lhamon & Gupta, 2014 ). The Department of Justice and Department of Education also withdrew the 2016 legal guidance that schools treat students consistent with their gender identity (Lhamon & Gupta, 2016 ). And, most recently in 2018 , a White House memo expressed the intention to deny the existence of transgender people. This withdrawal of federal policy support and recognition has double impact for LGBTQ students, who report disproportionately high levels of in-school and out-of-school suspensions (Kosciw, Greytak, Zongrone, Clark, & Truong, 2017 , p. 48). Piled on to these shifts away from protecting youth in schools are the recent attacks on young people migrating to the United States and immigrant youth with long-term residency.

These daily lived conditions shape the contours within which PAR unfolds and challenges, raising critical considerations for a research praxis that ignites and supports the full participation and direction from youth who are structurally dispossessed and speaking out within spaces of intersecting lines of resistance.

Privileging What Has Historically “Counted” as Knowledge and the Policing of Such Matters

In addition to conditions on the ground inside PK–12 education, the horizon for educational research has lost considerable capacity for imagining many ways of inquiring into, interpreting, and altering the conditions of human experience in public education. As feminist and critical theorist Patti Lather ( 2004 ) observes about the role of the National Research Council and its 2002 report, Scientific Research in Education : “In spite of its oft-repeated intentions of balance across multiple methods, objectivity is enshrined and prediction, explanation, and verification override description, interpretation, and discovery” (p. 762). With the legislation of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the articulation of criteria for quality research includes four tiers of research standards that define the degree to which educational research is rigorous and replicable. A Foucauldian act of surveillance and control, these tiers of research frame the standardization process, with each tier involving some form of experimental or correlational design, statistical analyses, or measures of significance. The justification for these standards is the assumption that a “high-quality research finding . . . is likely to improve student outcomes or other relevant outcomes” (Every Student Succeeds Act, 8101[21]).

Given this context, critical PAR is an inherently transgressive approach in its attention to power, its privileging of the lived experiences of the most marginalized, its use of problem posing and grounded participatory methodologies, and its commitments to produce knowledge useful for political activism and community mobilization against structures of exclusion and alienation (Cahill, Rios-Moore, & Threatts, 2008 ; Caraballo, Lozenski, Lyiscott, & Morrell, 2017 ; Drame & Irby, 2016 ; Guishard, 2009 ; jones, Stewart, Galletta, & Ayala, 2015 ; Otero & Cammerota, 2011 ; Torre et al., 2008 ; Tuck et al., 2008 ; Wright, 2015 ).

PAR in Education: Predictable Tensions

Some might argue that there is an elephant in the room when one is engaged with PAR projects that take place in schools. Not all participatory research in education is located within schools, but, when it is, predictable tensions often arise. While there are ongoing struggles to reimagine education, formal educational spaces can be alienating hierarchical places where relationships between youth and adults are rigid and not rooted in equality (Irizarry & Brown, 2014 ). Students are generally positioned as receivers of knowledge who are expected to follow directions; they are rarely included in decision-making about policies and cultural practices that shape their experiences, and they often face disciplinary outcomes if they do not do as they are told. In contrast, PAR spaces are built around methodologies that encourage open-ended inquiry, assume that knowledge is co-constructed, challenge conventional power relationships, and aim to disrupt and transform oppressive conditions.

As a result of these tensions, critical PAR projects—projects that consciously incorporate feminist, critical race, decolonial, and neo-Marxist frameworks—make strategic decisions about when and how to study issues in education from within schools and when to instead operate from outside, in community organizations, recreation centers, libraries, and the streets. However, as we discuss in more depth later, regardless of research settings issues of power exist and must be negotiated. When participatory methodologies are uncritically employed, they, like any methodology, can reproduce “the very forms of oppression that participatory approaches seek to disrupt” (Drame & Irby, 2016 , p. 3). All research is vulnerable to gendered and racialized social relations (among others) that appear so natural and inevitable that their toxicity is left undetected (Hall, 1993 ). Critical PAR addresses this by engaging in ongoing questions of privilege and vulnerability throughout the research process, reflecting the theory and history of the origins of PAR.

Participatory Methodologies in the Life of a PAR Project

We work as faculty in public universities, active in formal and informal educational settings, in both classrooms and communities, with a commitment to envisioning the academy as an inclusive public space for inquiry and social action. Anne collaborates with youth, educators, and community leaders in efforts to inquire about and take action toward more equitable relations and structural arrangements in education. María spends much of her time running the Public Science Project, which brings together intergenerational and interracial collectives of academics, organizers, advocates, artists, lawyers, and policymakers to engage participatory research in the interest of transforming unjust conditions. In the next section, we draw from moments within the life of a PAR project in Cleveland, Ohio, called Lives in Transition, to illustrate a set of theoretical, methodological, and ethical characteristics and considerations when engaging PAR in education.

Lives in Transition: Constructing Knowledge and Formulating Critique on the Meaning of School Closure

As was the case in Chicago, Denver, New York City, Philadelphia, and many other urban school districts across the United States, the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) responded to federal accountability policy and state and local school reform initiatives by closing schools in some of the poorest neighborhoods on the city’s east side, where many African American families live. The consequences of these decisions impacted the lives of youth, families, and communities for whom these schools were a part. A collective of approximately 10 high school youth, several teachers, and graduate students and faculty from Cleveland State University came together to document the historical moment and understand the meaning of these school closures for youth and interrogate the discourse of “transformation” by the district. The research collective met regularly from 2010 through 2011 . The origins of this project reflect a common characteristic of PAR beginnings, as noted in our first core dimension of PAR.

Organic and Collective Beginnings

The origins of PAR projects are often organic and collective in nature, responses to realities of groups encountering unfair or unjust historical moments. In the case of the project discussed here, the announcement that the district was going to close schools that had not met state “standards of achievement,” among other measures, interrupted the life of students in Edison High School, a school where Anne and visual artist and PAR researcher vanessa jones were working on a storytelling project. 2 The focus of their project with students in the school at that time was the nature of transitions in the lives of young people. In the midst of narrating significant turning points of their lives through spoken word, art, and music, the participating students encountered a new life transition—as the closure of their high school was impossible to ignore.

Anne, vanessa, and their youth co-researchers faced a critical situation. The storytelling project had created a space where close relationships developed amid both a nurturing and hostile school climate. On the one hand, there were classrooms where teachers understood the brilliance and struggles of their students; on the other, students had to enter the school each day through “weapon detectors” and were subjected to the use of “lockdowns” to empty the hallways. Students facing the closing of their school were filled with uncertainty, anger, and apprehension—affect and reactions that felt in stark contrast to the reform narratives being used by the local district and the federal education policy to justify the closings through the argument that school closure was a “necessary intervention” to save students from “failing” schools. The sharp difference between the “reform” discourse and student experiences signaled the need for inquiry. Ethically, it pointed to a glaring absence. Where was the expertise—the voices, experiences, and ideas—of youth and teachers attending and working inside the schools targeted for closure?

In the year that followed, students displaced by school closures and those in receiving schools were forced to navigate new spaces and relationships. Anne and vanessa decided to collaborate with teachers and graduate students to offer a space for critical PAR in an after-school program in two of the high schools receiving students displaced by school closure. In keeping with the theme of transitions, the project was named Lives in Transition, or LiT.

Recognizing Expertise Beyond the Academy

PAR is guided by experiential knowledge and recognizes the legitimacy of those outside the academy to problem-pose and conduct research about issues impacting their lives. The expertise youth brought to the LiT project was essential to documenting the experience of school closure as they were living it in the present. They wrote poetry, drew maps of their neighborhoods and bus routes, and filmed the processes of the research collective’s engagement in forms of problem-posing. Anne and vanessa brought data sources providing a broader context to the meetings, such as district reports on the criteria used for closures, newspaper clippings on how the district justified its closure decisions, documents on district and state educational policies on school transportation and the use of closed school facilities, as well as historical accounts related to neighborhoods affected by the closures. They invited guests to meetings, who brought specific information needed to complete the inquiry. Critical PAR often draws on the expertise of intergenerational collectives, wherein differentially positioned members carry varied (though sometimes overlapping) funds of knowledge. The validity of the research is strengthened by this breadth of expertise—in this case, the youth knowledge about their communities and schools as well as the adult knowledge of the law, history, or data from particular fields.

In this manner, being on the “inside” of an issue or experience brings an angle of vision likely to afford understanding of the nuances and complexity of the problem being studied. Those positioned outside the community or the study focus may raise questions that reveal gaps in understanding or investment in outsider perspectives. For example, vanessa proposed involving students in the PAR project to the administration at one of the schools receiving students displaced by school closure. The school administration declined extending an invitation to their students to participate, noting that students’ participation in PAR on the experience of school closure might “bring the pain up again” (jones, Stewart, Galletta, & Ayala, 2015 ). While the production of knowledge of those closest to the problem studied offers potential for constructing new knowledge, as indicated here it also may pose a threat to maintaining ways of knowing and being in relation that support the status quo. Alternative angles of vision offered by the youth experiencing school closure may have produced knowledge potentially disruptive to the established logic of the district’s educational policies. In this example, the transgressive nature of PAR is evident, as is the centering of the experience of youth within the construction of knowledge and the repositioning of relationships.

Discontinuities as Potential Reframing Analysis and Repositioning Relationships

PAR is attentive to discontinuities in ways of seeing a problem and the power relations at work within conflicting frames for analyzing a problem. While dissonance and disagreement can be productive to research, they are not always easy. We experienced a moment of conflict for the LiT project where youth researchers were speaking about the varying identities students possessed, which differed depending on whether they were displaced by school closure and sent to a receiving school or were in the receiving school, impacted by the presence of new students transferring in from closed schools. The conversation took place at a research meeting at Granite Hill, a high school that received students from Edison High after Edison was closed. Students and teachers were each arguing from standpoints that held deep knowledge of the experience of dislocation but with different perspectives. The conflict surfaced the reality that students from closed high schools held strong ties to their old schools, and this was reflected in their reluctance to associate themselves with the new school to which they had been transferred. It also underscored for the research collective the importance of place, socially, historically, and geographically for students and school communities, as the school closings involved relocating students across geographic and community boundaries to new schools that often had long-standing rivalries and other competitive relationships with their old (now closed) schools.

Three teachers participated in the LiT PAR collective the year after a number of schools were closed. The teachers, all African American, were recognized as strong student advocates with shared cultural connections with the youth researchers. At the same time each represented different vantage points and varying degrees of structural constraints (Kohfeldt, Chhun, Grace, & Langhout, 2011 ; Ozer, Ritterman, & Wanis, 2010 ). Students knew Ms. Drew and Ms. Turney to be teachers who responded quickly to student challenges, provided rides home when bus fare was unavailable, and supported students when families encountered health crises. The third teacher, Sergeant Goodman, directed the JROTC program. Anne and vanessa had met him through two students who joined JROTC when they arrived at Granite Hill High School, after being transferred from their closed school. He asked to join the project, and though Anne and vanessa shared a broader critique of the presence of JROTC inside poor and working-class urban and rural schools but absent from wealthier suburban schools, they recognized his relationships with the students and his desire to support the project. His presence added to diverse perspectives among the adults who were insiders to the school. vanessa was also an “insider” in many ways as her son attended Cleveland schools, and she shared common experiences of attending underresourced schools serving poor and working-class communities of color. As a member of the research collective she drew organically from these experiences as a student longing for greater “communication, expression, freedom, and forming social connections” in education (jones, 2012 , p. 193). Anne’s race and social class background positioned her at times as an “outsider,” even as her regular presence in classrooms and community meeting spaces offered meaningful relationships with students and teachers and provided exposure to intimate knowledge about what was happening inside the schools.

In this participatory contact zone of sameness and difference—within the research collective—LiT members inquired and engaged multiple positionalities, sparking lenses of analysis used in meaning-making, contestation, humor, and reflection throughout the research process. A student researcher who was displaced spoke about his feelings of loss and defended those who resisted, even resented, assimilation into their receiving school, Granite Hill High. Other youth researchers saw this as deeply problematic and even used the moment to lift the benefits of being a student at Granite Hill, boasting of its athletic prowess and superiority. In what first appeared to be playfulness within the group, there was evident a rub produced by the strong shared frustration over the policy of school closure that, while impacting each of them differently, was enforced on all of them without any control or authorizing on their part.

A youth researcher who had been at Granite Hill for several years responded critically toward displaced students who stayed loyal to their closed school. Frustration hung from the words shared, particularly by one of the teachers. In a discussion punctuated with references to teachers who did and did not help students learn, and resources the school did and did not possess, the statements became personal. Ms. Drew spoke in a raised, emotional tone in her response to a youth researcher’s observation that displaced students retained their former school’s affiliation:

What he’s saying is that, most people who consider themselves from Edison High, they were invested in their school. But if you . . . went to Edison, and you walked the hall all day then, and then your school closed, you have no right to complain. You didn’t go to class and that’s why the numbers went down , because you didn’t go to your class and that’s why Edison had to close. Because if you would have been in class then they would’ve had the numbers they needed.

This biting critique by a teacher, uncharacteristic of her reputation as a student advocate, revealed the abrasive and frequent presence of high-stakes measures as a reference point in the lives of teachers and students. These measures influenced school rankings and led to school closure, dressed up as school reform. Ms. Drew called on the assumptions of a policy context where “numbers” drove decisions that were decontextualized from the lives of youth, their families, and educators. As Ms. Drew continued she revealed her biography of struggling with displacement as a teacher. She noted her affection for her former school and its students. Along with students and other teachers, Ms. Drew had been transferred from Kensington High to Granite Hill just that year. The tension created by her passionate comments forced the research collective to acknowledge that the threat of school closure bleeds into the everyday life of all schools in the district including “receiving schools.”

Ms. Drew: I came from Kensington. I love Kensington . . . I’ve seen plenty of kids . . . that graduated . . . that’s my school. vanessa: So that was a part of the story— Sergeant Goodman: Their pain could be your pain. As easy as Edison High closed, Granite Hill could be next. Ms. Drew: That’s right. Sergeant Goodman: And truth be told Granite Hill is on that list.

