Action Research Group Research Articles

Co-Researching the Researchers: Dicep's Ongoing Self-Reflection

The self-appointed chronicler of DICEP strikes again! In 1997 I prepared, distributed and analyzed an anonymously completed survey of our collaborative action research group (McGlynn-Stewart, 1998). I felt that there were a lot of issues that needed to be discussed regarding how we functioned as a group, and I wanted to provide a forum for that to happen. In 1999, I facilitated an interactive email conversation among our members for an update on how we were doing with respect to the issues that arose in the earlier survey (McGlynn-Stewart, 2001).

Assessing children's mathematical thinking in practical modelling situations

This paper reports on research into the development of mathematical thinking skills using practical modelling activities. An action research group of 12 teachers from six secondary schools in Wales was created to investigate the use of mathematical modelling tasks in years seven and eight (11 and 12 years old). Twelve intervention classes were matched with 12 equivalent control classes as part of a quasi-experiment to investigate the impact of such activities. The experimental design was based on the use of written pre-tests, post-tests and delayed tests. However, in addition to the written tests, 48 pupils—two from each class—engaged in mathematical modelling tasks during one to one semi-structured interviews with the researchers. The interviews used a form of dynamic assessment to analyse the development of pupils' mathematical thinking at each assessment point. This paper focuses on the interview data and reports on the extent to which some pupils proved to be naturally mindful and the extent to which metacognitive thinking might be taught in the early years of secondary school.

Beyond Reflection: Cake and Co-operative Inquiry

Issues arising during a participatory action research project with a group of midwives are explored, in particular, those related to group process, membership, and roles. A Midwives Action Research Group established an Early Mothering Group for women in hospital to talk to each other and form supportive social networks. The time-honored ritual of sharing morning tea and cake allowed both midwives and mothers to experience the therapeutic potential and power of women's ordinary talk.

Countering science reluctance in elementary science education: Contrasting approaches via action research

Abstract This article describes and evaluates the work of an action research group (three teachers and a researcher/facilitator) established to address some of the problems associated with teaching science in elementary schools—in particular, what has been described as ‘science reluctance’ or, in its more extreme form, as ‘science phobia.’ It also describes how an elementary school teacher worked in a one‐on‐one relationship with the same researcher/facilitator to replace her somewhat traditional approach to science teaching with more hands‐on activities and student‐directed inquiry. The author asks whether this particular project can legitimately be classified as action research.

Teacher Development through Action Research: A Case Study of an Elementary Teacher

This paper describes the experiences of an elementary teacher, Ingrid, as she conducted an action research project in science with her grade five students. By adopting the framework of action research within the context of an action research group consisting of four teachers and a university researcher/facilitator, she was able to critically examine her instructional and assessment practices and to make changes in those practices. She attributed her personal and professional growth primarily to the collaboration and support that manifested itself through the action research group. This case study provides supporting evidence for the value of action research as an effective and feasible form of teacher development, while acknowledging both its strengths and limitations.

Multiple Intelligences Theory: A Framework for Personalizing Science Curricula

This case study reports on the experiences of a high school science teacher, Dave, as he explored multiple intelligences (MI) theory within the context of an action research group. The theory was used as a framework to make decisions about how he would structure learning experiences for his grade nine students in a science unit on space and astronomy. Through participation in the project, Dave believed he was able to offer his students a more student‐centered, engaging science curriculum that catered to individual learning needs. Thus, the case provides insight into the nature of MI theory and how the framework of MI theory can be used to make science accessible to students and to assist them in achieving high levels of scientific literacy.

Breaking the silence: women living with multiple sclerosis and urinary incontinence.

This study examined women's understandings of living with multiple sclerosis (MS) and urinary incontinence and the challenges they have encountered in their day-to-day lives. As health-care professionals, we aimed to understand how people living with MS manage urinary incontinence. This paper reports the findings from a Participatory Action Research (PAR) group with four women, the researcher and two Continence Nurse Advisors (CNAs). The group met on five occasions between March and June 1999. The women's stories held personal and gendered meanings about living with MS and urinary incontinence. Four themes were derived from the transcripts: maintaining control; seeking understanding; avoiding shame; and good and bad days. The women and the CNAs benefited from an exchange of knowledge about living with MS and incontinence. The CNAs became sensitive to the women's experience and have been able to incorporate these understandings into their practice. By sharing our research we hope the findings may be more widely incorporated into sensitive health practice.

The IRB, the HSR -- and the Ethics of Insider Research

This project began about eight years ago when I tried adapt the mandated "human subjects review" (HSR) by my university's Institutional Review Board (IRB) to the work I was doing as a researcher of my own practice and as a consultant to K-12 teacher researchers. After many roadblocks and revisions, I produced a guide intended, not for IRB review, but for discussion in action research groups and dissertation committees. It was first published in Educational Action Research (1998, vol 6, no. 1), then revised and updated as the Epilogue to the new book (Zeni, 2001). Despite its convoluted genealogy, the Guide and its heuristic questions have proven useful to researchers trying to make ethical decisions amid the alphabet soup of regulations. Today I believe we must engage in dialogue about ethics with two very different groups. We must talk with the traditional arbiters of research ethics -- the Institutional Review Boards that control access to research funding and academic degrees. However, we cannot allow this dialogue to stay within the walls of the universities; we must widen the conversation to include the stakeholders in the schools where most practitioner research is conducted.

