Summary

This book celebrates the teacher-researcher. It is about the way in which teachers can use action research to improve their own practices of managing schools and classrooms. Its message is political: through action research teachers can emancipate themselves from being mere implementers of others' policies and can themselves become the change agents for school improvement; but its style is pragmatic: the step-by-step guides to doing action research can be followed easily by teachers who wish to engage in the process. Traditional research has often been alienating for teachers, like the books and journals that house it. What teachers have to say has been relegated to publications about classroom practice, its implications for research and theory being discounted. Although the teacher-innovator is not a new phenomenon, research published by teachers is. This book reverses that trend because it is written by teachers who are describing their own practices. The book also celebrates collaboration as the way to bring about effective change. The action researcher works with colleagues at school, with teachers from other schools and with the support offered by LEAs and colleges. This collection of accounts from different educational perspectives contains useful indications of how the professional development of teachers can be managed within the present resourcing arrangements so that school, LEA and college all have a part to play.