We see in this strained moment the created space for problem-posing, in the Freirian sense, as LiT members actively engaged in working out together and naming their “reality” as students and teachers, reflecting on differing and similar experiences of youth and of teachers. In this way, the LiT members came closer to understanding themselves to be “in a situation,” as Freire might say, coming closer to “the very condition of existence” (Freire, 1970/2016 , p. 109). The clash of ideas and interpretations created deeply pedagogic moments relationally and conceptually. Through their own enactments, the very dynamics of what they were studying surfaced. At its best, PAR produces critically pedagogical spaces where tensions and dissonance spark learning for everyone in the collective , not just the youth or the adults, and new possibilities in knowing and being in relation can be imagined.

Situating Lived Experiences of Youth Within Broader Structural Conditions

Within PAR, critical inquiry and ethical praxis situates lived experiences of youth within broader structural conditions. What happens within the PAR collective often speaks to what is happening in the broader context, influencing what students and educators are experiencing within schools. Here LiT members were also engaged in a form of what Drame and Irby ( 2016 ) refer to as interpersonal reflexivity, which interrogates positionalities and the nature of relationships within and beyond us (see also Chiu, 2006 ; Nicholls, 2009 ). Collectively there is a role for reflexivity within critical PAR where as a group we might pause and examine what is happening within the PAR collective to understand how it may be influencing the conceptualization of a project, data collection, analysis of the data, and/or reporting back results. Interpersonal reflexivity involves deliberate attention to the contextual layers of analysis and relations of power operating within the research. As Cammarota and Fine ( 2008 ) write, knowledge gained from research “should be critical in nature, meaning that findings and insights derived from analyses should point to historic and contemporary moves of power and toward progressive changes improving social conditions within the situation studied” (p. 6).

In this manner, ethical considerations impacted analytical practice and reporting back strategies. It meant attending to a broader context within which LiT youth researchers, educators, and university faculty worked together. At the state level, legislation in 2012 had altered school funding policies to allow CMSD to share a portion of local funding with charter schools the district deemed high performing. State per-pupil funding followed students out of district schools and into charter schools as a result of provisions of No Child Left Behind, as one of several consequences for districts with underperforming schools. Also, federal funds flowed to states through legislation specifically supporting the establishment of charter schools. Schools faced closure, followed by the opening up of educational facilities once publicly owned to privatized entities through charter school start-ups and new theme-based district schools in partnership with industry and nonprofit organizations.

These broader structural conditions and their historical significance provided the interpretive material to document the “webs of power that connect institutional and individual lives to larger social formations” (Weis & Fine, 2004 , p. xxi). These considerations were evident in the creative product as LiT prepared to communicate findings to the public. In a performative sharing of pain associated with school closure and the power in reframing this policy as unjust, vanessa jones and Eric Schilling integrated the poetry, images, and narratives of LiT members and produced a film, Lives in Transition: Eviction Notice (jones & Schilling, 2011 ). The film reflected the creative work of the youth in naming their reality and using creative arts to convey the findings from the PAR project to “retrieve and correct official or elitist history and reinterpret it according to class interests” (Fals-Borda, 2001 , p. 30). The metaphor of eviction reflected the realities of the lives of the youth, experienced in residential mobility. Now, as a result of state and local intervention through school accountability policies, students experienced the imposition of a decision with profound relational and material consequences. This counterstory was conveyed in the film.

In the spirit of questioning, a core value and epistemic activity in critical interpretive perspectives, we can see that the beginnings of PAR projects frequently emerge from a critique of dehumanizing structural arrangements and alienating cultural discourse. Those for whom the critique is most profoundly embodied play a central role in the participatory inquiry and action, displacing notions of expertise common within the academy. The tasks of engaging in dialogue and problem-posing often lead to discontinuities in understandings as situated standpoints produce differences in ways of being and knowing. In the next section, we discuss an additional dimension of PAR as we consider ethical commitments within collective production of knowledge.

Layering Collective Analyses

Participatory analysis in PAR involves a layering of collective analyses with critical theory and ethical praxis. The iterative process creates openings for deeper understandings. As the research process unfolds and analyses become more nuanced, new inquiries can organically emerge. Often new questions are prompted by shifting sociopolitical contexts—perhaps evolutions of issues that sparked the research in the first place. This in turn can inspire additional methods, data, and/or analyses.

After the first group of LiT youth researchers left the project to pursue jobs, family responsibilities, and postsecondary education, another group of 25 young people joined the project and extended the work of the earliest LiT collective. This second phase of the LiT project decided to build on earlier analyses with a survey of youth experiences of educational transitions imposed on students, their families, and teachers, without their deliberation. The survey was administered to 258 students across the seven schools that the 25 youth researchers attended, some of which were neighborhood comprehensive high schools while others were recently established theme-based district schools.

The decision to create the survey reflected a continued desire to flesh out and fill in the absent student expertise in the conversation about school reform. Collecting more data on school closure, students changing schools, student–teacher relationships, and transportation challenges from the perspective of the students in the district promised a more nuanced analysis. Notably, it represented an ethical praxis within PAR to center the knowledge and rights of those most impacted by the conditions being studied. The initial LiT research revealed that teachers and students were invested in their teaching and learning and had often built strong communities in their “failed” schools, and the data called the dominant discourse on “failing schools” into question. In this way the emphasis within PAR to engage iterative inquiry processes grounded in lived experiences, layered with critical sociopolitical analyses of contemporary and historical policy and practice, enabled the LiT collective to avoid slipping into reproducing prevalent analyses that stereotyped and dismissed the experience of students and teachers. Drawing on the lessons of DuBois and Freire to resist these seductive and simplistic individual-level analyses that obscure the responsibility of broader sociopolitical power reflects an ethical stance within PAR. Ontologically, this interpretive stance opens space for understanding the realities encountered by students in relation to the conditions under which they are forced to live.

In reviewing the survey data, the LiT research collective engaged in an analytical conversation with data from across the life of the first and second phase of the LiT project, alongside analyses of local history, educational policy, and current structural conditions. For example, survey data showed that 59% of the ninth-grade students said students and teachers did not get along very well. This large percentage signaled a serious break in relationships central to meaningful learning and social and emotional safety among students and teachers. It concerned members of LiT in that it echoed dominant narratives of teacher indifference and student recalcitrance. However, student data also indicated teacher qualities that the collective agreed were important, such as teachers encouraging critical thinking and challenging their students to work hard. Some of the open-ended data on the impact of school closure indicated grief and anger over the severing of productive student relationships with teachers.

How would this apparent contradiction in the data be represented in the reporting back of research findings? This presented not only a question about interpretive validity but also a question about ethical responsibility. As noted by Guishard et al. ( 2018 ), “Knowing and knowledge production inherently come with an epistemological responsibility that is simultaneously, an ethical responsibility” (para. 40). Guishard et al. underscore the ethics inherent in data interpretation and with Thomas Teo call upon researchers to be aware of the responsibility researchers have to interrogate their frames of analysis in order to avoid the reproduction of harm through what Teo ( 2011 ) refers to as epistemological violence directed at communities that have been and may be further marginalized when “equally plausible interpretations of the data are available” and not accessed (p. 247). What interpretation offered validity from a critical and multilayered analysis?

After some discussion of what contributes to teachers and students not getting along, Anne and her university colleagues drew from transcripts of PAR meetings in the first phase of LiT that spoke of strained relationships among students and between students and teachers as schools closed and schools in other neighborhoods received displaced students. Holding together the different forms of data as well as the social and political history in the district allowed the collective to develop a more contextualized and complicated interpretation of survey data.

For example, when the youth researchers dug deeper into the data on students attending multiple schools, they found most of the students responding to the survey reported changing schools at some point in their K–8 trajectory, with 35% reporting having changed schools five to nine times and 6% indicating that school changes occurred more than nine times (Steggert & Galletta, 2018 ). These staggering numbers felt like an important contradiction within a district that uses a K–8 school structure in order to maintain continuity across the elementary and middle school grades. The data points sparked a shift in analysis within the research collective, wherein the phenomenon of “teachers and students not getting along” was no longer easily understood as teacher or student obstinance or disrespect.

Instead a more nuanced interpretation emerged that considered forced relocation; alienation; interrupted student–teacher relations; and severed family and community roots, traditions, and practices. This produced a key theme in the LiT findings: school closure and frequent changing of schools was associated with challenges for youth socially and academically. Situated analytically in relation to the history of school reform initiatives carried out in the district, often exacerbating students’ access to educational opportunity, the data supported LiT’s critique of reform initiatives that failed to actually improve their schools, particularly those serving the most economically stressed neighborhoods. Youth researchers prepared creative products such as video, poetry, and music to report back findings specific to their schools, presenting their findings in classrooms and engaging students who participated in the survey in further problem-posing through these discussions (Giraldo-Garcia & Galletta, 2015 ).

The inclusion of sociopolitical analysis is a key element of a critical PAR praxis, one that involves illuminating the connections between “personal, micro-level experiences of sociopolitical inequities to larger macro-level sociological forces” (Wright, 2015 , p. 196). Wright links this form of analysis to Freire’s concept of critical consciousness, of grasping that which was “not perceived in its deeper implications (if indeed it was perceived at all)” (Freire, 1970/2016 , p. 83). Cahill, Rios-Moore, and Threatts ( 2008 ) engage similar analyses by posing three levels of interpretation, each intertwined with forms of social action: (a) involving looking “closely,” questioning, and examining how lived experience is influenced by broader economic and ideological processes; (b) seeing oneself and one’s community as connected to often unexamined histories; and (c) envisioning with others what could be possible as alternatives to the current struggles (pp. 90–92). We next examine what happened as the research collective engaged individuals and groups in positions of political power and influence when youth researchers and adult allies reported back their research findings.

Ethical Praxis and Epistemological Commitments

PAR opens up spaces within collectives of individuals differently positioned and engages standpoints of power and vulnerability. In doing so, dissonance and conflict arise, signaling moments of discontinuity. These moments offer potential for reframing existing knowledge and relationships. They also may result in the shutting down of transformative possibilities.

This is evident in the experience in which members of LiT reported back survey results. For example, LiT met with the leadership of the School Reform Partnership within Cleveland, the public-private partnership charged by the state with overseeing the city-wide school reform plan, to inform members of its board of the results of the survey. The School Reform Partnership involved elite membership of the city and county business leadership, influential private foundations, a charter organization supported by wealthy donors, higher education leadership, and local religious, community, and parent representatives.

Youth researchers Dana and Marcus arrived with Anne at the building that housed a major city foundation, where the School Reform Partnership also shared office space, described by Marcus as “really corporate-like.” When greeted by the director of this organization, it became clear the LiT reporting back session would take place with this individual and two staff, not the entire board of directors.

Marcus, Dana, and Anne shared the survey findings on the issue of school transportation, relationships between students, student–teacher relationships, frequency of students’ changing schools, and school closure. The clash of perspectives and vast differentials of power produced a stark clarity about how the district’s reform policy did not take the grounded experiences of students and teachers into account. It provided further evidence of one of the early themes of the first phase of the LiT research, that the reforms “were happening to us” without any form of participation along the way. Anne’s notes taken immediately after the meeting capture some of the exchange:

At one point Marcus spoke about what it was like to be at Granite Hill High School, designated by the district as an “investment” school. He talked about seeing his teachers face job insecurity in the school reform policy that required teachers to be interviewed for positions they had held previously, some for a long time. He noted, “students didn’t know if their teachers would be there” the following year . . . The Director of the School Reform Partnership seemed caught off guard by Marcus’ statement, his expression of concern for his teachers, and his affection toward his school. She commented that she hadn’t seen the reform strategies in the same way. Wouldn’t a student at Granite Hill express dissatisfaction with their school [given how poorly the school was performing]? There appeared to be some disjuncture evident to her at that moment, some gap between Marcus’ critique of the reform plan and her logic that “investment schools” were a way to remedy “failing schools.” She said something about not realizing students might love their schools even when their schools “failed” them.

The disjuncture at this moment within the meeting revealed a clear discontinuity of standpoints, commitments, and relations of power. At the same time, it offered the potential for producing new understandings. However, the potential opening apparent in this instance was not sustained or engaged. There was no opportunity to explore it further and produce new understandings and possibly reconfigure relationships or reframe the problems associated with underperforming schools in high-poverty neighborhoods. School closure and replacement, a possibility for Marcus’s school, was referred to as “inevitable” more than once by the director of the School Reform Partnership in talking with the LiT members. This reconnected to a moment three years earlier in the first phase of the LiT project when it was acknowledged that Granite Hill High School was “on the list.” This reference to a set of policy enactments that hung over students and teachers, something out of their control, was noted in a debriefing following the meeting of LiT with the partnership director. The following is an excerpt from the debriefing:

Anne: What point do you think engaged them the most? Marcus: Probably between transportation and school closings, school closings came up a lot. Dana: Yeah. Marcus: To the point that they’re unavoidable, or well, not unavoidable—they’re pretty much gonna happen at some point. Dana: Inevitable. Marcus: Yeah. Dana: Yeah and they kinda expressed that it's not necessarily all within their power if schools are closing but they agreed we need to make other aspects of students’ transition easier.

The naturalizing of the district’s reform strategy of school closure was so threaded through the conversation between the partnership leadership and the LiT members present that it appeared normative. This is evident in Marcus’s and Dana’s replication of the language of inevitability. Equally disturbing is the durability of statements repeated as real by Dana and Marcus when they reflected the director’s skirting of authority in the partnership’s involvement with school closures. In a setting where youth voice was presumably “heard,” the solution offered by the director during the meeting was to ease the transition for students but not end the policy of school closure. As noted by Anderson ( 2017 ), “In schools and districts, spaces for PAR open and close with frequency, making them risky and difficult to sustain when they challenge ‘NPM [new public management]’” (p. 440). The space of dissonance with its potential for transformation was cut short.

In the LiT project, this was evident in the discontinuity that surfaced, however momentary, in the meeting between LiT members and the School Reform Partnership director. Opening space for altering existing ways of knowing and being in relation, for interpretive ambiguity, and for relational dissonance creates cracks and fissures in the status quo from which transformational change might emerge. This level of change can feel impossible at times, for as Freire ( 2016 ) quotes from an unpublished work of José Luiz Fiori, “the structure of domination is maintained by its own mechanical and unconscious functionality” (p. 51, n 6). In the LiT project this dominant resistance was evidenced by the director’s ultimate dismissive statement of school closure as “inevitable.” Her comment, and the dissonance it created, provoked the LiT collective to spend time thinking about their own goals for their research, the ethics of representation, how the data they collected might be used for and against communities to which they felt responsible, which audiences were most important to them, and how they might best be engaged.