We just don't talk about it: Men living with urinary incontinence and multiple sclerosis

For people with multiple sclerosis (MS), urinary incontinence can become central to their experiences of managing the consequences of the disease. The Research Unit at the Royal District Nursing Service in South Australia conducted a study between October and December 1998 that aimed to understand how people living with multiple sclerosis manage urinary incontinence. This paper reports the findings from a participatory action research group consisting of four men who lived with MS and urinary incontinence, two continence nurse advisors (CNA) and the researcher. Incontinence was found to be a subject that men had found difficult to talk about previously. Themes that emerged from the conversations with the men were: planning your life around toilets; today will not be the same as tomorrow; managing myself; and motivated to make changes. The men and the CNA experienced a valuable exchange of knowledge about living with incontinence. We consider it essential that the voices of these men are clearly heard so that health‐care providers may be responsive and sensitive to their clients' needs.

The political is personal: reflections on facilitating action research in gender issues in science education

Action research is emerging as a promising means of promoting individual and societal change in the context of university programmes in teacher education. However, significant gaps exist in the literature regarding the use of action research groups for the education of science teachers. Therefore, an action research group, dealing with gender issues in science education, was established within the context of a graduate course in action research at OISE/UT. The group met 14 times from September of 1992 until May 1993, and consisted of the author and five other science teachers from the Toronto area. Two of us were in the primary panel, two in the intermediate panel and two in the tertiary panel. Five teachers are female and one male. The experiences of the group form the basis of this study. A methodology of participant observation supported by interviews, classroom visits, journals, group feedback and participant portfolios provided a means of examining our experiences from the perspectives of the participants in the group. This case study examines the development of the author as a participant, researcher and facilitator of action research through a critical examination of group dynamics and power issues arising within the action research group. The results of this study confirm that facilitators should undertake their own action research within the context of their groups in order to examine their own taken-for-granted assumptions about teaching and learning. Through such reflections, we will continue to problematise the social and political aspects of science education, and make explicit how the political is personal for each of us as science educators.

Men living with diabetes: minimizing the intrusiveness of the disease.

In this paper we present the findings from the second of four Participatory Action Research (PAR) groups with men and women who have been diagnosed with type two diabetes. The findings of the men's group are reported here. People who have received a diagnosis of diabetes must immediately absorb a great deal of information about how to control their diabetes, care for themselves and make lifestyle changes. In this study, we have asked men about this transition and about what it is like to live with diabetes. We aimed to understand how people with type two diabetes incorporate chronic illness into their lives. Utilizing the processes of PAR, we created a conducive environment for the voices of people with diabetes to be clearly heard in relation to their health. Men who live with type two diabetes met with a researcher and two Clinical Nurse Consultants, for two hours, once a week, for four weeks, during November 1998. The men expressed that diabetes had made a positive impact on their lifestyle; they viewed diabetes as part of life and not as an illness. Men chose foods with confidence; their concern about potential complications meant they chose to take better care of themselves. They were confident in their knowledge of diabetes, and while they took responsibility for themselves, being supported by their partner was helpful in managing their diabetes. They managed their life with diabetes by minimizing the intrusiveness of the disease.

The role of conversation in collaborative action research

The article examines the role of conversation in collaborative action research to understand how conversations among teachers can serve as a research methodology in which the sharing of knowledge and the growth of understanding occurs through meaning making processes. It begins with a review of three collaborative action research groups that use conversation as research. The article then turns to an examination of the three types of conversations used by the teachers in those groups: oral inquiry processes, collaborative conversations, and long and serious conversations. A look at some of the implications that conversation as a research methodology has for the establishment and sustenance of collaborative action research groups concludes the article.

Using ‘Fictional’ Story in Teacher Research

A deputy headteacher in a mixed comprehensive school of some 1200 students, aged 12-18 years describes her responsibilities, which include ‘continuing professional development’. She began an action research project in 1991 on how to develop not only her role in becoming more reflective in her day to day practice, but also how to develop opportunities for teachers to take time out of everyday ‘busyness’ in order to reflect on and improve pedagogical practices. She set up an action research group for teachers in school and many of the projects undertaken were validated by Kingston University, thus enabling teachers to gain a postgraduate Diploma in Action Research as part of an in-house course, in which teachers chose their own focus for development, and learnt to support and critique each other's work. As part of the methodology they used ‘story’ to help come to a focus, to put their thoughts in order, to clarify what they were thinking and to move forward their professional development. What follows is one account of how story was used to begin to develop thinking.

Becoming a community of researchers1

Poststructural action research highlights the ambiguity and uncertainty for those involved in research with other individuals. This article chronicles how such an action research group with seven young women, 15 – 18 years of age, used personal writing as a basis for exploring identity, and how the researcher and the teacher had to acknowledge and critique their own feminist agendas within such a setting. Relying on reciprocity and dialectical theory-building, the group evolved into a collective of women where new opportunities were created for all the participants.

