Education, Teaching and Action Research

This booklet presents an overview of action research as a method for educational inquiry. It answers questions about what is and is not action research, describes the action research process, and offers reflections from two educators on their experiences of using action research in their classrooms to improve their own teaching and their students' learning.

Published 2000 by The Education Alliance at Brown University

The American Educational Research Association (AERA), a national research society, strives to advance knowledge about education, to encourage scholarly inquiry related to education, and to promote the use of research to improve education and serve the public good.

The Center for Collaborative Action Research (CCAR) links together educators, researchers, and community organizers. The Center's aim is to create deep understanding of important social problems in a range of different contexts including, but not limited to schools, and to encourage evidence-based reasoning to solve these problems. The Center shares collaborative action research projects and supports the development of "knowledge-building" communities making use of innovative technology tools. The goal is to share what others are doing to reinvigorate their workplace with the capacity to reflect and adapt to evolving needs.

Networks: An Online Journal for Teacher Research offers a place for sharing reports of action research, in which teachers at all levels, kindergarten to postgraduate, are reflecting on classroom practice through research ventures. It also provides space for discussion of other ways in which educational practitioners, alone or in collaboration, use inquiry as a tool to learn more about their work with the hope of eventually improving its effectiveness.