Engaging Action

In the iterative movement between inquiry and action throughout the life of a PAR project, the “action” of problem-posing takes as many forms—a reflection of the many different theories of change held by individual researchers and/or research collectives (Tuck & Yang, 2013 ). Typical understandings of action may involve engaging communities of interest in the findings of a PAR project or carrying out strategies responsive to the research findings, such as a plan to address issues uncovered through the research. Many PAR projects also recognize the transformative experiences of members of the research collective as actions (Zeller-Berkman, 2007 ). But actions can also occur or engage those who are “insiders to the problem” who were not involved in the PAR project, as well as press those not directly impacted but who are in positions of power as it relates to the research findings.

Engaging “outsiders” or those whose lives appear not to be directly impacted by the findings can be challenging to collectives interested in provoking sustained changes in thought and action. Moving a listener or, more broadly, an audience toward engaged witnessing from a position of bystanding (Watkins & Shulman, 2008 ) requires forms of “mutual implication” that some have been successful achieving through embodied and performative methodologies (Stoudt, Fox, & Fine, 2012 ). This is not an easy, or always possible, process. There are instances when opening understandings of mutual implication and/or a sense of connected futures are impeded by seemingly intractable dynamics of privilege that refuse to concede conditions of power (Bell, 1995 ). As a result, the ethical and epistemological commitments of critical PAR insist that collectives intentionally address ideological and structural relations. In the case of the LiT project, this meant deepening an understanding in the political and economic investments in corporate school reform.

To reach insiders familiar with the challenges young people faced within an increasingly privatized approach to school reform, such as other students and teachers, as well as those in decision-making positions in the district, the LiT collective agreed to present its findings at a prestigious city-wide gathering attended by youth, educators, district officials, and members of the School Reform Partnership. Sharing their mixed method study, including the survey data and autoethnographic texts, the youth researchers skillfully layered their lived experience in relation to historical and structural conditions. Youth in the audience, who had not been involved in the research, joined the LiT members at the podium twice, first to narrate stories from the open-ended survey data on transportation challenges getting to and from school and second to convey students’ responses to school closure.

Having deliberated on how best to offer a contextually valid frame from which to present survey findings, Marcus explained survey data and shared his grounded experience in school. During his part of the presentation, his focus was on the complex predicament students and teachers found themselves facing as their lives were shaped by the imposition of high-stakes state testing impacting students’ ability to graduate, teachers’ security in their jobs, and the longevity of schools to serve their communities. Marcus situated the finding that 59% of the ninth-grade students indicated that students and teachers did not get along in the fragile state of relations at the classroom level, revealing the complicity of local and state policy in creating untenable educational conditions:

stress might cause students and teachers to be more edgy towards each other due to the teacher being pressured about getting good scores. Teachers are evaluated on 4 dimensions of their teaching, which accounts for 50% of their evaluation. The other 50% is the scores students get on the state tests. This can lead to teachers getting stressed along with the students, which would alter the ways students and teachers would interact with each other. Teachers and students would be on edge and would react in negative ways. Not only that, but teachers' jobs would be on the line and students wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. (Galletta et al., 2014 )

In addition to forums for engaging differentially positioned audience members in research findings, other forms of PAR-related action may involve boycotts, walkouts, the use of performance for analysis and sharing back findings (Fox, 2011 ), securing agreements with administrators for school change (Ozer et al., 2010 ), accessible “back pocket reports” and open letters (Stoudt & Torre, 2014 ), social media activism, and messaging through hashtags, t-shirts, buttons, and the creative arts (Otero & Cammarota, 2011 ; Stoudt et al., 2015 ). Common threads across these forms of action provide a distinct break with existing ways of knowing and being in relation and an upending of that which is presumed natural or inevitable. In this manner, PAR addresses epistemological commitments and ontological imperatives as it reflects the desire among those most impacted by a social or educational problem to give it meaning and transformative potential, thus producing what Fals-Borda and Rahman ( 1991 ) refer to as “countervailing power.”

Through the story of the LiT project, we have illustrated critical moments within a PAR project when tensions flared as to the meaning of educational policy and its impact on students and teachers. In an active effort to spark change in the district and share research findings with the city’s leadership responsible for recommending school closure, members of the LiT project encountered contestation over what meaning youth gave to their relationships with teachers in academically struggling schools. The implications of the divergence were dismissed, school closure was labeled inevitable, and the effort to reframe the impact of school closure was shut down.

However, when tensions within PAR can be sustained, new meanings and new ways of being in relation surface. By staying open to different interpretations of data on “teachers and students not getting along,” the LiT research collective suspended the socially dominant discourse on “bad teaching” or “problem students” and pursued additional data sources. This enabled a deeper understanding of what was happening within and beyond classrooms that affected relationships between students and teachers. Contradictions that emerged in the clash between students’ lived experience and the city’s school reform logic offered the potential to generate new understandings. The participatory contact zone of the research collective held the dissonance and encouraged an interrogation of power that destabilized the privileged discourse and knowledge structures.

As the attacks on public education continue—and as capitalism, the rise of white supremacy, and heteropatriarchy strengthen—we find ourselves with a heightened sense of urgency for new ways of seeing, hearing, and understanding. We believe a PAR framework has the ability to create solidarity spaces for inquiry that can produce necessary knowledge for justice struggles in education and beyond. Participatory spaces are where people can come together across a continuum of privilege and vulnerability to make meaning of the conditions under which we are living, with each other, for our collective liberation. The extensive reach of privatization within public education, the narrowing public governance to business and philanthropic interests and priorities, and the deceptive branding of corporate reform as “equity” is sobering. PAR offers a research praxis of countervailing power and accumulative tremors to agitate static ways of knowing and being in relation and makes possible a generative approach to collective inquiry for transformation.

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the contributions of Dr. vanessa jones to the Lives in Transition project, the support of Dr. Carmine Stewart, and the creativity, questioning, and care among the youth researchers, educators, graduate students, and community members who participated in our collective over multiple years.

Further Reading

• Cahill, C. , Rios-Moore, I. , & Threatts, T. (2008). Open eyes—Different eyes: PAR as a process of personal and social transformation. In J. Cammarota & M. Fine (Eds.), Revolutionizing education: Youth participatory action research in motion (pp. 89–124). New York, NY: Routledge.
• Cammarota, J. , & Fine, M. (Eds.). (2008). Revolutionizing education: Youth participatory action research in motion . New York, NY: Routledge.
• Caraballo, L. , Lozenski, B. D. , Lyiscott, J. , & Morrell, E. (2017). YPAR and critical epistemologies: Rethinking education research . Review of Research in Education , 41 , 311–336.
• Drame, E. R. , & Irby, D. (2016). Black participatory research: Power, identity, and the struggle for justice in education . New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Fals-Borda, O. , & Rahman, M. A. (Eds.). (1991). Action and knowledge: Breaking the monopoly with participatory action-research . New York, NY: Apex.
• Freire, P. (2016). Pedagogy of the oppressed . New York, NY: Bloomsbury. (Original work published 1970.)
• Galletta, A. (2017). Exploring generative dissonance: Inten[s]ional states and relational interruptions . Social & Personality Psychology Compass , 11 (9).
• Giraldo-Garcia, R. , & Galletta, A. (2015). What happened to our sense of justice? Tracing agency, inquiry, and action in a youth participatory action research (PAR) project. Journal of Urban Learning, Teaching, & Research , 11 , 91–98.
• Guishard, M. (2009). The false paths, the endless labors, the turns now this way and now that: Participatory action research, and the politics of inquiry. Urban Review , 41 (1), 85–105.
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1. When using the term participatory action research or PAR in this article we are referring to a framework that attends to relational, structural, and cultural arrangements of power throughout the research process. While at times we signal this specifically by describing the approach as “critical,” for the ease of reading we ask the reader to understand that this is always implied.

2. Although the city, school district, and university are identified, all student, teacher, and high school names are pseudonyms.

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• Critical Race Theory
• Urban School Reform in the United States
• Accountabilities in Schools and School Systems
• Ethnography and Education
• Qualitative Design Research Methods
• Qualitative Approaches to Studying Marginalized Communities

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21 Action Research Examples (In Education)

Dave Cornell (PhD)

Dr. Cornell has worked in education for more than 20 years. His work has involved designing teacher certification for Trinity College in London and in-service training for state governments in the United States. He has trained kindergarten teachers in 8 countries and helped businessmen and women open baby centers and kindergartens in 3 countries.

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Chris Drew (PhD)

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Action research is an example of qualitative research . It refers to a wide range of evaluative or investigative methods designed to analyze professional practices and take action for improvement.

Commonly used in education, those practices could be related to instructional methods, classroom practices, or school organizational matters.

The creation of action research is attributed to Kurt Lewin , a German-American psychologist also considered to be the father of social psychology.

Gillis and Jackson (2002) offer a very concise definition of action research: “systematic collection and analysis of data for the purpose of taking action and making change” (p.264).

The methods of action research in education include:

• conducting in-class observations
• taking field notes
• surveying or interviewing teachers, administrators, or parents
• using audio and video recordings.

The goal is to identify problematic issues, test possible solutions, or simply carry-out continuous improvement.

There are several steps in action research : identify a problem, design a plan to resolve, implement the plan, evaluate effectiveness, reflect on results, make necessary adjustment and repeat the process.

Action Research Examples

• Digital literacy assessment and training: The school’s IT department conducts a survey on students’ digital literacy skills. Based on the results, a tailored training program is designed for different age groups.
• Library resources utilization study: The school librarian tracks the frequency and type of books checked out by students. The data is then used to curate a more relevant collection and organize reading programs.
• Extracurricular activities and student well-being: A team of teachers and counselors assess the impact of extracurricular activities on student mental health through surveys and interviews. Adjustments are made based on findings.
• Parent-teacher communication channels: The school evaluates the effectiveness of current communication tools (e.g., newsletters, apps) between teachers and parents. Feedback is used to implement a more streamlined system.
• Homework load evaluation: Teachers across grade levels assess the amount and effectiveness of homework given. Adjustments are made to ensure a balance between academic rigor and student well-being.
• Classroom environment and learning: A group of teachers collaborates to study the impact of classroom layouts and decorations on student engagement and comprehension. Changes are made based on the findings.
• Student feedback on curriculum content: High school students are surveyed about the relevance and applicability of their current curriculum. The feedback is then used to make necessary curriculum adjustments.
• Teacher mentoring and support: New teachers are paired with experienced mentors. Both parties provide feedback on the effectiveness of the mentoring program, leading to continuous improvements.
• Assessment of school transportation: The school board evaluates the efficiency and safety of school buses through surveys with students and parents. Necessary changes are implemented based on the results.
• Cultural sensitivity training: After conducting a survey on students’ cultural backgrounds and experiences, the school organizes workshops for teachers to promote a more inclusive classroom environment.
• Environmental initiatives and student involvement: The school’s eco-club assesses the school’s carbon footprint and waste management. They then collaborate with the administration to implement greener practices and raise environmental awareness.
• Working with parents through research: A school’s admin staff conduct focus group sessions with parents to identify top concerns.Those concerns will then be addressed and another session conducted at the end of the school year.
• Peer teaching observations and improvements: Kindergarten teachers observe other teachers handling class transition techniques to share best practices.
• PTA surveys and resultant action: The PTA of a district conducts a survey of members regarding their satisfaction with remote learning classes.The results will be presented to the school board for further action.
• Recording and reflecting: A school administrator takes video recordings of playground behavior and then plays them for the teachers. The teachers work together to formulate a list of 10 playground safety guidelines.
• Pre/post testing of interventions: A school board conducts a district wide evaluation of a STEM program by conducting a pre/post-test of students’ skills in computer programming.
• Focus groups of practitioners : The professional development needs of teachers are determined from structured focus group sessions with teachers and admin.
• School lunch research and intervention: A nutrition expert is hired to evaluate and improve the quality of school lunches.
• School nurse systematic checklist and improvements: The school nurse implements a bathroom cleaning checklist to monitor cleanliness after the results of a recent teacher survey revealed several issues.
• Wearable technologies for pedagogical improvements; Students wear accelerometers attached to their hips to gain a baseline measure of physical activity.The results will identify if any issues exist.
• School counselor reflective practice : The school counselor conducts a student survey on antisocial behavior and then plans a series of workshops for both teachers and parents.

Detailed Examples

1. cooperation and leadership.

A science teacher has noticed that her 9 th grade students do not cooperate with each other when doing group projects. There is a lot of arguing and battles over whose ideas will be followed.

So, she decides to implement a simple action research project on the matter. First, she conducts a structured observation of the students’ behavior during meetings. She also has the students respond to a short questionnaire regarding their notions of leadership.

She then designs a two-week course on group dynamics and leadership styles. The course involves learning about leadership concepts and practices . In another element of the short course, students randomly select a leadership style and then engage in a role-play with other students.

At the end of the two weeks, she has the students work on a group project and conducts the same structured observation as before. She also gives the students a slightly different questionnaire on leadership as it relates to the group.

She plans to analyze the results and present the findings at a teachers’ meeting at the end of the term.

2. Professional Development Needs

Two high-school teachers have been selected to participate in a 1-year project in a third-world country. The project goal is to improve the classroom effectiveness of local teachers. 

The two teachers arrive in the country and begin to plan their action research. First, they decide to conduct a survey of teachers in the nearby communities of the school they are assigned to.

The survey will assess their professional development needs by directly asking the teachers and administrators. After collecting the surveys, they analyze the results by grouping the teachers based on subject matter.

They discover that history and social science teachers would like professional development on integrating smartboards into classroom instruction. Math teachers would like to attend workshops on project-based learning, while chemistry teachers feel that they need equipment more than training.

The two teachers then get started on finding the necessary training experts for the workshops and applying for equipment grants for the science teachers.

3. Playground Accidents

The school nurse has noticed a lot of students coming in after having mild accidents on the playground. She’s not sure if this is just her perception or if there really is an unusual increase this year.  So, she starts pulling data from the records over the last two years. She chooses the months carefully and only selects data from the first three months of each school year.

