Because teachers and administrators see the problems firsthand, they are familiar with what programs or areas need to be evaluated, and they know what questions seem most important to ask, the authors point out. Having teachers participate in research teams increases the likelihood that they will support changes that may need to be made, and having administrators participate enables them to understand how to use evidence when making policy decisions. A MIDDLE school teacher who had developed an action research project, a member of a schoolwide group of teachers, was interviewed after completing her project. When asked about the value of action research, she remarked that doing the research had made her consider that just because it's happening doesn't mean it's working. This teacher knew that action research can be a way to learn more about what is happening in classrooms and in other aspects of school life and about how well teachers' instructional strategies and school programs are working to help children learn. In this article we highlight the effort of the staff at Five Forks Middle School in Gwinnett County, Georgia, to institute and institutionalize action research as a practice fundamental to teaching and to leading a school. research in schools can have many possible goals. We want to focus on three in this article. The first goal we intend to focus on is understanding who one's students are. This goal can be achieved by examining students' beliefs and their interpretations of classroom life. Educators might conduct case studies of students and their perceptions of school and classroom activities. Such inquiries would require an educator to interview, survey, and observe students. The second goal we'll deal with is improving the classroom curriculum and developing the requisite teaching skills. To accomplish this goal, a teacher could examine how different classroom activities influence student learning. For example, a teacher might audiotape class sessions, conduct a survey to discover what students think about assessment procedures, or keep careful notes during student conferences to determine whether students' sense of responsibility for their learning increases. The third goal we'll treat here is examining the consequences of team or school policies and programs. One central feature of pursuing this goal is trying to understand what other teachers, staff members, parents, administrators, and community members think about a school's policies and programs. For example, an educator could analyze data from observations, interviews, or surveys regarding teachers' use of computers, special programs to help struggling students, or various methods of communicating with parents. All the examples offered in our description of the three goals come from studies conducted collaboratively by educators at Five Forks Middle School. Collaborative action research has enabled teams of teachers, administrators, parents, and university faculty members to ask research questions about teaching and learning and about school policies and programs. Each word in this highlighted phrase is important. * research at Five Forks has been collaborative because teams of researchers have discussed the notion of practitioner research, have brainstormed possible research questions and data sources, have often shared the analysis of data, and have tried to determine what can be learned from their findings. * Action is central to the process because this sort of research deals with the way individual educators, teams of educators, and schoolwide research teams can take action as a result of what they have learned. For example, a teacher might examine what students think about alternative forms of assessment, a team of teachers might examine students' understanding of the content and process of a student research project, or a schoolwide study might focus on teachers' and parents' views of communication in the school. …