Action Research : the first steps to start up a pilot experiment in heritage education

Peer-reviewed

Learning analytics in practice: setting up a laboratory for action research at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Since its inception in 1994 as a purely online university, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya(UOC) has been able to position itself among the main universities of the Catalan and Spanish university systems. Most of the students at the UOC (currently more than 60,000) are adults who have a profile that could hardly fit into the traditional university system, thus finding in the UOC an opportunity to start or continue their higher education grades, in a very innovative environment. The intensive use of ICT for both theteaching/learning processes and management allowsresearchers and practitioners to obtain data aboutwhat takes place in the UOC Virtual Campus, which is continuously being improved according to suchfindings.

Enhancing absorptive capacity in a non-research and development. An action research approach to converting individual observations into organisational awareness

The ability to recognize potential knowledge and convert it into business opportunities is one of the key factors of renewal in uncertain environments. This thesis examines absorptive capacity in the context of non-research and development innovation, with a primary focus on the social interaction that facilitates the absorption of knowledge. It proposes that everyone is and should be entitled to take part in the social interaction that shapes individual observations into innovations. Both innovation and absorptive capacity have been traditionally related to research and development departments and institutions. These innovations need to be adopted and adapted by others. This so-called waterfall model of innovations is only one aspect of new knowledge generation and innovation. In addition to this Science–Technology–Innovation perspective, more attention has been recently paid to the Doing–Using–Interacting mode of generating new knowledge and innovations. The amount of literature on absorptive capacity is vast, yet the concept is reified. The greater part of the literature links absorptive capacity to research and development departments. Some publications have focused on the nature of absorptive capacity in practice and the role of social interaction in enhancing it. Recent literature on absorptive capacity calls for studies that shed light on the relationship between individual absorptive capacity and organisational absorptive capacity. There has also been a call to examine absorptive capacity in non-research and development environments. Drawing on the literature on employee-driven innovation and social capital, this thesis looks at how individual observations and ideas are converted into something that an organisation can use. The critical phases of absorptive capacity, during which the ideas of individuals are incorporated into a group context, are assimilation and transformation. These two phases are seen as complementary: whereas assimilation is the application of easy-to-accept knowledge, transformation challenges the current way of thinking. The two require distinct kinds of social interaction and practices. The results of this study can been crystallised thus: “Enhancing absorptive capacity in practicebased non-research and development context is to organise the optimal circumstances for social interaction. Every individual is a potential source of signals leading to innovations. The individual, thus, recognises opportunities and acquires signals. Through the social interaction processes of assimilation and transformation, these signals are processed into the organisation’s reality and language. The conditions of creative social capital facilitate the interplay between assimilation and transformation. An organisation that strives for employee-driven innovation gains the benefits of a broader surface for opportunity recognition and faster absorption.” If organisations and managers become more aware of the benefits of enhancing absorptive capacity in practice, they have reason to assign resources to those practices that facilitate the creation of absorptive capacity. By recognising the underlying social mechanisms and structural features that lead either to assimilation or transformation, it is easier to balance between renewal and effective operations.

Enhancing teaching and learning speech acts: action research of Japanese as a foreign language /

This action research observes a second year Japanese class at a university where foreign language courses are elective for undergraduate students. In this study, using the six strategies to teach Japanese speech acts that Ishihara and Cohen (2006) suggested, I conducted three classes and analyzed my teaching practice with a critical friend. These strategies assist learners toward the development of their understanding of the following Japanese speech acts and also keep the learners to use them in a manner appropriate to the context: (I) invitation and refusal; (2) compliments; and (3) asking for a permission. The aim of this research is not only to improve my instruction in relation to second language (L2) pragmatic development, but also to raise further questions and to develop future research. The findings are analyzed and the data derived from my journals, artifacts, students' work, observation sheets, interviews with my critical friend, and pretests and posttests are coded and presented. The analysis shows that (I) after my critical friend encouraged my study and my students gave me some positive comments after each lesson, I gained confidence in teaching the suggested speech acts; (2) teaching involved explaining concepts and strategies, creating the visual material (a video) showing the strategies, and explaining the relationship between the strategy and grammatical forms and samples of misusing the forms; (3) students' background and learning styles influenced lessons; and (4) pretest and posttests showed that the students' Icvel of their L2 appropriate pragmatics dramatically improved after each instruction. However, after careful observation, it was noted that some factors prevented students from producing the correct output even though they understood the speech act differences.

Growing up expectations. Better understanding the expectations of community partners in participatory action research projects

This paper challenges the assumption that youth and youth agencies are in a condition of equality when entering a participatory action research (PAR). By asserting that it is not a state of equality that practitioners nor youth should assume nor be immediately striving for, but a consistently equitable process, this article draws from and reflects on the relationship between young people and researchers who have used a PAR methodology in action oriented projects. Using the UNESCO Growing up in Cities Canada project as a case example, this review extrapolates from and reflects on challenges faced by the project as a whole. Using semi-structured interviews to explore the roles of adults and youth, a number of strategies are highlighted as the techniques used to overcome these challenges. The discussion concludes with further reflection on the complexities of equality and equity, recommending a number of actions that have the potential to create an equitable environment in PAR projects similar to the one examined.