She creates a chart to make the data more easily understood. Sure enough, there seems to have been a dramatic increase in accidents this year compared to the same period of time from the previous two years.

She shows the data to the principal and teachers at the next meeting. They all agree that a field observation of the playground is needed.

Those observations reveal that the kids are not having accidents on the playground equipment as originally suspected. It turns out that the kids are tripping on the new sod that was installed over the summer.

They examine the sod and observe small gaps between the slabs. Each gap is approximately 1.5 inches wide and nearly two inches deep. The kids are tripping on this gap as they run.

They then discuss possible solutions.

4. Differentiated Learning

Trying to use the same content, methods, and processes for all students is a recipe for failure. This is why modifying each lesson to be flexible is highly recommended. Differentiated learning allows the teacher to adjust their teaching strategy based on all the different personalities and learning styles they see in their classroom.

Of course, differentiated learning should undergo the same rigorous assessment that all teaching techniques go through. So, a third-grade social science teacher asks his students to take a simple quiz on the industrial revolution. Then, he applies differentiated learning to the lesson.

By creating several different learning stations in his classroom, he gives his students a chance to learn about the industrial revolution in a way that captures their interests. The different stations contain: short videos, fact cards, PowerPoints, mini-chapters, and role-plays.

At the end of the lesson, students get to choose how they demonstrate their knowledge. They can take a test, construct a PPT, give an oral presentation, or conduct a simulated TV interview with different characters.

During this last phase of the lesson, the teacher is able to assess if they demonstrate the necessary knowledge and have achieved the defined learning outcomes. This analysis will allow him to make further adjustments to future lessons.

5. Healthy Habits Program

While looking at obesity rates of students, the school board of a large city is shocked by the dramatic increase in the weight of their students over the last five years. After consulting with three companies that specialize in student physical health, they offer the companies an opportunity to prove their value.

So, the board randomly assigns each company to a group of schools. Starting in the next academic year, each company will implement their healthy habits program in 5 middle schools.

Preliminary data is collected at each school at the beginning of the school year. Each and every student is weighed, their resting heart rate, blood pressure and cholesterol are also measured.

After analyzing the data, it is found that the schools assigned to each of the three companies are relatively similar on all of these measures.

At the end of the year, data for students at each school will be collected again. A simple comparison of pre- and post-program measurements will be conducted. The company with the best outcomes will be selected to implement their program city-wide.

Action research is a great way to collect data on a specific issue, implement a change, and then evaluate the effects of that change. It is perhaps the most practical of all types of primary research .

Most likely, the results will be mixed. Some aspects of the change were effective, while other elements were not. That’s okay. This just means that additional modifications to the change plan need to be made, which is usually quite easy to do.

There are many methods that can be utilized, such as surveys, field observations , and program evaluations.

The beauty of action research is based in its utility and flexibility. Just about anyone in a school setting is capable of conducting action research and the information can be incredibly useful.

Aronson, E., & Patnoe, S. (1997). The jigsaw classroom: Building cooperation in the classroom (2nd ed.). New York: Addison Wesley Longman.

Gillis, A., & Jackson, W. (2002). Research Methods for Nurses: Methods and Interpretation . Philadelphia: F.A. Davis Company.

Lewin, K. (1946). Action research and minority problems. Journal of SocialIssues, 2 (4), 34-46.

Macdonald, C. (2012). Understanding participatory action research: A qualitative research methodology option. Canadian Journal of Action Research, 13 , 34-50. https://doi.org/10.33524/cjar.v13i2.37 Mertler, C. A. (2008). Action Research: Teachers as Researchers in the Classroom . London: Sage.

• Dave Cornell (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/dave-cornell-phd/ 23 Achieved Status Examples
• Dave Cornell (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/dave-cornell-phd/ 25 Defense Mechanisms Examples
• Dave Cornell (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/dave-cornell-phd/ 15 Theory of Planned Behavior Examples
• Dave Cornell (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/dave-cornell-phd/ 18 Adaptive Behavior Examples

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 23 Achieved Status Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 15 Ableism Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 25 Defense Mechanisms Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 15 Theory of Planned Behavior Examples

2 thoughts on “21 Action Research Examples (In Education)”

Where can I capture this article in a better user-friendly format, since I would like to provide it to my students in a Qualitative Methods course at the University of Prince Edward Island? It is a good article, however, it is visually disjointed in its current format. Thanks, Dr. Frank T. Lavandier

Hi Dr. Lavandier,

I’ve emailed you a word doc copy that you can use and edit with your class.

Best, Chris.

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Action research in the classroom: A teacher's guide

November 26, 2021

Discover best practices for action research in the classroom, guiding teachers on implementing and facilitating impactful studies in schools.

Main, P (2021, November 26). Action research in the classroom: A teacher's guide. Retrieved from https://www.structural-learning.com/post/action-research-in-the-classroom-a-teachers-guide

What is action research?

Action research is a participatory process designed to empower educators to examine and improve their own practice. It is characterized by a cycle of planning , action, observation, and reflection, with the goal of achieving a deeper understanding of practice within educational contexts. This process encourages a wide range of approaches and can be adapted to various social contexts.

At its core, action research involves critical reflection on one's actions as a basis for improvement. Senior leaders and teachers are guided to reflect on their educational strategies , classroom management, and student engagement techniques. It's a collaborative effort that often involves not just the teachers but also the students and other stakeholders, fostering an inclusive process that values the input of all participants.

The action research process is iterative, with each cycle aiming to bring about a clearer understanding and improvement in practice. It typically begins with the identification of real-world problems within the school environment, followed by a circle of planning where strategies are developed to address these issues. The implementation of these strategies is then observed and documented, often through journals or participant observation, allowing for reflection and analysis.

The insights gained from action research contribute to Organization Development, enhancing the quality of teaching and learning. This approach is strongly aligned with the principles of Quality Assurance in Education, ensuring that the actions taken are effective and responsive to the needs of the school community.

Educators can share their findings in community forums or through publications in journals, contributing to the wider theory about practice . Tertiary education sector often draws on such studies to inform teacher training and curriculum development.

In summary, the significant parts of action research include:

• A continuous cycle of planning, action, observation, and reflection.
• A focus on reflective practice to achieve a deeper understanding of educational methodologies.
• A commitment to inclusive and participatory processes that engage the entire school community.

Creating an action research project

The action research process usually begins with a situation or issue that a teacher wants to change as part of school improvement initiatives .

Teachers get support in changing the ' interesting issue ' into a 'researchable question' and then taking to experiment. The teacher will draw on the outcomes of other researchers to help build actions and reveal the consequences .

Participatory action research is a strategy to the enquiry which has been utilised since the 1940s. Participatory action involves researchers and other participants taking informed action to gain knowledge of a problematic situation and change it to bring a positive effect. As an action researcher , a teacher carries out research . Enquiring into their practice would lead a teacher to question the norms and assumptions that are mostly overlooked in normal school life . Making a routine of inquiry can provide a commitment to learning and professional development . A teacher-researcher holds the responsibility for being the source and agent of change.

Examples of action research projects in education include a teacher working with students to improve their reading comprehension skills , a group of teachers collaborating to develop and implement a new curriculum, or a school administrator conducting a study on the effectiveness of a school-wide behavior management program.

In each of these cases, the research is aimed at improving the educational experience for students and addressing a specific issue or problem within the school community . Action research can be a powerful tool for educators to improve their practice and make a positive impact on their students' learning.

Potential research questions could include:

• How can dual-coding be used to improve my students memory ?
• Does mind-mapping lead to creativity?
• How does Oracy improve my classes writing?
• How can we advance critical thinking in year 10?
• How can graphic organisers be used for exam preparation?

Regardless of the types of action research your staff engage in, a solid cycle of inquiry is an essential aspect of the action research spiral. Building in the process of reflection will ensure that key points of learning can be extracted from the action research study.

What is an action research cycle?

Action research in education is a cycle of reflection and action inquiry , which follows these steps:

1. Identifying the problem

It is the first stage of action research that starts when a teacher identifies a problem or question that they want to address. To make an a ction research approach successful, the teacher needs to ensure that the questions are the ones 'they' wish to solve. Their questions might involve social sciences, instructional strategies, everyday life and social management issues, guide for students analytical research methods for improving specific student performance or curriculum implementation etc. Teachers may seek help from a wide variety of existing literature , to find strategies and solutions that others have executed to solve any particular problem. It is also suggested to build a visual map or a table of problems, target performances, potential solutions and supporting references in the middle.

2. Developing an Action Plan

After identifying the problem, after r eviewing the relevant literature and describing the vision of how to solve the problem; the next step would be action planning which means to develop a plan of action . Action planning involves studying the literature and brainstorming can be used by the action research planner to create new techniques and strategies that can generate better results of both action learning and action research. One may go back to the visual map or table of contents and reorder or colour-code the potential outcomes. The items in the list can be ranked in order of significance and the amount of time needed for these strategies.

An action plan has the details of how to implement each idea and the factors that may keep them from their vision of success . Identify those factors that cannot be changed –these are the constants in an equation. The focus of action research at the planning stage must remain focused on the variables –the factors that can be changed using actions. An action plan must be how to implement a solution and how one's instruction, management style, and behaviour will affect each of the variables.

3. Data Collection

Before starting to implement a plan of action , the researcher must have a complete understanding of action research and must have knowledge of the type of data that may help in the success of the plan and must assess how to collect that data. For instance, if the goal is to improve class attendance, attendance records must be collected as useful data for the participatory action. If the goal is to improve time management, the data may include students and classroom observations . There are many options to choose from to collect data from. Selecting the most suitable methodology for data collection will provide more meaningful , accurate and valid data. Some sources of data are interviews and observation. Also, one may administer surveys , distribute questionnaires and watch videotapes of the classroom to collect data.

4. Data Analysis and Conclusions

At this action stage, an action researcher analyses the collected data and concludes. It is suggested to assess the data during the predefined process of data collection as it will help refine the action research agenda. If the collected data seems insufficient , the data collection plan must be revised. Data analysis also helps to reflect on what exactly happened. Did the action researcher perform the actions as planned? Were the study outcomes as expected? Which assumptions of the action researcher proved to be incorrect?

Adding details such as tables, opinions, and recommendations can help in identifying trends (correlations and relationships). One must share the findings while analysing data and drawing conclusions . Engaging in conversations for teacher growth is essential; hence, the action researcher would share the findings with other teachers through discussion of action research, who can yield useful feedback. One may also share the findings with students, as they can also provide additional insight . For example, if teachers and students agree with the conclusions of action research for educational change, it adds to the credibility of the data collection plan and analysis. If they don't seem to agree with the data collection plan and analysis , the action researchers may take informed action and refine the data collection plan and reevaluate conclusions .

5. Modifying the Educational Theory and Repeat

After concluding, the process begins again. The teacher can adjust different aspects of the action research approach to theory or make it more specific according to the findings . Action research guides how to change the steps of action research development, how to modify the action plan , and provide better access to resources, start data collection once again, or prepare new questions to ask from the respondents.

6. Report the Findings

Since the main approach to action research involves the informed action to introduce useful change into the classroom or schools, one must not forget to share the outcomes with others. Sharing the outcomes would help to further reflect on the problem and process, and it would help other teachers to use these findings to enhance their professional practice as an educator. One may print book and share the experience with the school leaders, principal, teachers and students as they served as guide to action research. Or, a community action researcher may present community-based action research at a conference so people from other areas can take advantage of this collaborative action. Also, teachers may use a digital storytelling tool to outline their results.

There are plenty of creative tools we can use to bring the research projects to life. We have seen videos, podcasts and research posters all being used to communicate the results of these programs. Community action research is a unique way to present details of the community-related adventures in the teacher profession, cultivate expertise and show how teachers think about education , so it is better to find unique ways to report the findings of community-led action research.

Final thoughts on action-research for teachers

As we have seen, action research can be an effective form of professional development, illuminating the path for teachers and school leaders seeking to refine their craft. This cyclical process of inquiry and reflection is not merely a methodological pursuit but a profound professional journey. The definition of action research, as a systematic inquiry conducted by teachers, administrators, and other stakeholders in the teaching/learning environment, emphasizes the collaborative nature of improving educational strategies and outcomes.

Action research transcends traditional disciplinary practices by immersing educators in the social contexts of their work, prompting them to question and adapt their methods to meet the evolving needs of their students . It is a form of reflective practice that demands critical thinking and flexibility, as one navigates through the iterative stages of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting.

The process of action research is inherently participatory, encouraging educators to engage with their learning communities to address key issues and social issues that impact educational settings. This method empowers professionals within universities and schools alike to take ownership of their learning and development, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and participatory approaches.

In summary, action research encapsulates the essence of what it means to be a learning professional in a dynamic educational landscape. It is the embodiment of a commitment to lifelong learning and a testament to the capacity of educators to enact change . The value of action research lies in its ability to transform practitioners into researchers, where the quest for knowledge becomes a powerful conduit for change and innovation. Thus, for educators at every level, embracing the rigorous yet rewarding path of action research can unveil potent insights and propel educational practice to new heights.

Key Papers on Action Research

• Utilizing Action Research During Student Teaching by James O. Barbre and Brenda J. Buckner (2013): This study explores how action research can be effectively utilized during student teaching to enhance professional pedagogical disposition through active reflection. It emphasizes developing a reflective habit of mind crucial for teachers to be effective in their classrooms and adaptive to the changing needs of their students.
• Repositioning T eacher Action Research in Science Teacher Education by B. Capobianco and A. Feldman (2010): This paper discusses the promotion of action research as a way for teachers to improve their practice and students' learning for over 50 years, focusing on science education. It highlights the importance of action research in advancing knowledge about teaching and learning in science.
• Action research and teacher leadership by K. Smeets and P. Ponte (2009): This article reports on a case study into the influence and impact of action research carried out by teachers in a special school. It found that action research not only helps teachers to get to grips with their work in the classroom but also has an impact on the work of others in the school.
• Teaching about the Nature of Science through History: Action Research in the Classroom by J. Solomon, Jon Duveen, Linda Scot, S. McCarthy (1992): This article reports on 18 months of action research monitoring British pupils' learning about the nature of science using historical aspects. It indicates areas of substantial progress in pupils' understanding of the nature of science.
• Action Research in the Classroom by V. Baumfield, E. Hall, K. Wall (2008): This comprehensive guide to conducting action research in the classroom covers various aspects, including deciding on a research question, choosing complementary research tools, collecting and interpreting data, and sharing findings. It aims to move classroom inquiry forward and contribute to professional development.

