Product Description
Each school and classroom is different. Therefore educators must learn, through their own inquiry, how to adjust their practices in ways that will improve teaching and learning. Practitioner Research for Educators explains how the popular technique of practitioner inquiry can be used by teachers, principals, and other school leaders to solve instructional problems and improve student achievement. Viviane Robinson and Mei Kuin Lai include step-by-step instructions, ready-to-use tools, and examples of successful practitioner research projects. Practical yet rigorous, this collaborative process is ideal for use in professional learning communities. Focusing on the pragmatic aspects of embedding research into everyday practice, the authors demonstrate how to develop an important, yet manageable research question; select research methods appropriate to the question; plan and conduct a research project that is both practical and rigourous; use inquiry to reveal, critique, and revise taken-for-granted assumptions about how to teach; use evidence to check the accuracy of claims about "what works"; communicate the results of the research to a range of professional audiences. Appropriate for novice and experienced educators alike, this indispensable book provides a functional framework for developing a culture of inquiry among teachers, based on high-quality information, mutually supportive critique, and a sustained focus on school improvement. While the primary audiences for this book are teachers, principals, and other school leaders, this valuable resource is equally useful for teacher educators and pre-service teachers.
