Pub Date : 2022-06-20DOI: 10.1080/09650792.2022.2089191
Abdul Hameed Panhwar, M. Bell
ABSTRACT This study addresses lack of student engagement in large English as a second language (ESL) classes at a Pakistani university, using cooperative learning within the framework of participatory action research. A reconnaissance of the literature and thorough situation analysis led to an initial plan based on two cooperative learning strategies: Student-Teams-Achievement-Divisions and Think-Pair-Share. Over a semester, a second-year undergraduate compulsory ESL class was delivered as a series of mini action-research cycles refining this plan. The intervention was evaluated using classroom observation, student questionnaires and semi-structured group interviews. The results indicate that cooperative learning enhanced students’ behavioural, cognitive, and emotional engagement relative to their previous experience of learning in lecture-style classes. In addition, the study demonstrates that action research can be used by individual practitioners in even highly problematic teaching environments as a way of emancipating themselves and their students from the helplessness associated with institutional and cultural constraints.
{"title":"Enhancing student engagement in large ESL classes at a Pakistani university","authors":"Abdul Hameed Panhwar, M. Bell","doi":"10.1080/09650792.2022.2089191","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2022.2089191","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study addresses lack of student engagement in large English as a second language (ESL) classes at a Pakistani university, using cooperative learning within the framework of participatory action research. A reconnaissance of the literature and thorough situation analysis led to an initial plan based on two cooperative learning strategies: Student-Teams-Achievement-Divisions and Think-Pair-Share. Over a semester, a second-year undergraduate compulsory ESL class was delivered as a series of mini action-research cycles refining this plan. The intervention was evaluated using classroom observation, student questionnaires and semi-structured group interviews. The results indicate that cooperative learning enhanced students’ behavioural, cognitive, and emotional engagement relative to their previous experience of learning in lecture-style classes. In addition, the study demonstrates that action research can be used by individual practitioners in even highly problematic teaching environments as a way of emancipating themselves and their students from the helplessness associated with institutional and cultural constraints.","PeriodicalId":47325,"journal":{"name":"Educational Action Research","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47671047","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-13DOI: 10.1080/09650792.2022.2084433
Jonas Egmose, H. Hauggaard-Nielsen, Stefan Gaarsmand Jacobsen
ABSTRACT Finding ourselves in the midst of a plural eco-social crisis, this paper addresses roles and guiding questions for action research understanding, envisioning, practicing, and organising eco-social action, with the aim of renewing our human entanglements with the living ecologies, in which we are embedded. Driven by the aim of democratising eco-social transformations, climate- and biodiversity disasters are approached as symptoms of a plural eco-social crisis. From an eco-feminist position, this crisis concerns notions of mastery and extractivism eroding human and societal capabilities to sustain the inherent regenerative capacities of the living. Grounded in critical utopian action research, the paper addresses four different dimensions in action research for eco-social transformation: i) enabling social learning spaces to make visible the ways we are socially and ecologically related; ii) re-imagining how we want to live and relate in wider ecologies; iii) seeking alternatives to mastery through tangible practices; and iv) enabling new organisational forms for societal reorganisation. Building on concrete cases from urban planning to rural and regenerative practice, this paper describes how these different perspectives can mutually strengthen action research for eco-social transformation.
{"title":"Action research in the plural crisis of the living: understanding, envisioning, practicing, organising eco-social transformation","authors":"Jonas Egmose, H. Hauggaard-Nielsen, Stefan Gaarsmand Jacobsen","doi":"10.1080/09650792.2022.2084433","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2022.2084433","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Finding ourselves in the midst of a plural eco-social crisis, this paper addresses roles and guiding questions for action research understanding, envisioning, practicing, and organising eco-social action, with the aim of renewing our human entanglements with the living ecologies, in which we are embedded. Driven by the aim of democratising eco-social transformations, climate- and biodiversity disasters are approached as symptoms of a plural eco-social crisis. From an eco-feminist position, this crisis concerns notions of mastery and extractivism eroding human and societal capabilities to sustain the inherent regenerative capacities of the living. Grounded in critical utopian action research, the paper addresses four different dimensions in action research for eco-social transformation: i) enabling social learning spaces to make visible the ways we are socially and ecologically related; ii) re-imagining how we want to live and relate in wider ecologies; iii) seeking alternatives to mastery through tangible practices; and iv) enabling new organisational forms for societal reorganisation. Building on concrete cases from urban planning to rural and regenerative practice, this paper describes how these different perspectives can mutually strengthen action research for eco-social transformation.","PeriodicalId":47325,"journal":{"name":"Educational Action Research","volume":"57 10-13","pages":"671 - 683"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41307905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-05DOI: 10.1080/09650792.2022.2084435
D. Zandvliet, Vajiramalie Perera
ABSTRACT This paper highlights action research into the practices of environmental learning through two interconnected stories focusing respectively on educational policy and the details of classroom instruction. Together these illustrate how a framework guides teachers in educational planning and supports the implementation of a curriculum for environmental learning in diverse subjects. Teacher inquiry, focus groups and interviews informed a collaborative writing process involving teachers and academics. The framework offers a conceptual view for environmental learning in all settings providing principles of teaching and learning to guide teachers in activities in a variety of learning contexts. The broader study sets the scene and the context for imbedded teacher inquiry. This study provides a personal perspective on how environmentally focused lessons were developed and researched by teachers. It highlights the story of a Grade 2/3 teacher (Ms. P) as she embarks on a program of action research about outdoor learning exemplary of other elements of the imbedded action research in the broader study. Multiple, overlapping themes emerge as she documents her reflections and students’ interactions with local environments. This paper and its narratives together relate how the concepts of environmental learning and teacher experience empower us to guide learning in new, exciting ways.