These studies highlight the significant role of action research in enhancing teacher effectiveness, student learning outcomes, and contributing to the broader educational community's knowledge and practices.

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2 Action Research as a Process for Professional Learning and Leadership

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

• What is the role of action research in professional learning and leadership?
• What are the educational contexts that action research takes place?
• What are the critiques of action research as a methodology?
• What are the basic stages of an action research project?

In the previous chapter, we were able to explore the idea of action research, the purpose of action research, and the theoretical underpinnings of action research. Hopefully, you now have a good understanding of the landscape of action research and the contours in which it can take shape in educational contexts. It is important to emphasize that the primary aim of conducting action research in an educational context is to study and improve upon an educator’s, or group of educators’, practice. This chapter will explore some of the practical aspects of action research, in particular, the forethought and planning required to engage in a successful action research experience.

As we begin to transition from the theoretical to the more practical aspects of action research, we want to provide a few questions to consider:

• How does the epistemological, ontological, and theoretical basis of action research fit with your pedagogical philosophy in the classroom? Will using action research require any paradigmatic shifts in how you approach your pedagogy?
• What are the pedagogical benefits of using action research in your educational context?
• What are the most significant affordances and challenges of using action research in your educational context?

After considering the questions above, we think it is important from a practical standpoint to consider and situate action research as part of an educator’s responsibility to professional learning and leadership.

Action Research as Professional Learning and Leadership 

Thus far, we have made the case that action research is a useful methodology for educators because it formalizes a process you already use to improve your pedagogy; but how does it benefit you as a professional and your professional identity? In Becoming Critical Carr and Kemmis (2003) list characteristics of action research that make it integral to critical professional learning for educators. We have summarized their five characteristics of action research as a methodology for educators:

Five Characteristics of Action Research as a Methodology for Educators

• action research rejects positivist notions of rationality, objectivity, and truth and instead has an openness to competing possibilities for effective pedagogical practice in educational contexts;
• action research employs educators’ reflective and interpretive categories, and uses the language of educators as a basis for educators to explore and develop their own pedagogical theorizing;
• action research allows educators’ unrealized self-understandings to be discerned by analyzing their own practices and understandings;
• action research connects reflection to action, enabling educators to overcome barriers to pedagogical change through awareness of social and systemic factors influencing their educational context;
• action research involves deep consideration of theory and practice and to demonstrate this critically self-reflective action, researchers develop and organize knowledge in which truth is evidenced through its relation to practice.

To synthesize these five characteristics in terms of practical knowledge, we think it is important to now consider a “so what?” type of question. After learning these characteristics, why would an educator engage in action research for the purpose of professional learning or leadership? The following five principles correspond to the five characteristics above:

Why an Educator would Engage in Action Research

• the development of an educator’s pedagogy is not about developing a set of “surefire” technical competencies; it is concerned with finding the most effective practices for the students in their educational context;
• one way for educators to be consistently informed on pedagogy and increase their skills is through actively being involved in a culture of inquiry that dually relies on the latest educational research and their own classroom to spark new inquiry;
• by doing action research, educators are engaged in the process of hypothesizing, theorizing, and developing self-knowledge related specifically to their practice;
• when educators engage in action research, they develop agency and gain control of knowledge, and address questions for themselves, instead of being subservient to the knowledge enacted on their educational context;
• when educators are engaged in research, educators are naturally engaged in educational theorizing because they are reflecting on practice systematically and critically, to close the distance between educational theory practice, which many educators feel (Hopkins, 2003).

Professional learning in education takes many forms. Action research is unique in the realm of professional learning because it is tailored to the educator’s real time pedagogical foci, issues, or needs. Professional learning opportunities often fail to meet the expectations of educators because they are meant for large groups of teachers, either based on a school, topic, subject, or course. Even at the course level of professional learning, while the content may be the same for each teacher, the students and educational context are different for each teacher – which creates unique challenges that educators want to address through their professional learning. One advantage of traditional professional learning sessions is the group aspect, or collaborative thinking that takes place. Action research is flexible enough that collaborative inquiry could be part of the process, and educators could include colleagues as part of their research. In many ways, action research not only contributes to professional learning, but also provides professional leadership to colleagues.

Professional leadership in education, or teacher leadership, also takes many forms. Danielson (2007) lists teacher leadership in her framework for teaching, as one of several professional responsibilities for educators. Educators who engage in action research and share their findings, are working to impact professional learning, and subsequently student learning, beyond their classrooms. Engaged educators who attain and continue to receive recognition in the teaching profession invest a lot of time and energy to stay informed and further develop their skills. Danielson (2007) notes that these educators are in a prime position to exercise leadership among their colleagues. Often times educators view conferences and professional learning sessions as the only opportunities to further develop their skills and become leaders among their colleagues. However, Danielson (2007) goes on to describe a distinguished educator as someone who engages in a combination of seeking “out opportunities for professional development and makes a systematic effort to conduct action research” (105). In this way, professional learning is a part of the action research process that engages educators in reflection and conversations outside of their educational context, while also potentially providing an alternative lens to analyze their data.

Data-driven decision making by administrators, teachers, and teams of educators, often facilitated by teacher leaders, is a prevalent practice in schools that impacts educator performance and student learning. This sort of professional learning through collaborative inquiry provides vital contextual data to improve pedagogy in classrooms and throughout the school. Sagor (2010) defines collaborative action research as ”the team inquiry process, when a group of individuals who are a part of a specific PLC, grade-level, or teacher learning team engage in inquiry and research.” These teams can become a means for collaboratively engaging in action research and developing data that is relative to the school. Data is most valuable to an educational context when it is deeply relatable and relevant to the specific educational context. Data specifically related to the educational context can increase a school’s capacity to focus on curricular and instructional strategies with the greatest potential to support student learning. In an effort to spark professional leadership, and as we discuss the process of action research in future chapters, please discuss with colleagues the potential action research projects in your own classroom and think about how to leverage those toward your school’s PLC, professional learning, or school-wide improvement plans. Thinking about your action research in this way adds another layer of purpose and makes action research a truly valuable process for improvement throughout your educational context.

What Will Action Look Like in My Classroom?

Now that we have discussed the relevance of action research for professional learning and leadership, it may be a little easier to conceptualize an action research project, or perhaps you already have an idea ready to start. O’Leary (2004) provides a useful list of processes related to action research that could help you think about your initial plans. Here are some questions to think about related to the processes of an action research project:

• Does it address a practical problems(s)? Educators typically identify a practical problem in their educational context that has multiple possible ways to be addressed. The impetus to improve professional practice prioritizes change.
• Does it generate knowledge? Generating knowledge promotes change. By addressing this practical problem, you will generate knowledge.
• Does it enact changes in your pedagogy/classroom/school? The changes generated by the knowledge will be useful to enact change relatively close to the conclusion of the research project.
• Is it participatory? Action research is participatory, and the primary researcher is involved in the action, potentially along with other researchers and stakeholders.
• Could it be a cyclical process? Action research is a cyclical process that results from emerging knowledge. Once better situational understanding is gained through research, a change can be implemented and researched again, resulting in an evaluative practice that reciprocates between informed action and critical reflection.

I want to emphasize that this is one of interpretations of the processes involved in the action research process, and you should adapt these basic processes to fit your needs as an educator and researcher. These processes will also become clearer in purpose as we discuss the contexts for action research.

The Contexts for Considering Action Research

Action research can take place in many professional settings and contexts. As we think about some of those contexts we will focus on the most common in educational settings. I have also provided some examples for research in each context.

Improving Classroom Practice

These projects are conducted by educators in their classroom context and focus on pedagogical, curricular, or instructional aspects of their practice. Examples could include:

• How can Socratic questioning improve engagement in class discussions?
• Who participates more in my class?
• How can integrated social studies and ELA lessons improve students’ reading scores?
• Will learning diaries in mathematics lessons enhance students’ conceptual understanding?
• How can Flipgrid help connect student interests to content standards?

Examining an Educational Theme

These projects allow educators to examine new ideas or themes that they have encountered in professional learning opportunities. Examples could include:

• How can I implement personalized learning in my classroom?
• Can I integrate all subjects into a problem-based inquiry project?
• In what ways do Breakout Box activities prepare students for content-based learning?
• Do exercise balls help students focus longer while sitting at their seats?

Educational Context Focus

These projects focus on interaction between humans and the ecological space of the context. Examples could include:

• How can using non-letter grades improve communication with parents?
• How can we increase engagement at parent meetings?
• Does going outside and doing yoga improve student focus in the afternoon?
• What is the effect of eliminating homework?
• Does presenting to community members, outside the school community, improve engagement or motivation for group projects?
• What anti-bullying strategies reduce verbal teasing?

Implementing a New Initiative Based on Policy or Research

These projects are sparked by new policy or research data or are related to district or state-wide initiatives. These are often group or collaborative projects. Examples could include:

• What are the best methods to prepare teachers for a school-wide one-to-one device launch?
• Do weekly meetings help support first-year teachers?
• Adopting the new formative assessment framework for inquiry-based learning.

Critiques of Action Research

Action research is a fairly new form of acceptable educational research; therefore, educators should be aware of some of the common critiques you may hear when presenting or sharing your research. These critiques can also be easily dealt with in the planning and development of your action research project. The following are three of the most common critiques of action research.

Critique #1: Action research lacks rigor and trustworthiness in comparison to other methodologies…

The rigor of a research project is shaped by the manner in which data collection and analysis are conducted in the research process. For example, rigor can develop in data collection by using a variety of research methods to collect data (discussed further in Chapter 6). Sharing data with critical friends and colleagues, or triangulating the data, would demonstrate rigor in the data analysis process. Issues of trustworthiness are raised around the question: Can you be/maintain objectivity when you are conducting research on your own practice? Trustworthiness can be viewed as the strength of the inference made possible by the given research study. Trustworthiness can be achieved primarily through triangulation of data (multiple sources of data) and a clear description of context, participants, processes, and analysis which allows for transferability as a reader. Maintaining a rigorous data collection and analysis process will help with trustworthiness, but also being clear in your epistemological stance and positionality from the beginning of the project also contributes to trustworthiness. Rigor and trustworthiness can easily be addressed through developing a research plan and sticking to it. Adherence to ethical research (IRB) will also add to trustworthiness, we will discuss this in a later chapter.

Critique #2: Action research findings are not generalizable to other educational contexts…

Generalizability is often a concern for quantitative researchers who are trying to solve problems across large portions of the population. Simply put, the action researcher is not concerned with generalizable data that can provide answers to other educators in different contexts (However, it is great if this happens!). The action researcher is primarily concerned with generating knowledge based on the actions within their own situated context. Action research findings are generalizable only within specific situations and within that specific educational context, which is described and considered as part of the research process. Sharing findings could be applicable to educators who are interested or who are in similar circumstances, either locally, nationally, or globally.

Critique #3: Action research is based on a deficit model…

The problem-solving nature of action research may give an appearance that it is based on a deficit model. This is not necessarily the case; however, if researchers are not conscious of deficit thinking or deficit models of thinking, it is possible to engage in action research based on perceived student deficits. From my perspective, developing strategies for solving a problem within a situation with the sole purpose of improving practice is not rooted in deficit thinking, especially if they really generate knowledge. Regardless, researchers need to be aware of deficit thinking and make sure their research questions do not rely on assumptions about students’ weaknesses based on demographic groupings.

What’s Ahead? Thinking about the Stages of Action Research

The models of action research presented in Chapter 1 all described action research as a cyclical process. It is exciting to think about a cyclical process of professional learning to improve your practice; however, it can also be overwhelming to think about the process. We think it is helpful to have some awareness of what may happen during the project, represented in distinct stages, to provide an overview of the whole process. This will help you plan more efficiently, but we think it is also important to be flexible and understand that your project does not always need to follow that order. Here is what to expect:

• Identifying a topic in the educational context
• Reviewing related literature
• Revising the topic
• Developing a research question
• Plan research activities
• Collect data
• Analyze data
• Action implementation
• Reflection on action
• Report, share, or document.

Each of these steps has some brief considerations, yet I would like to discuss these steps in three broad areas of focus due to the overlap of these considerations.

Topic Development

• Researching in Action

Action Implications

Identifying and developing a topic that is important and relevant to your practice is vitally essential. Your topic not only shapes the area of educational knowledge you will contribute to, but it will also shape your research question. It is usually helpful to identify and write down three to five potential topics. In addition to writing the topic down, describe why each topic is important or relevant to you, your practice, your students, and/or your educational context. Then, if you are still having a hard time deciding on a topic, write down the intended benefits for you, your practice, your students, and/or your educational context. It may also be helpful to discuss your ideas with others, to help focus your thoughts and provide another perspective on the feasibility of completing a study on a particular topic, its relevance and implications for practice.

Once you have identified a topic, it is important to conduct a literature review (discussed fully in Chapter 3) to find out what the field of education has researched in regards to your topic. This will help you understand what we know and don’t know about your topic. Once you have conducted a thorough literature review you will feel capable of potentially revising your topic to reflect the knowledge base, and possibly narrow the scope of your project for your own purposes.

Lastly, you will be able to develop a research question (discussed fully in Chapter 4) based on your topic, the reviewed literature, and your intended outcomes.

Researching Action

After you have thoroughly vetted a topic and developed a research question, you will be ready to begin the process of researching your topic in your educational context. In consideration of your research question, you can begin to plan your research activities—when  and how you will conduct the research in your educational context (Chapter 4). This will include a timeline of activities. You will then begin planning your data collection (Chapter 5) methods and fit those into your timeline. You will also need to think about a proposed process, or order for analyzing your data. This may seem strange; however, it helps contribute to the rigor and validity of your study to have a plan that fits within your epistemological stance.

Once your plan is set, you can begin the data collection process. After data collection, you can begin the analysis of the data (Chapter 6).

