Section archive - Research Methods

This article addresses a single aspect of narrative research: the construction of narratives as representations of research studies, using literary elements and devices common to nonfiction and fiction texts. The authors discuss these elements and use four narratives to illustrate them. The authors address how literary elements intersect with more familiar practices of generating and analyzing evidence to reveal themes.

This article analyses and discusses the roles and participation of those involved in a collaborative action research project to highlight the factors that influenced their content, quality and intensity. Emphasis is given to the reflections of the facilitator, who is the author, on the processes employed to achieve equal participation and roles in the action research. Meetings and interviews with teachers are content-analysed to provide descriptions of the timing, content and type of interactions among the members of the collaborative action research.

In this article the authors draw upon 14 semi-structured interviews with the participants in a teacher-researcher project on the theme of 'ensuring African Caribbean attainment'. The aim of shedding light on the purposes, processes and lived experiences of teacher research in a difficult and contentious intellectual and practical domain. In the second half of the article the authors analyse the challenges and the rewards of participating in the project, including the challenges of facilitating teacher research. The authors also review the key implications of the research for policy and practice.

In this article, the authors describe an innovative capstone course for preservice K-8 teachers integrating action research and a unifying theme in science. The goals of the capstone course are to increase student knowledge of the unifying theme, improve written communication skills, and introduce students to educational research. The analysis of action research reports demonstrates that students are able to connect their action research project results to previous research.