{"title":"Two stories of environmental learning and experience","authors":"D. Zandvliet, Vajiramalie Perera","doi":"10.1080/09650792.2022.2084435","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2022.2084435","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper highlights action research into the practices of environmental learning through two interconnected stories focusing respectively on educational policy and the details of classroom instruction. Together these illustrate how a framework guides teachers in educational planning and supports the implementation of a curriculum for environmental learning in diverse subjects. Teacher inquiry, focus groups and interviews informed a collaborative writing process involving teachers and academics. The framework offers a conceptual view for environmental learning in all settings providing principles of teaching and learning to guide teachers in activities in a variety of learning contexts. The broader study sets the scene and the context for imbedded teacher inquiry. This study provides a personal perspective on how environmentally focused lessons were developed and researched by teachers. It highlights the story of a Grade 2/3 teacher (Ms. P) as she embarks on a program of action research about outdoor learning exemplary of other elements of the imbedded action research in the broader study. Multiple, overlapping themes emerge as she documents her reflections and students’ interactions with local environments. This paper and its narratives together relate how the concepts of environmental learning and teacher experience empower us to guide learning in new, exciting ways.","PeriodicalId":47325,"journal":{"name":"Educational Action Research","volume":"30 1","pages":"569 - 584"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44672859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-05DOI: 10.1080/09650792.2022.2084434
Simon N. Jorgenson, J. Stephens
ABSTRACT Responding to the climate crisis requires a large-scale transformation of energy systems away from fossil fuels toward a more distributed, equitable, renewable-based society. The societal benefits of this transformation which could redistribute power, literally and figuratively, go well beyond decarbonization; a renewable society could also be a healthier, more economically just society. This study conceptualizes action researchers as key drivers of these systemic change processes. We argue that transforming and democratizing energy systems should be the focal point of action researcher’s efforts to address climate change. To advance this argument, the study draws on the systemic action research, energy democracy, and sustainability transitions literature and includes recommendations, examples, and practical suggestions for conducting energy-related action research. This study’s findings will be useful to researchers interested in engaging the climate crisis by building transformative capacity in the context of local and regional energy systems.
{"title":"Action research for energy system transformation","authors":"Simon N. Jorgenson, J. Stephens","doi":"10.1080/09650792.2022.2084434","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2022.2084434","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Responding to the climate crisis requires a large-scale transformation of energy systems away from fossil fuels toward a more distributed, equitable, renewable-based society. The societal benefits of this transformation which could redistribute power, literally and figuratively, go well beyond decarbonization; a renewable society could also be a healthier, more economically just society. This study conceptualizes action researchers as key drivers of these systemic change processes. We argue that transforming and democratizing energy systems should be the focal point of action researcher’s efforts to address climate change. To advance this argument, the study draws on the systemic action research, energy democracy, and sustainability transitions literature and includes recommendations, examples, and practical suggestions for conducting energy-related action research. This study’s findings will be useful to researchers interested in engaging the climate crisis by building transformative capacity in the context of local and regional energy systems.","PeriodicalId":47325,"journal":{"name":"Educational Action Research","volume":"30 1","pages":"655 - 670"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45870450","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-02DOI: 10.1080/09650792.2022.2084133
D. Coghlan, Vivienne Brady, D. O'Leary, G. Hynes
{"title":"Exploring vulnerability and risk in an action research writing group: a cooperative inquiry","authors":"D. Coghlan, Vivienne Brady, D. O'Leary, G. Hynes","doi":"10.1080/09650792.2022.2084133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2022.2084133","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47325,"journal":{"name":"Educational Action Research","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44096782","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-01DOI: 10.1080/09650792.2022.2084132
Jaana Nehez
{"title":"To be, or not to be, that is not the question: External researchers in emancipatory action research","authors":"Jaana Nehez","doi":"10.1080/09650792.2022.2084132","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2022.2084132","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47325,"journal":{"name":"Educational Action Research","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46049440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/09650792.2022.2079823
A. Convery
The range of articles in this edition fulfils the aspiration of this journal to invite writers and readers to engage in good conversations about action research. The quality of the papers can be seen in the number which offer stimulating disruptions for readers by challenging some of the popular assumptions that can be held about action research. Writers tackle the gaps between their research plans and their research experiences, showing how positive intentions to improve participation need to be constantly modified as they gain heightened awareness of the complexities of shifting practice. Other papers show the variable benefits of adapting action research approaches to address national education policy changes or question the claimed outcomes from building practitioner research into student teacher programmes. There is a healthy challenge from a Deleuze-inspired paper to the limitations of grounded data approaches. A classroom-based research project examines the practical paradox of using teacher authority to help learners become more self-disciplined, while other