After you have analyzed your data, you should have some indication as to implications for your research question. You will have the opportunity to reflect on the research, take action, and eventually share or report your findings. Many of you will have reason to change an action in your educational context, whether it is the following week, the next semester, or next school year. This is where the cyclical process of action research can take shape.

Action Research in Action: A Vignette

As a classroom teacher, I was often engaged in action research without realizing it, and typically this process began from reflection. As a graduate student, weekly reflections on the required readings in my Teachers as Researchers course prompted me to identify issues in my classroom to address, either through pedagogical changes or adjustments to my curriculum. In a less formal way, action research naturally emerged as part of my yearly evaluations with administration. In one particular year, after reflecting on my own practice, I realized (rather, admitted) that my junior-level English students did not enjoy our classroom novel studies, resulting in a lack of engagement and poor performance for many of them. The ‘start and stop’ method—where students read a chapter, then stop to either discuss the chapter or take a quiz—did not replicate how people read books, and it is no wonder that it destroyed my students’ desire to engage with the novels they were assigned. This is where action research emerged—I established a driving question for my own classroom problem: How can I adapt whole novel studies to reflect the natural reading process, take into account each students’ reading level, and improve overall reading performance and engagement?

The next step in this process was to find research that already existed on whole novel studies in the classroom and use that information as a catalyst for my own research. I read several examples of alternative methods to whole novel studies, but most of what I could find was based on a middle school classroom. This was good news! It meant, on a large scale, my action research would have a place in the broad educational context by filling an existing void in the information available to classroom teachers. On a small scale, this meant other teachers in my own department could benefit from what I design since a lack of resources exists in this area.

After reading several examples of alternative methods, I adapted the practices that seemed to fit best with my own students and created my own version of how to work with whole novels in the high school English classroom. I implemented this method in two different courses, one of which was considered an ‘advanced’ course, with students at all different reading levels. I tracked their progress in multiple ways and recorded the information on spreadsheets for future use. After a successful first attempt at changing my practice, I presented the findings to my colleagues at a department meeting, and many adapted my method to use in their own classrooms.

Though this example of action research does not reflect a formalized project, it speaks to how teachers naturally engage in the process of questioning and problem-solving to create change for their students. It also demonstrates the value in what teachers discover in their own classrooms. Researchers are often criticized for being too far removed from classroom practice to really understand what teachers need; but teacher researchers have the opportunity to be their own guide and to potentially influence teacher praxis in positive and practical ways.

Action Research Copyright © by J. Spencer Clark; Suzanne Porath; Julie Thiele; and Morgan Jobe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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CURRICULUM, INSTRUCTION, AND PEDAGOGY article

Research approaches in master-based teacher education preparing student teachers for professional work.

• 1 Department of Education, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway
• 2 Centre for University Teaching and Learning, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
• 3 Department of Education, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
• 4 Department of Educational Science, Faculty of Humanities, Sports and Educational Science, University of South-Eastern Norway, Drammen, Norway

Student teachers have been found to be critical toward the research approaches they learned from their master's-based teacher education programmes. Our aim is to discuss how certain research approaches learnt during a 5-year academic master's level teacher education, may bring student teachers close to practice and provide them with conceptual and practical tools for a thorough understanding of the practice of teaching. The argumentation is based on an elaboration of master's-based teacher education programs in Finland and Norway and the essential characteristics of teachers' work. We elaborate on student teachers' need to understand constative, critical and constructive research approaches. This includes critical approaches such as observations and interviews for understanding and interpretation, and constructive approaches such as action research and lesson studies. Finally, we argue that, through these approaches, student teachers make use of research knowledge in teachers' work with an inquiring orientation as well as develop and change their practice.

1 Introduction

International educational trends, students' outcomes and the traditional tension between academic knowledge and practice in initial teacher education have resulted in research for better solutions and continuous development of teacher education ( Cochran-Smith et al., 2015 ; Darling-Hammond, 2017 ). In addressing this tension, it has been an internationally shift toward more school-based teacher education. In some countries, this shift has even resulted in apprentice-style teacher education programs, while others has opted for an increase in field experience and partnership models ( Czerniawski et al., 2023 ). Finland introduced a 5-year master's-based education programme in 1971 with the ambition of developing teachers with an inquiry-oriented attitude and the capacity to observe, analyse and develop their teaching ( Aspfors and Eklund, 2017 ). The concept of master's-based teacher education involves student teachers learning about versatile research of teaching and learning, and research methods, and undertaking research themselves, meaning bachelor and master's theses ( Aspfors and Eklund, 2017 ). The report from the British Education Research Association (BERA) claims that implementing master's-based teacher education programmes would improve countries' education systems ( Furlong et al., 2014 ). Norway introduced a 5-year master's-based primary and secondary school teacher education programme in 2017 to improve academic quality in schools through a focus on deep subject knowledge, research and professional development ( Jakhelln et al., 2019 ; Advisory Panel for Teacher Education, 2020 ).

The new Norwegian teacher education programs inspire us as a group of teacher educators from Norway and Finland to write this article. Recent investigations revealed that several student teachers were critical of the research approaches they learned and the estimated value of writing a master's thesis for their professional work ( Olsen et al., 2022 ; Bakken and Langørgen, 2024 ). In addition, Finnish student teachers have reported challenges with transforming their research knowledge learned from their master's-based teacher education programme directly into their day-to-day work ( Aspfors and Eklund, 2017 ; Eklund, 2019 ), claiming they miss practical tools to solve teachers work ( Eklund, 2018 ). The transfer problem may be related to the extensively identified research-practice gap in teacher education, and thus, concretely the types of research approaches student teachers learn through their master's-based program as discussed by Hansén et al. (2012) . As such, an essential question is what type of research approach is significant for the practice of teaching and for education, and how it is enacted to teachers work in teacher education programmes ( Smith, 2015 ). In this context, Eklund et al. (2019) found that the concepts of inquiry and research are not clearly defined in the literature on what we describe as master's-based teacher education. Heikkilä et al. (2020) claim that it is possible to integrate academic research and practice, while, Jenset et al. (2018) go further and emphasize that student teachers' learning need to be firmly “grounded in practice,” and that the two arenas for teacher education, campus and school, need to be connected. This would orient the student teachers to study and develop their own work, rather than studying schools and teachers as objects. If the student teachers see the relevance of the why and how of research approaches in the education programme, this will add meaning and motivation for their learning.

Our aim is to discuss how certain research approaches may bring student teachers close to practice and provide them with conceptual and practical tools for a thorough understanding of the practice of teaching, as required by an international panel of experts that gave advice to Norwegian authorities regarding the implementation of the new master-based teaching education ( Advisory Panel for Teacher Education, 2020 ). The panel describes the reform as ambitious. Successful implementation requires collaboration among stakeholders and the enhancement of practice orientation in school experiences and master's theses. Close to practice, we relate to student teachers' ability to tackle various aspects of teachers' practical work. However, being prepared for practice is also being prepared to give reasons for choices, as there always will be alternatives to consider, and that teachers need to be trained to assess these alternatives against each other. The intention is also to prepare student teachers with research approaches to investigate and analyse practice in schools, with an intention to develop them ( Aspfors and Eklund, 2017 ). However, in this paper we will limit ourselves, and not go into the details or aspects of the necessity of content knowledge, general didactics, the role of the teacher and capabilities in teachers' work and teacher education programmes, nor will we elaborate on inclusive education and using new technologies in teacher education. From this background, we elaborate on the following research questions: How may research approaches in teacher education in the form of observations, interviews, action research and lesson studies prepare students for their professional work?

The paper is structured as follows: first, we describe the context of the Finnish and Norwegian master's-based teacher education. Next, we elaborate on the essential characteristics of teachers' work and teaching, and then discuss research approaches in research-based teacher education programmes. We argue for student teachers to undertake critical approaches with observation and interviews related to teachers work for understanding and interpretation. We elaborate on the need for constructive approaches through action research and lesson studies in teachers' work, before summing up in our concluding discussion.

2 The Finnish and Norwegian master's-based teacher education programmes

The context of the Finnish and Norwegian master's-based teacher education programmes for primary and secondary schools is the background for our research question. The master's-based teacher education programmes in Finland and Norway are enacted in an academic university environment, are relatively extensive, and include a spectrum of theoretical and practical elements ( Jenset et al., 2018 ). Research is integrated in a variety of ways: as curricula content, use of teaching and learning methods that have been shown to be effective for student teachers' learning ( Jakhelln et al., 2019 ; Cao et al., 2023 ), learning of research approaches and doing research and, most importantly, cultivating inquiring orientation toward teachers' work ( Toom et al., 2010 ). These programmes tend to have a strong emphasis on cultivating pedagogical thinking and a reflective approach toward teaching, and systematically linking theoretical and practical aspects of teaching ( Hansén et al., 2012 ).

The Finnish model involves a broad knowledge base in several subjects and the teacher education programme's curriculum is intended to prepare teachers with skills to differentiate support and instruction by using different content strategies ( Darling-Hammond, 2017 ). In this respect, research results and evidence are used in the continuous development of the master's-based teacher education programme ( Toom and Pyhältö, 2020 ).

The new Norwegian master-based teacher education for primary and secondary school involves student teachers acquiring a specialized knowledge base, with two to four school-related subjects, with 30–60 ECTS in each. These courses in school subjects include both subject matter knowledge and subject-related teacher knowledge or didactics and involves reading and discussing research. Furthermore, the students are to acquire pedagogical knowledge about, for example general didactics, the role of the teacher, inclusive education, and collaboration for professional and school development.

The master's thesis in Norway gives in addition a total of 30 ECTS and in Finland 35 ECTS. These theses can be written based on data collection regarding different education studies or subject didactics ( Jakhelln et al., 2019 ). A study of 236 master's theses completed under two piloted teacher education programmes at University of Tromsø, Norway (UiT): Sæther et al. (2024) found that the methods used are dominated by interviews (82% use interviews; 42% as the only method and 40% combined with other methods), mainly of teachers. The other major method is observation (31%, mostly combined with other methods), while methods such as text analysis (19%), action research (14%) and questionnaires (10%) were less frequent. Similar findings are seen in Finland, where 66% of master's theses are based on interview studies ( Eklund, 2019 ). This entails that most use of these research approaches is traditionally academic involving study schools and teachers as objects, even though they should be relevant for teachers' work. Studying others' practices as objects may make it difficult to apply this research knowledge in their own work later. Also, some Norwegian teachers report being bored of constantly being interviewed ( Engelsen et al., 2024 ). It's important to stress that the methods used in the master's thesis are just one part of the methods students encounter during the program.

3 Characteristics of teachers' work and teaching for teacher education programmes

An important point for discussing research approaches in master—based teacher education and the ways in which teachers should be educated are the characteristics of teacher's work and teaching. Teachers' work involves artistry that is performed in the moment, and to achieve such mastery of teaching skills, you need to have practiced real classroom situations over time ( Eisner, 2002 ). Teaching is a non-technical endeavor ( Flores, 2020 ). However, to make in-flight decisions one also needs to make independent judgements and have ideas about alternatives ( Van Manen, 1991 ). Teachers need to take account of the context of all pupils all together, and consider pupils both collectively and individually in educational decisions ( Eisner, 2002 ). Teaching needs what Herbart ( Van Manen, 1991 ) describes as pedagogical tact, which is situational judgement connecting general theory and insights with the unique case and context. Here, tact is realized in the immediacy of practice and is related to the skill and artistry of teaching.

Further, teachers' professional work includes teaching pupils with different needs ( Ryan et al., 2022 ), curriculum work, collaboration with colleagues, collaboration with parents and guardians, and school development, and teachers need knowledge and capabilities for these duties ( Toom, 2017 ). Even so, the teacher's work is demanding in continuously changing social interactions ( Lampert, 1998 ). Considering the complexity of teaching, it is not sufficient for student teachers to develop fixed skills ( Flores, 2020 ; Smith, 2021 ), or to give student teachers firm and simple answers about their work, but rather to provide them with a variety of resources with which they use to improve their practice of teaching ( Biesta, 2022 ). Although education and teaching are considered and planned activities, there will always be an element of improvisation ( Lampert, 1998 ). Cochran-Smith et al. (2009) describe it as a hallmark of the professional teacher to be knowledgeable about content and pedagogy, and to learn from teaching on an ongoing basis. One consequence is that student teachers need to be able to develop and analyse their classroom practice in school.

The teaching profession entails continuous learning and development as teachers' work also seem to increase in complexity ( Lundahl, 2016 ). Becoming a professional encompasses not only classroom teaching but also participation in a professional community and contributing to the development of the school ( Hargreaves, 2019 ). In Norway, for example, teachers face substantial expectations regarding research and development work ( Ulvik and Smith, 2019 ). For student teachers, acquiring such knowledge requires participating in deep-level collaboration that Vangrieken and Kyndt (2020) claim to involve reflective autonomy in the form of participating in open and constructive dialogues that question the didactics of teaching, as well as the handling of day-to-day work. In line with this position, research-based teacher education should promote teachers with research approaches, so they become critical and development oriented, to facilitate their own and the school's professional development.

4 Research literacy and constative, critical and constructive research approaches

The student teachers' research approaches in a research-based teacher education programme are intended to support learning to analyse and improve teaching and learning, or their practice in schools. Research results always require a translation effort where teachers must interpret and assess research results in the light of their own context ( Hermansen and Mausethagen, 2023 ). Furlong et al. (2014) introduces the concept of research literate teachers that involves knowing different research approaches and research methods, having a critical mindset, being updated on research findings, and understanding their implications for practice. Research literacy gives a wide understanding and will involve knowledge of the close relationship between research design, theoretical framework, research questions and results ( Tatto, 2021 ). Such literacy is intended to be developed through the 5-year master's programmes, with the work on the master's thesis as one of the main elements. While research literacy can be seen as a basis for understanding different research approaches. Here, how teacher education is to link research approaches directly with practice provides an important grounding for the development of research-literate teachers. It is essential that during their teacher education, student teachers learn research approaches with which they analyse and understand the practice of their teaching more thoroughly, develop their practical work, and learn and develop as teachers, in line with arguments from Eriksen (2022) . Here, Kalleberg (2009) understanding of social science research approaches as constative, critical and constructive, based on the intention of the research questions, would give us a basis for how this may be done.