Linking the UK Professional Standards Framework to reflective practice and action research

This is a part of a collection of materials developed by the HEAcademy Subject Centre for Languages, linguistics and area studies. The materials provide reflective activities designed to engage teachers with some of the key issues in working with international students and practical ideas for ways in which these can be addressed. They will be of particular interest to new staff or anyone new to working with international students.

Action Research : investigación en el aula : inglés secundaria.

Este trabajo supone la continuidad de un proyecto comenzado el curso pasado, de inglés y para los niveles de secundaria, formación profesional, BUP y COU. Aplicados a 3 centros de bachillerato y 4 de formación profesional, con la participación de 9 docentes. La investigación-acción en el aula es una forma de trabajar encaminada a mejorar la práctica docente sin salir del propio entorno y por medio del trabajo en equipo y la reflexión y evaluación de la propia acción profesional contrastándola con la de otros compañeros, teorizando juntos los problemas prácticos que se van presentando, buscando estrategias para valorar lo que se hace y adaptarlo a las exigencias del proceso enseñanza-aprendizaje, realizando los cambios pertinentes. Objetivos: -Llegar a conocer mejor las estrategias y técnicas de investigación en el aula, atendiendo a los diferentes tipos de actividades, mediante la lectura y comentario en equipo de los libros o artículos adecuados. -Conociendo estas estrategias y técnicas para facilitar el aprendizaje autónomo del alumnado mediante la lectura y comentario de los libros o artículos más adecuados. -Ver la posibilidad de aplicación de estas técnicas y estrategias a través de aspectos concretos de una unidad didáctica determinada. -Puesta en común de las distintas experiencias de cada participante y de la interacción entre los diversos elementos (profesor-alumnos, alumnos-alumnos). -Redactar una propuesta viable y comprobada, con posibilidades de generalización de un método de investigación en el aula. El procedimiento seguido ha sido fundamentalmente el siguiente: 1. Lectura de bibliografía disponible relacionada con el tema. 2. Consensuar , a partir de lo anterior, modelos de observación aceptables para todos los miembros del grupo, que serían utilizados como herramientas para la recogida sistemática de información. 3. Definir a modo de hipótesis qué, quién y para qué observar. 4. En relación a lo anterior se decidió observar tanto el proceso de enseñanza como el de aprendizaje incluyendo recursos materiales y metodológicos implicados en los mismos. 5. Evaluar el resultado final viendo algunas propuestas que pudieran servir como referente valido en la línea de investigación-acción marcada inicialmente. De la evaluación realizada se desprenden las siguientes conclusiones: -La mayor parte de los modelos de observación seleccionados han resultado útiles para los fines propuestos. -Dichos modelos son extrapolables a otros grupos interesados en la misma línea de trabajo. -Las grabaciones realizadas en las distintas clases han resultado sufucientemente válidas para la observación, aún no reuniendo las condiciones técnicas idóneas. -Las encuestas adaptadas o elaboradas por el grupo han resultado útiles para los objetivos propuestos..

The struggle to redefine the relationship between knowledge and action in the academy : some reflections on action research.

Resumen del autor. Este art??culo pertenece al monogr??fico 'John Elliott: su pensamiento y su influencia'

Dinamización de las relaciones familia-centro escolar a través de la formación del profesorado en este campo de actuación. 'Enhancing family-school partnerships throug in-service teacher training programs and action-research in this field'.

Resumen basado en el de la publicación. Resumen y título en castellano y en inglés

Un ejemplo de 'Action Research' : el horario de segunda etapa de EGB.

Se aborda la forma de aplicar esta técnica de investigación aplicada, a la resolución de un problema educativo de gran importancia como es la confección de un horario escolar, y se describe un ejemplo real de elaboración para la segunda etapa de la E.G.B. en las áreas Fundamentales de de Experiencias, en el Centro Piloto Experimental 'Santo Cáliz' del I.C.E. de la Universidad Politécnica de Valencia. Asimismo, se dan unas orientaciones generales al profesorado para que pueda desarrollar una acción ó 'Action Research' en la resolución de un problema educativo en su centro de E.G.B.

The challenges of creating actionable knowledge: an action research perspective

Academia has a critical role in developing new knowledge which construction industry practitioners need to envision, undertake and sustain successful innovation. The new knowledge produced by academia, however, often does not satisfy the needs of practitioners. This unsatisfactory state of affairs is frequently taken to be the consequence of the cultural, motivational and operational differences between the two communities. Actionable knowledge is presented as a useful concept which can fuse the expectations, contributions and outputs of academia and practitioners. Within this context, action research is argued to be an appropriate methodology to develop successful actionable knowledge. Results from an action research project are given which provide researchers and practitioners greater understanding of the key factors that shape the degree to which action research produces actionable knowledge: change focus, collaboration capabilities and systematic process. The criteria intrinsic to Mode 2 research (Gibbons et al., 1994) are demonstrated to have utility in evidencing actionable knowledge. The implication for policy is that there is a need to develop and use appropriate actionable knowledge frameworks and measures to design funding calls, and to evaluate research proposals and outputs.