papers highlight how movements towards more active, integrated and holistic teaching environments need to be adapted to make incremental and provisional progress. Each paper provides evidence of critical development towards the goal of achieving more socially just practices, as practitioners and participants develop a greater sense of agency to help themselves and others. For example, Stuart’s article, ‘Problematic participation: reflections on the process and outcomes of participatory action research into educational inequalities’ highlights a range of power differentials that are often implicit when academics attempt ‘participatory’ research. Her account examines an international project that aimed to engage Higher Education students in working with groups of schoolchildren to examine their educational experiences. Stuart acknowledges the complex power relationships between academics, their HE students, and the schoolchildren with whom the HE students were researching, and concludes that structural differences cannot easily be erased, but barriers can be reduced if these differences can be acknowledged and articulated. She describes how participating groups were encouraged to devise social activities which enabled the researchers ‘to name and semi-manage the power dynamics present’. This paper is filled with valuable reflective insights from a research team struggling to reduce inequalities, and highlights the tensions of the team in appreciating that they were conducting research with co-researchers and on young people, and Stuart concludes that their work may be considered ‘participatory practice’ rather than ‘participatory research’. This openly reflexive account acts as a meditation on how action research methodology needs to be continually revised and reimagined when attempting to realise our ambitions in the fluid world of research relationships. Continuing the focus on the pr
{"title":"Celebrating the problematics in action research","authors":"A. Convery","doi":"10.1080/09650792.2022.2079823","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2022.2079823","url":null,"abstract":"The range of articles in this edition fulfils the aspiration of this journal to invite writers and readers to engage in good conversations about action research. The quality of the papers can be seen in the number which offer stimulating disruptions for readers by challenging some of the popular assumptions that can be held about action research. Writers tackle the gaps between their research plans and their research experiences, showing how positive intentions to improve participation need to be constantly modified as they gain heightened awareness of the complexities of shifting practice. Other papers show the variable benefits of adapting action research approaches to address national education policy changes or question the claimed outcomes from building practitioner research into student teacher programmes. There is a healthy challenge from a Deleuze-inspired paper to the limitations of grounded data approaches. A classroom-based research project examines the practical paradox of using teacher authority to help learners become more self-disciplined, while other papers highlight how movements towards more active, integrated and holistic teaching environments need to be adapted to make incremental and provisional progress. Each paper provides evidence of critical development towards the goal of achieving more socially just practices, as practitioners and participants develop a greater sense of agency to help themselves and others. For example, Stuart’s article, ‘Problematic participation: reflections on the process and outcomes of participatory action research into educational inequalities’ highlights a range of power differentials that are often implicit when academics attempt ‘participatory’ research. Her account examines an international project that aimed to engage Higher Education students in working with groups of schoolchildren to examine their educational experiences. Stuart acknowledges the complex power relationships between academics, their HE students, and the schoolchildren with whom the HE students were researching, and concludes that structural differences cannot easily be erased, but barriers can be reduced if these differences can be acknowledged and articulated. She describes how participating groups were encouraged to devise social activities which enabled the researchers ‘to name and semi-manage the power dynamics present’. This paper is filled with valuable reflective insights from a research team struggling to reduce inequalities, and highlights the tensions of the team in appreciating that they were conducting research with co-researchers and on young people, and Stuart concludes that their work may be considered ‘participatory practice’ rather than ‘participatory research’. This openly reflexive account acts as a meditation on how action research methodology needs to be continually revised and reimagined when attempting to realise our ambitions in the fluid world of research relationships. Continuing the focus on the pr","PeriodicalId":47325,"journal":{"name":"Educational Action Research","volume":"30 1","pages":"337 - 341"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43437343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-24DOI: 10.1080/09650792.2022.2076139
Paula Aamli
ABSTRACT The climate crisis is not (merely) a problem of science but also, pre-eminently, a moral and ethical one. Humans alive today are the first with overwhelming data that our modern, industrialised, high-carbon-consumption ways of living threaten the biosphere we depend on, and perhaps the last with meaningful opportunity to avert climate disaster. However, knowing how to act is not straightforward. This crisis requires the application of our scientific ingenuity and also that we build our individual and collective psychological, emotional and moral responsiveness. Whilst not replacing technological innovations or political reform, there is a vital role for artful actions that locate and re-connect us, to ourselves, to our context-in-nature, to each other. In artful action attentiveness to the subjective, committed personal experience is fundamental and so artful inquiry often begins with first person work, which can then be adapted to address communal concerns. In this article I present outcomes from a sustained cycle of first-person inquiry, which used a structured framework of walking and ‘compressed writing’ that I term poetic charting. My aspiration is to develop simple exercises that might support an ethic of connectedness and participation for moral action appropriate to the challenges facing the present climate breakdown generation/s.
