Product Description
For courses in Action Research; supplement for Reading Methods courses; and Teacher Education courses.
Appealingly styled as a “journey” on a “yellow brick road,” this compact text links all of the practical aspects of conducting action research with the scholarly tools that support the cycle of reflective practice, thereby showing prospective and practicing teachers how to make action research a natural part of their teaching. Offers a clear vision of how curiosity, play, imagination, and creativity can inform classroom teaching, as well as practical, well-grounded guidelines for using these qualities to enhance effective research studies in both individual and collaborative contexts.
From the Back Cover
Action Research for Teachers: Traveling the Yellow Brick Road, Second Edition, provides a solid framework for problem solving in collaborative contexts. The authors of this book detail how action research is a powerful method for documenting, developing, and evaluating the curriculum. Using the analogy of the Wizard of Oz and its characters, this text is expressly written for literacy teachers and identifies all of the elements that make action research a valuable self-assessment tool for teachers.
Features include: - Seven Sections. Each section is complete with excerpts from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Baum, 1900) to set the tone of the chapter, introductions, and summaries.
- Exploring the Forest. This is a workshop of explorations and exercises that will enable the reader to develop tools for carrying out an action research project, including how to keep a research journal and collect artifacts for a mini-portfolio.
- Stepping Stones. These features present tips to help readers gain insights into action research processes, such as getting organized and knowing what documents and artifacts to save.
- Four Case Studies. Five teachers share their action research studies and progress throughout the book, showing readers how to use action research in real classroom situations.
- Travelers' Notes and Stories. Fellow scholars provide notes and stories of their projects: how they analyzed their data, told their research stories, and organized and displayed their data, teaching readers how to further implement and organize an action research project.