The purpose of constative research approaches is to answer research questions aiming to understand causal effects and obtain causally clear answers about what to do ( Kalleberg, 2009 ), or what Biesta (2015) describes as the “technological term.” Examples of such educational research approaches are, for example, Hattie (2008) , who undertook a meta study to investigate factors that enhance students' learning across different countries or bring in other suggestions about “effective pedagogy” ( Biesta, 2016 ). We do not argue for student teachers themselves to undertake constative research approaches in their education with the ambition of finding results that contribute to guiding the teaching profession ( Tatto, 2021 ). However, Mills et al. (2021) and Eriksen (2022) argue that, in an age of data and datafication and evidence-based teaching, teachers need to understand different research approaches and make their own decisions, and that such knowledge would contribute to strengthening teachers' expertise and raising the status of the teaching profession. For example, student teachers need to know that moral and political questions cannot be based on evidence alone ( Zeichner, 2007 ). Therefore, student teachers may acquire relevant knowledge about research for their practice from reading and analyzing constative scientific papers that, for instance, thematise the combination of didactics and subject knowledge. As such, student teachers need to “know about” conceptual knowledge, to be prepared to make their own assessment of other studies, and to be critical, even if they do not perform such research themselves ( Eriksen, 2022 ). They need to be critical toward constative research that is influencing the educational system, for example reforms, commercial interests, or evidence based learning ( Tatto, 2021 ). However, emphasizing constative research approaches too much without making connections to their practice “may disengage student teachers” in teacher education.

Critical research approaches are designed to answer research questions with the purpose of evaluating social realities and in particular consider differences in social and psychological conditions to find out what is stable and what can be socially improved ( Kalleberg, 2009 ). The researcher will contribute to such development by asking prescriptive “should” questions, but cannot contribute objective, value-neutral knowledge about society ( Kalleberg, 2009 ). The researcher's statements about society will, for this purpose, either be characterized by, or challenge the existing social institutions and ways of thinking ( Biesta, 2016 ). As such, we argue that student teachers that pursue “critical” research approaches that are connected to practical teachers work, would develop their ability to become thoughtful practitioners ( Eriksen, 2022 ). Critical research approaches are relevant to the work of teachers with regard to example curriculum, didactics, pedagogy and assessment, because the difference is made through interaction and communication. Student teachers need to be reflexive and critical about others' and their own research, and to critically assess and interpret policy documents, as well as learning resources. Critical research approaches are relevant for student teachers and something they need to “do” to make sense of education empirically. This is because such research is not looking for causes that operate behind the backs of teachers and students, but rather for the reasons that guide their actions, judgement, perception and decision making ( Biesta, 2015 ).

Constructive research approaches have research questions with the purpose of contributing to the transformation of social realities and identifying precisely what is unique or special ( Kalleberg, 2009 ). Such research concerns finding insights that would improve existing structures or practices. Constructive research questions will, for example, ask: “what can and should actors do to improve their situation” ( Kalleberg, 2009 ). From this starting point, investigating new solutions will provide research contributions that are more important than all the unsuccessful solutions one uncovers along the way ( Kalleberg, 2009 ). Epistemologically, this constructive approach is further widened to three different perspectives: technical, practical and critical ( Kalleberg, 2009 ; Kemmis, 2009 ). The first concerns finding technical solutions to practical problems, the next concerns finding local solutions to local challenges defined by actors, and the last perspective identifies challenges in society and aims for the emancipation of actors. This last perspective is also supported from Habermas' view of knowledge, which expresses values of equality and equal rights for all people and that social science and dialogue must contribute to participation and liberation ( Kemmis, 2009 ). From Kalleberg (2009) exposition, student teachers should also be supported to learn constructive approaches in the form of practice-oriented research, to be able to analyse or develop their own and their colleagues' practice ( Stenhouse, 1975 ). Such constructive research is connected to developing research literacy whereby student teachers can access, interpret and adapt research findings to their own settings ( Furlong et al., 2014 ) and thereby promote schools' improvement ( Ulvik and Smith, 2019 ).

5 Critical approaches in the form of observation and interviews

Next, based upon critical research approaches ( Kalleberg, 2009 ), we elaborate on how observation and interviews can be used beyond studying teachers and schools as objects, and rather, to acquire competence to understand and interpret continually in teachers work. The use of observation creates opportunities to study teacher practice at different levels of the teacher education programme ( Brouwer and Korthagen, 2005 ), while interviews is useful when something cannot be observed and when one is occupied by understanding others experiences through questioning and dialogue ( Kvale and Brinkmann, 2018 ). Observation and interview methods should be taught and connected to the student's practice, particularly in their education, to gain an understanding of the context and complexity of teachers' work. Student teachers could, for example, observe and interview: pupils, teachers, parents, and collaborators in inclusive education, or in relation to curriculum work and professional learning. The student teachers should be able to plan and respond and thereby learn to observe and interview informally and systematically in authentic situations. Such processes would help them develop skills to understand what is being said and not said, and, in addition, learn to link interviews and observation with other information.

For example, in the first year, the student teachers may during their practice period, informally observe teaching by an experienced teacher, and conduct an interview to achieve a deeper understanding of the observations, and link these with research literature; and further use these to develop a more thorough understanding of the practice of teaching. Such observation and interviews are relevant for the students to acquire the context of teaching and give insights into class management, which would also help them in relating academic knowledge to their practice later. Various observations and interviews during teacher education programmes should be made recurring, as part of both theoretical courses and practice periods in schools. Then both the university teacher educators and practice teachers contribute to enhancing learning potentials and collaboration.

Observation can furthermore be practiced in a variety of ways in teacher education: by participatory or non-participatory approaches, or by using video materials from student teachers' own or other teachers' teaching ( Husu et al., 2008 ; Ulvik et al., 2023 ). A participative orientation involves combining observation with interviews to reveal new understandings of teachers' work and to contribute to evaluating and developing practice. Student teachers would benefit from learning how to ask students or colleagues questions that reveal understanding, logic argumentation or what Niss (2003) describes as competence to understand or reveal the students' learning. Such practice could be integrated in the practice period of the education programme, with the student teachers focusing on student learning and following one pupil's development closely during practice periods. The aim is to get an insight into pupils' learning and to perceive instruction from the pupils' perspective. This could be supported by facilitating student teachers' observations, and interviews with pupils to understand the observations from the pupils' perspectives and to gain more versatile perspectives on their work ( Spernes and Afdal, 2023 ). Student teachers here learn to utilize various theoretical lenses and practical tools in their observations, as well as to make a distinction between description and interpretation.

It is necessary for student teachers to understand how different theoretical perspectives allow them to perceive various phenomena in the practice of teaching, but also influence what they observe and interpret in and from practice ( Grossman, 2007 ; Husu et al., 2008 ). Student teachers have observed teaching for many years as pupils, and with their apprenticeship of observation they go into teacher education programmes with solid images of what it means to work as a teacher in a school. These early acquired beliefs need to be challenged during the teacher education programme, as they may impede student teachers' learning ( Darling-Hammond, 2006 ) to become and develop as teachers ( Westrick and Morris, 2016 ). Observation and interviews further involve interpretation of what takes place and, more conceptually, understanding the practice and how to respond to it. Observation could be used to facilitate understanding of the reciprocal interactions among teachers and pupils in the classroom, which may be challenging to realize for student teachers ( Brouwer and Korthagen, 2005 ). Observation also brings insights in practices that need to be developed, to gather data (understanding) of how actions are progressing.

New learning approaches for teaching are also required to develop creative and self-reflective students ( Cochran-Smith et al., 2015 ), where observation and interviews are essential for what Sawyer (2019) describes as guided supervision whereby pupils are activated through open assignments and the freedom to improvise their own path through the academic material. Student teachers working with inquiry-oriented interpretation will benefit in their professional work from understanding what is going on. Observations and interviews could potentially be collaborative and teach student teachers to initiate what ( Vangrieken and Kyndt, 2020 ) describe as deep-level collaboration between student teachers and practice teachers in teacher education. Peers are a very important source of learning and support for teachers, and the capability of learning together with others should be developed systematically during teacher education ( Cochran-Smith et al., 2022 ). Here, their own perspective might be challenged, and they might consider a far wider set of factors that enables them to reflect more deeply ( Penlington, 2008 ).

6 Constructive practical-oriented approaches

An inquiry-based approach in teacher education helps teachers become lifelong learners ( Cochran-Smith et al., 2009 ). In master's-based teacher education, work related to the bachelor or master's project might create time and opportunities to pursue practice-oriented research approaches. However, the study of the 236 master's theses from UiT, Sæther et al. (2024) , found limitations and developed five categories to describe how student teachers approached their master's research project: Study practice as it is, Teacher insight, Synthesis of theory and practice, Decompose and Action research . The first four are typically conducted by researching others and have a critical approach, while the fifth is about developing new practices using constructive approaches. Sæther et al. (2024) concluded that while the master's thesis seemed to support the development of research literate teachers, the use of critical research approaches did not prepare teachers for the kind of constructive research needed in developing their own practice or their school. The first four types of approaches developed knowledge about systematic data collection and analysis, but the results are not implemented in the classrooms. This means that these student teachers are not trained in using research approaches to change or develop their practice. They have taken an important first step by becoming research literate , but not the second step by becoming what could be called research implementers . By leaving this second step to the teachers to learn, we probably ensure that this will rarely happen. This might indicate a need to go beyond deepening the students' knowledge of research and methods to a stronger focus on research approaches with relevance for professional work ( Eriksen, 2022 ). Next, we elaborate on constructive research approaches in the form of action research that, among other things, was introduced in educational research by Stenhouse (1975) , before we present lesson studies.

6.1 Action research

Action research always entails critical reflection: learning from experience (action) through investigating and trying to understand (research) the change process, thinking critically about and conceptualizing what worked, what did not work, how or how not, and why or why not, and identifying what can be done better on the basis of this learning ( Zuber-Skerritt, 2018 ).

Action research in teacher education is based on a constructive research approach, and the teacher students participates actively in changing interventions in the studied field ( Kalleberg, 2009 ). Action research involves a series of different traditions that might overlap ( Kemmis, 2009 ). For example, Carr and Kemmis (1986) describe action research as a systematic and stepwise process with four main phases: (1) planning, (2) action, (3) observation, and (4) reflection. If necessary, these phases can be repeated in a spiral-like sequence to further develop both the practical results and the theoretical basis for the actions. Stenhouse (1981) further describes such research as systematic inquiry made public. However, he also claims that we should consider what constitutes publication and allow other utterances than traditional academic papers. Ponte et al. (2004) , argue that teachers might not turn voluntarily to action research if it is not introduced in teacher education.

Action research has been used in the bachelor thesis in the third year of the piloted master's-based teacher education programme at UiT ( Antonsen et al., 2022 ). Here, the students identified a challenge in the classroom during their practice period that made them curious, possibly in strong collaboration with their practice teacher. They then used the weeks between the practice periods to plan an action or trial to achieve change, and base this on established academic literature and research knowledge. The next practice period the student teacher tried out their plan and decided which methods they would use to gather the data needed for evaluation. From this work, the students expressed how they learned and gained a critical inquiry-oriented attitude toward their own teaching, national and local curricula and, for some students, even their assigned practice teachers in their schools ( Antonsen et al., 2022 ). As such, the former study also found the known challenge of creating a shared understanding of the purpose of action research among students, teacher educators and practice teachers ( Vaughan and Burnaford, 2016 ).

Action research would, for student teachers, involve learning from acting and critical reflection with the intention of understanding their experiences and actions, and with a clear ambition to change and improve their teaching practices in groups or, for example, in a school ( Vaughan and Burnaford, 2016 ). Action research in teacher education could be about investigating teaching, professional learning, curriculum work, inclusive education, collaboration, school development, improvement work or interdisciplinary teaching. The use of action research in education help student teachers be open minded about change and help them be able to improve their teaching or other developmental work in schools ( Ponte et al., 2004 ; Smith and Sela, 2007 ; Ulvik and Riese, 2016 ). Action research has long been documented as a strategy for promoting systematic reflection among student teachers ( Penney and Leggett, 2005 ; Vaughan and Burnaford, 2016 ) and for linking theory and practice in education ( Smith and Sela, 2007 ; Bendtsen et al., 2021 ). It provides room for reflection that contributes to professional development ( Ulvik and Riese, 2016 ). Such reflection depends on empowerment for teacher students in their practice period, to promote critical and self-critical understanding of their own situation ( Kemmis, 2009 ).

The studies of Ulvik and Riese (2016) and Ulvik et al. (2018) show the challenge to set aside enough time and space to promote reflection and use of academic theoretical perspectives among student teachers after their practice periods at school. This also indicates that it is fruitful to make action research projects small, so they can be fulfilled during education. Even though the analyses of teacher experiences and consideration of theory may have an impact on the understanding of both practice and theory and create an abstract understanding that may have transfer value for initiating new situations ( Ulvik and Smith, 2019 ). Penney and Leggett (2005) and Ulvik et al. (2018) argue that action research is an approach for students to assess their practice more critically, which is necessary to be prepared for a dynamic teaching profession. This because action research is often based on a constructivist understanding of learning, where knowledge is formed through activities and experience that have both practical and theoretical goals ( Reason and Bradbury, 2001 ). This implies that the research is not conclusive ( Mertler, 2017 ). As such, despite their intentions, action research projects have not significantly impacted broader social and organizational transformations. This limitation arises from the fact that these projects are typically structured as isolated interventions rather than systemic initiatives ( Brydon-Miller et al., 2003 ).

6.2 Lesson studies

Lesson studies involves a group of teachers who together plan their teaching based on topics, observe each other and the students to examine their practice, and improve their teaching and class management together ( Elliott and Tsai, 2008 ; Ming Cheung and Yee Wong, 2014 ). Lesson studies may be used as a strategy for teachers to work on their art and artistry and to promote inquiry-oriented teachers. Lesson studies have similarities with action research, as they both involve experimental cycles of action and reflection ( Elliott and Tsai, 2008 ). Lesson studies entail a collaboration, as the teachers discuss and agree on their improvements together ( Elliott and Tsai, 2008 ). According to Willems and Van Den Bossche (2019) , students may benefit from lesson studies in groups during their education, and as such can tailor an intervention and analyse the outcome using observation data and reflection in combination with theory ( Fauskanger and Bjuland, 2019 ). Familiarity with such practices will also benefit the students in their future work, as they can use them to develop their own and collaborate on improving practices in their schools. According to Elliott and Tsai (2008) , lesson studies will have a narrower agenda to improve the teaching based on observations, rather than the wider approach that action research offers for improving teaching or other development work in schools.

