Action research in practice

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Action research makes a number of assumptions as a result of its nature and purposes (Richardson, 1994; Schmuck, 2006). To varying degrees, most such studies support some combination of these ideas:

• that teaching is itself really a form of research
• that action research, like teaching itself, requires substantial reflection
• that collaboration among teachers is crucial for making teacher research meaningful, and for the improvement of teaching
• that teachers' knowledge of teaching has to be shared publicly, especially when gained systematically through action research

To see how these features look in practice, look at several examples of action research studies.