Learning About Science, Technology, and Society (STS) Through an Action Research Project: Co‐Constructing an Issues‐Based Model for STS Education

This article describes the experiences of six science teachers and a facilitator (the author) involved in an action research group in science, technology and society (STS) education. Two strands of research have informed the evolution of this action research project. The first strand comes from an interest in science, technology and society education, while the second strand emerges from the literature on action research as a possible means of accomplishing some of the goals articulated by STS advocates. Therefore, the purposes of this paper are two‐fold. First, the paper explores the genesis of an issues‐based model for STS education and curriculum development created by the teachers and facilitator of the action research group, and briefly highlights applications of this model in a classroom context. Second, action research is examined as a potential tool for professional development in the context of science education.

Nurses' adoption of a patient-controlled analgesia approach.

The value of a patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) approach has been demonstrated in the literature. A group of nurses responsible for implementing a PCA approach in their agencies reported varying levels of success. It was not known how nurses' values, goals, and experiences influenced their innovation adoption behavior, nor was it understood how an organization's contextual factors affected nurses' adoption of the PCA approach. The purpose of this study was to increase the understanding of the factors that influence nurses' adoption of PCA. A total of 13 coinvestigators responsible for the implementation of PCA in their agencies formed a participatory action research group. A phenomenological approach, using staff nurse focus groups, was chosen by the coinvestigators to gather data from their respective agencies. The concept of innovation adoption provided the framework for the study.

Facilitating Action Research in Science, Technology and Society (STS) Education: an experience in reflective practice

ABSTRACT Action research as a form of professional development encourages teachers to participate in cycles of planning, acting, observing and reflecting, thereby creating possibilities for change and transformation. Equally important are the transformations and professional growth experienced by the facilitator in an action research context. In recent literature, the epistemological and methodological foundations of action research have come under scrutiny. Part of this debate emerges from the experience of those who actually attempt to facilitate action research with groups of teachers. In this paper I critically examine my participation (as a university‐based facilitator and researcher) in an action research group in science, technology and society (STS) education to illustrate: (a) how a second‐order inquiry enhanced my understanding of the nature of action research, while (b) simultaneously allowing me to explore and develop strategies for facilitating the process.

From rhetoric to action: Implementing sts education through action research

AbstractThis article outlines the arguments for an action research approach to the implementation of STS education, and describes some of the experiences and outcomes of an action research group of six teachers (one elementary, five secondary) based at The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto. The teachers' initial views, and their changing perceptions throughout the duration of the project (the 1992‐93 academic year), are presented in terms of four categories: the nature of STS education; the development of curriculum materials; personal/professional development; collaborative work. The emergence of an additional complex theme involving reinforcement, extending horizons, and building professional confidence, is considered the most significant outcome of the project.

Action Research, School Change, and the Silencing of Teacher Voice

Abstract A group of elementary school teachers and the researcher engaged in collaborative action research in order to explore, implement, and document practitioner initiated change. Three assertions are reported: (1) teachers' newfound voices can be silenced by peers; (2) collaborative action research groups may provide essential support during school change efforts; (3) teachers can be silenced by a principal, even one who is supportive of school change and teacher empowerment. Support for these assertions unfold through the stories of two teachers and their principal. Implications for teacher education are drawn.

Why Corporate Research? The Case of Elf Aquitaine

Partisans of corporate versus divisional RD chlorine, fluorine and sulfur derivatives; organic and mineral peroxides; additives for plastics; adhesives and sealants. * Health, Beauty and Bioactivities Division (under the name of Sanofi), which includes drugs, veterinary products, food additives, flavors, fragrances and perfumes. This whole is becoming more and more a true group rather than a conglomerate; our chairman has clearly stated that each of the three branches must interact with the other two and draw upon all the synergies as much as possible, especially where research is concerned. Corporate research has thus been given the role of cement between the branches. I shall come back to this issue. No Labs, Few People Corporate research is run by a senior VP of Corporate R&D, who reports directly to the group's chairman and frequently discusses with him the global results of the group's research. He also functions as its primary spokesman inside and outside the company. Each division has its own research setup which is run by a VP of R&D (two of them for the hydrocarbons division, one for exploration-production and one for refining). The important point is that each one of these VPs of R&D is under the authority of his own division's president, while reporting also to the senior VP of Corporate R&D (see diagram next page), as far as the workings of Corporate research are concerned. Therefore, the enactment of corporate research policy can be directly influenced by the heads of research for the divisions. Furthermore, the senior VP of Corporate R&D presides over a corporate research committee which includes the VP of R&D for each of the three divisions as well as directors from his own staff. This committee is the true forum where not only information regarding the group's research activities is exchanged, but also where the possibilities for interaction between the branches' R&D for joint actions and for exchanges of personnel are discussed at a high level. Corporate research has no laboratories and very few people. But its expertise, its knowledge of the divisions' R&D needs, and a budget of more than $70 million allow it to play an important role in the company. …