7 Discussion

Based on the Finnish and Norwegian context, we have argued that research approaches learned in master's-based teacher education need to relate to the practical work of teaching. We have elaborated on student teachers' need for knowledge about constative research by reading research articles and gaining insights and being critical about a variety of research methods in education. Furthermore, we have argued for critical research approaches that promote closeness to practice and an inquiry-based reflective attitude in the form of observation and interviews for understanding and interpretation, and constructive practice-based approaches such as action research or lesson studies. Observation and interviews may take place during everyday practice, while action research and lesson studies are planned activities with set agendas.

There is limited time to learn research approaches, even in a 5-year research-based teacher education programme, and as such the time allocated for these activities, must be considered, and integrated in relation to other needs in the curriculum, such as to example learning pedagogy and subject knowledge. Furthermore, the student teachers need to reflect carefully and be critical about research that they want to use in their teaching or school development, as claimed by Biesta (2015) . It is to be expected that student teachers' engagement and experience from observations, interviews and practice-oriented research, such as action research and lesson studies, could promote and strengthen their autonomy ( Vangrieken and Kyndt, 2020 ), as they will themselves either individually or in collaboration be able to try out new innovation in teaching and evaluate it for further improvements ( Stenhouse, 1975 ). Autonomy is a prerequisite for being a professional teacher ( Vangrieken and Kyndt, 2020 ). Since teaching is not merely a technical endeavor ( Flores, 2020 ), teachers need to be empowered to make their own decisions. Furthermore, when using these methods, student teachers could collaborate to analyse practice experiences that involve deep-level collaboration ( Vangrieken and Kyndt, 2020 ), as collaboration is essential and transferable to professional work ( Hargreaves, 2019 ). This approach would also encourage student teachers to study and develop their own work, rather than treating schools and teachers as mere objects. Some informants have already expressed fatigue with this approach in Norway ( Engelsen et al., 2024 ). Setting practice-based research on the agenda for student teachers also gives them knowledge and tools that can potentially be used in inquiry-oriented teaching ( Cao et al., 2023 ). The new teachers in schools encounter practices that are hectic, chaotic and complex ( Lampert, 1998 ; Lundahl, 2016 ), so these research approaches would help them make sense of and understand the reality that they encounter in the schools. Master's-based teacher education could as such help student teachers to become professional teachers that could promote critical and practical wisdom through experience, reflection and discussion ( Husu et al., 2008 ; Toom et al., 2010 ). Reflection implies a dialogue with the world in which people question their own actions ( Penlington, 2008 ). Analyzing experiences and considering theory may have an impact on the understanding of both, and create an abstract understanding that may have transfer value for new situations ( Kemmis, 2010 ).

One implication of our arguments is the need to integrate critical and constructive research approaches in the form of observation, interviews and practice-based research approaches cohesively into master-based teacher education curricula both nationally and locally. In Table 1 , we provide characteristics, implications, and some examples of how this may be done.

Table 1 . Research approaches characteristics, implications and examples.

7.1 Implications for research

The use of critical and constructive research approaches in the form of observation and interviews, action research and lesson studies to prepare teacher students for teachers work, needs to receive further research attention in teacher education programmes. Further, there is a need to investigate how the use of these research approaches may bridge the gap between theory and practice in master-based teacher education ( Drageset et al., 2024 ). Here, the use of tripartite collaboration, as mentioned by the Advisory Panel for Teacher Education (2020) between researchers, teacher students, and teachers may contribute to such bridging ( Blomsø et al., 2023 ), but need to be scaled up. Additionally, there is a need to investigate the process of student teachers undertaking master's thesis research that engages them in practice, and how they should report this process in a master's thesis. Here, there is also a greater need to include a focus on content knowledge, as also claimed by the Advisory Panel for Teacher Education (2020) .

Data availability statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Author contributions

YA: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. AT: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. MU: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. OD: Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing. KO: Funding acquisition, Writing – review & editing. FH: Funding acquisition, Writing – review & editing. K-AS: Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing.

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by The Research Council of Norway under Grant 320273, Partnership for Sustainable Transition from Teacher Education to the Profession (STEP): Becoming a professional teacher.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

The author(s) declared that they were an editorial board member of Frontiers, at the time of submission. This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision.

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Keywords: research-based teacher education, master's-based teacher education, research, observation, interviews, action research, primary and secondary school

Citation: Antonsen Y, Toom A, Ulvik M, Drageset OG, Olsen KR, Hjardemaal FR and Sæther K-A (2024) Research approaches in master-based teacher education preparing student teachers for professional work. Front. Educ. 9:1418398. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2024.1418398

Received: 16 April 2024; Accepted: 25 June 2024; Published: 10 July 2024.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2024 Antonsen, Toom, Ulvik, Drageset, Olsen, Hjardemaal and Sæther. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Yngve Antonsen, Yngve.antonsen@uit.no

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Three DISE Graduate Students Win Prestigious Fellowship and Awards for International Research

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Three graduate students from McGill University's Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE) have been honoured with prestigious fellowships and awards for their international research endeavours.

Renee Davy , a PhD candidate in Educational Studies, is a 2023 recipient of the International Doctoral Research Awards (IDRA). Funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and managed by Universities Canada, the IDRA aims to enhance research skills in Canada and the Global South, with the goal of improving the lives of people in the developing world. In 2023, 25 doctoral students from 12 Canadian schools each received up to $20,000 in awards. Her project entitled  Transforming Writing Instruction: Engaging Marginalized Youth in a Community Publishing Approach to Writing   explores how marginalized youth’s engagement with community writing and grassroots publishing can shape their social and academic identities. Using a participatory action research approach, her work aims to challenge the deficit discourse surrounding marginalized youth and their language and literacy development. Renee’s research is being supervised by Dr. Amir Kalan .

Sitong Wang , a PhD candidate in Educational Studies, has been awarded the Graduate Mobility Award, which encourages graduate students to study and conduct research abroad as part of their McGill degree program by defraying part of the cost of the international experience. Titled “Discovering the Reading Subject”: Reducing Linguistic Prejudice in Writing Assessment in Academic Writing, focuses on reducing linguistic prejudice in writing assessment. This award enables Sitong Wang to collect material and data to examine writing course outlines, institutional language policies, and other relevant documents from universities in China. This research contributes to a thorough analysis and comparison of pedagogical methodologies and materials across universities in diverse countries, helping to determine the ubiquity of linguistic prejudice in writing education and thereby addressing Wang's research questions. Sitong Wang's research is being supervised by Dr. Amir Kalan .

Chama Lassassy , an MA student in Second Language Education, has been selected as an incoming young leader for the 2024-25 Pathy Foundation Fellowship at the Coady Institute. This prestigious 12-month fellowship, supported by the Pathy Family Foundation, provides each Fellow with up to $40,000 in funding to implement a self-designed initiative. Chama Laassassy's initiative, ⵉⵙⵡⵉ | ISWI: Purpose for At-Risk Youth, aims to empower at-risk youth in Nador, Morocco (الناظور, المغرب). This project seeks to create a supportive environment for young people, helping them develop skills and opportunities that promote their personal and professional growth. offers community-focused experiential learning opportunities for graduating students. Chama Laassassy is in the final year of her MA program, focusing her research on the impact of outside-of-the-classroom language practice on language learning. Her commitment to fostering sustainable positive social change has earned her this important fellowship. Chama Lassassy's research is being supervised by Dr. Susan Ballinger . Learn more about the  Pathy Foundation Fellowship .

Congratulations to the winners for their commitment to driving social change in international contexts!

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Study of Toxins’ Impact on Brain Motivated by Social Justice

• Destiny Tiburcio, a Ph.D. student, and Michal Toborek, M.D., Ph.D., received the HHMI Gilliam Fellowship to study phthalates and brain cancer.
• The fellowship places a considerable emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion, values reflected by the work of Tiburcio and Dr. Toborek.
• Tiburcio believes phthalates pose the greatest risk to people who live near Superfund sites, a disproportionate number of whom are people of color and economically underprivileged.

Can an environmental toxin cause brain cancer?

Destiny Tiburcio, a University of Miami Miller School of Medicine Ph.D. student, is using support from an HHMI Gilliam Fellowship to study the effects of phthalates on the blood-brain barrier and the brain’s defenses against cancer cells.

Tiburcio and mentor Michal Toborek, M.D., Ph.D., the Leonard M. Miller professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Miller School, were among the 50 graduate student-thesis adviser pairs chosen for fellowships that promote diversity, equity and inclusion. The fellowship provides awardees $53,000 per year and can be extended for up to three years.

Early Curiosity Fuels Scientific Passion

Tiburcio’s inquisitiveness surfaced at an early age. By age 3, her favorite word was “Why?” She often called her mother at work to deploy it. So often, in fact, mom had to impose a three-question limit during office hours.

“Choose them wisely,” she told the young Tiburcio.  

Studying phthalates within the realm of cancer biology with Dr. Toborek, a Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center researcher and vice chair for research for the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Miller School, is the current expression of Tiburcio’s curiosity.  

“Phthalates are ubiquitous environmental toxicants found in food packaging and cosmetics,” said Tiburcio. “They’re endocrine-disrupting chemicals and persistent organic pollutants. My hypothesis is that phthalates can induce a disruption in circadian rhythms.”

Toxins and the Body’s Natural Processes

Tiburcio is investigating the impact of phthalates on the natural processes that tell the body when it’s time to do things like eat and sleep. Her discoveries could provide important details about the impact of waste disposal, particularly for people of color, who are more likely to live in areas where toxins are dumped.

“Policymakers need to know how to make better decisions and consumers need to know about sleeping habits and lifestyle changes,” she said.

The HHMI Gilliam Fellowship’s emphasis on diversity and inclusion dovetailed perfectly with the philosophy that catalyzes Tiburcio’s and Dr. Toborek’s work.

“The purpose of science is to help everyone,” said Tiburcio. “Without including a diverse background in the people who do the medicine and people who receive it, there is no balance. We are not achieving the goal of doing the greater good for all.”

The demographics of the Toborek Lab that hosts their work reflect that diversity.

“At least 75% of students in the lab are from minority or underrepresented groups,” said Dr. Toborek. “We pay attention to DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and those values that are being emphasized by the fellowship, and we create this environment in the lab. The department of biochemistry has DEI champions and the leadership of Dr. George has been crucial.”

Health Care Diversity, Equity and Inclusion  

Sylvester molecular geneticist Sophia George, Ph.D., associate professor of gynecological oncology and associate director of diversity, equity and inclusion at the Miller School, co-mentors Tiburcio on the phthalate study.

“Empowering trainees from diverse backgrounds to conduct robust and meaningful science collectively improves our communities. By bridging the gap, we enable these communities to receive appropriate health care interventions so they may thrive as we mentor the next generation of scientists,” said Dr. George.

“We’re talking the talk and walking the walk,” said Tiburcio. “It goes all the way up. Without that support and genuine desire, I wouldn’t have the confidence to apply for a fellowship like this. Having a university that supports you and what you look like is amazing.”

Tiburcio also anticipates her findings could have a ripple effect that extends far beyond the Toborek Lab. In addition to her research, she mentors undergraduate and graduate students. She told one of her mentees, a woman of color who lives near Homestead Air Force Base Superfund site, about her work.

“You saw a lightbulb go on in her head,” Tiburcio said. “She can use this research to work in her own community.” 

Tags: blood-brain barrier , brain cancer , Dr. Michal Toborek , HHMI Gilliam Fellowship , Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center

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Syracuse, NY – July 10, 2024 – Faculty at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) in collaboration with faculty at Universidad Autónoma de Occidente (UAO) in Colombia won a 100,000 Strong in the Americas grant for their proposed Climate Action research project and student exchange program “Communicating Just Rural Transitions in the Americas.” ESF is one of 16 U.S. higher education institutions to win a grant to expand inclusive climate action education, research, and training programs with Colombian universities.    

Co-led by Dr. Theresa Selfa, professor of Environmental Studies, and Dr. Renata Moreno UAO and ESF Ph.D. 2016 alumna, the project will engage undergraduate students in learning, researching, and communicating about just energy transitions. The students will all enroll in a semester-long online course “Communicating Just Rural Transitions in the Americas.” During the exchange portion of the program, students will learn about a project with women involved in growing and marketing cacao, and the production and distribution of bioenergy in the United States and Colombia. 

“This partnership underscores the importance of international collaboration and renewable energy in addressing environmental challenges,” said ESF President Joanie Mahoney. “Dr. Selfa’s leadership, along with her colleagues at Universidad Autónoma de Occidente, provides a forward-thinking vision toward global climate action.”

Students from ESF and UAO will spend two weeks in the other country learning about just energy transitions, and developing bilingual multimedia stories using ESF’s Digital Storytelling Studio to communicate the challenges and solutions around just energy transitions to a broader audience. The goal is to secure funding to keep the partnership and student exchange program going and support more student and teacher exchanges i n the future.    

“This is an incredible opportunity for faculty and students to explore some of the environmental problems facing rural communities and the strategies for using renewable energy to bring about sustainable agriculture and just energy transitions,” said Selfa, chair of ESF’s Environmental Studies department and program co-director.  

This 100K Strong in the Americas Climate/Inclusive Education competition, supported by Grupo Energía Bogotá (GEB), Fundación Santo Domingo (FSD),   the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Department of State, expands innovative higher education partnerships to increase access to inclusive, climate-focused student exchange and training programs in both countries.      

About SUNY ESF  

The SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) is dedicated to the study of the environment, developing renewable technologies, and building a sustainable and resilient future through design, policy, and management of the environment and natural resources. Members of the College community share a passion for protecting the health of the planet and a deep commitment to the rigorous application of science to improve the way humans interact with the world. The College offers academic programs ranging from the associate of applied science to the Doctor of Philosophy. ESF students live, study and do research on the main campus in Syracuse, N.Y., and on 25,000 acres of field stations in a variety of ecosystems across the state.