{"title":"Connecting artfully in the context of the emerging climate crisis","authors":"Paula Aamli","doi":"10.1080/09650792.2022.2076139","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2022.2076139","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The climate crisis is not (merely) a problem of science but also, pre-eminently, a moral and ethical one. Humans alive today are the first with overwhelming data that our modern, industrialised, high-carbon-consumption ways of living threaten the biosphere we depend on, and perhaps the last with meaningful opportunity to avert climate disaster. However, knowing how to act is not straightforward. This crisis requires the application of our scientific ingenuity and also that we build our individual and collective psychological, emotional and moral responsiveness. Whilst not replacing technological innovations or political reform, there is a vital role for artful actions that locate and re-connect us, to ourselves, to our context-in-nature, to each other. In artful action attentiveness to the subjective, committed personal experience is fundamental and so artful inquiry often begins with first person work, which can then be adapted to address communal concerns. In this article I present outcomes from a sustained cycle of first-person inquiry, which used a structured framework of walking and ‘compressed writing’ that I term poetic charting. My aspiration is to develop simple exercises that might support an ethic of connectedness and participation for moral action appropriate to the challenges facing the present climate breakdown generation/s.","PeriodicalId":47325,"journal":{"name":"Educational Action Research","volume":"30 1","pages":"550 - 568"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47724874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-24DOI: 10.1080/09650792.2022.2058974
D. Chadha, Pavan Krishna Inguva, Liem Bui Le, A. Kogelbauer
ABSTRACT Students as partners (SaP) is becoming an increasingly common notion in higher education , but we continue to grapple with questions around how to best involve our students with the work we do as educators. Queries around responsibility, accountability and trust are raised when considering SaP. Participatory action research is presented from an introductory chemistry module in chemical engineering, whereby students were actively involved as partners at various stages of the research, design and development of the module. The action research spanned a 2-year period, accommodating 2 iterations of the module's development. The student partners actively participated in this process in 4 different ways: to set the research agenda (at the beginning), to create suitable formative assessment questions for their peers (ongoing), to manage other students in designing learning tools (as part of the second iteration), and to design and develop appropriate assessment. Some initial structuring was required to establish what the working relationship should look like, but the student partners engaged constructively with the process and added considerable value to reshaping the module. The end result was a more student-focused module, where the student partners had challenged the status quo, used their experiences constructively, and truly empathised with their peers.
{"title":"How far do we go? Involving students as partners for redesigning teaching","authors":"D. Chadha, Pavan Krishna Inguva, Liem Bui Le, A. Kogelbauer","doi":"10.1080/09650792.2022.2058974","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2022.2058974","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Students as partners (SaP) is becoming an increasingly common notion in higher education , but we continue to grapple with questions around how to best involve our students with the work we do as educators. Queries around responsibility, accountability and trust are raised when considering SaP. Participatory action research is presented from an introductory chemistry module in chemical engineering, whereby students were actively involved as partners at various stages of the research, design and development of the module. The action research spanned a 2-year period, accommodating 2 iterations of the module's development. The student partners actively participated in this process in 4 different ways: to set the research agenda (at the beginning), to create suitable formative assessment questions for their peers (ongoing), to manage other students in designing learning tools (as part of the second iteration), and to design and develop appropriate assessment. Some initial structuring was required to establish what the working relationship should look like, but the student partners engaged constructively with the process and added considerable value to reshaping the module. The end result was a more student-focused module, where the student partners had challenged the status quo, used their experiences constructively, and truly empathised with their peers.","PeriodicalId":47325,"journal":{"name":"Educational Action Research","volume":"31 1","pages":"620 - 632"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43963672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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