Welcome to the Action Research web page for the Faculty of Education at Queen's University for the 1997-98 academic year! The following action research reports were created by teacher candidates in Rena Upitis' PROF 190 G class: Research, Theory, and Professional Practice

Action research is a term used to describe professionals studying their own practice in order to improve it. Applied to teaching, it involves gathering and interpreting information to better understand an aspect of teaching. Action research is an important development in the broad territory of "teacher's professional development." It is called "research" because teachers are searching/re-searching their classroom practices. It is not research in the traditional sense of the word (it has nothing to do with lab coats, number-crunching, or "objectivity"!).

Teacher candidates are asked to identify an aspect of their practice to investigate in the school context and to develop a professional development plan to deal with the identified area of concern. The components of the plan include:

• writing a short proposal describing an area of concern;

• reading relevant literature;

• formulating ideas for action based on the literature;

• critically examining the ideas through personal experience as well as through conversations with others, trial and error, and re-examination of assumptions;

• making claims about what has been learned through the action research project and providing evidence to validate those claims; and

• presenting the action research project to peers.

We hope you enjoy reading our action research reports !

Andrew Cotton, March 10, 1998