Integrating Teaching, Learning, and Action Research

Ernest T. StringerAfter an early career as a primary teacher and school principal, Ernie was a lecturer in education at Curtin University of Technology, in Western Australia. From the mid-1980s, based at Curtin’s Centre for Aboriginal Studies, he worked collaboratively with Aboriginal staff and community people to develop a wide variety of innovative and highly successful education and community development programs and services. His work with government departments, community-based agencies, business corporations, and local governments assisted them to work more effectively with Aboriginal people. In recent years, as visiting professor at the University of New Mexico and Texas A&M University and as visiting scholar at Cornell University, he taught research methods courses and/or engaged in projects with African American and Hispanic community and neighborhood groups. As a UNICEF consultant, he recently engaged in a major project to increase parent participation in schools in East Timor. He is author of Action Research (Sage, 2007), Action Research in Education (Pearson, 2008), Action Research in Health (with Bill Genat; Pearson, 2004), and Action Research in Human Services (with Rosalie Dwyer; Pearson, 2005). Until recently, he was a member of the editorial board of the Action Research Journal and past president of the Action Learning, Action Research Association (ALARA).Lois McFadyen Christensen, PhD is an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is an elementary social studies specialist at the undergraduate and graduate levels teaching undergraduate, masters, and doctoral level course work. For six years, she facilitated a collaborative, cross-disciplined approach on the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement. Dr. Christensen’s publications and presentations are often in conjunction with inservice teachers and pertain to social studies research, critical pedagogy, and the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education. Shelia C. Baldwin’s education career spans 27 years, with seventeen years in public school and ten in higher education. As a high school teacher of English, Reading and ESL, she taught diverse students who were often struggling and disengaged, which inspired her to eventually pursue her Ph.D. Her early work in action research with high school students to study the cultural diversity in their environment was transformational in her perception of classroom life. Her interest, promoting collaboration between teachers and students in the exploration and implementation of alternative instructional approaches, has been a focal point in her continuing work and research as a teacher educator. She has examined her own classes to learn more about teacher candidates’ developing theories about teaching, students, and learning environments. She has developed and supervised service learning field experiences in urban settings for undergraduate and graduate teacher candidates in content literacy courses to provide them with autonomous experiences in diverse settings. Her integration of action research processes introduces the concept of teacher as researcher and guides them toward critical reflection on their experiences that contribute toward their developing theories. She has developed a Master’s level action research course for both initial certification candidates and practitioners.

This book is designed, as it says on the cover, for the enhancement of instruction in the K-12 classroom. I read the book in the hope of finding new approaches to action research within my classrooms but found the book to be specific to K-12 and only loosely based around action research. It is a well considered book but I found the link to action research to be misleading as the emphasis seemed to be on action learning as an alternative re-conceptualisation of the original model. However, that said I found the examples and case studies of most benefit and would recommend the book to those unfamiliar with classroom-based research who want to see what others might have done.

• PrefaceAcknowledgments - Chapter1. Action Research in Teaching and Learning2. Learning Theory3. Lesson Planning4. Instruction: Facilitating Student Learning5. Action Learning: Accomplishing Objectives, Outcomes, and Standards6. Assessment and EvaluationAppendix. Case ExamplesReferencesIndexAbout the Authors