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Educational Action Research
Connecting Research and Practice for Professionals and Communities
Volume 28, 2020 - Issue 1: Special Theme on Issues in Participatory Action Research
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Articles

Continuing professional development designed as second-order action research: work-in-progress

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Pages 71-82 | Received 27 Jun 2017, Accepted 14 Jun 2018, Published online: 03 Jul 2018
 

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to describe how Lesson Study as second-order action research can be applied and how we planned to evaluate and improve course design, learners’ progress, team members’ roles and learning objectives of a 2-year university course for English as a Second Language teachers. The article describes the concept of a Lesson Study conducted in a course for teachers with a minimum of 3 years of teaching experience, rather than for students or undergraduates as in traditional concepts of the Lesson Study approach. PFL (‘Pedagogy and Subject Didactics Programme’) is a 2-year programme consisting of three seminars and five groups meetings in which the participants focus on the reflection of their professional practice in their specific school situation. All participants are required to plan, carry out and document their own action research project. The team provides input on action research and current topics in language teaching and learning, and advises participants. The methodology follows a mixed-method approach based on action research methodologies including questionnaires, interviews and observations. Analyses are conducted qualitatively and quantitatively. The article presents the concept of the project but not yet findings at this stage due to curriculum development and approval issues.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the overall administration of PFL, Franz Rauch and Burgi Wallner, for the financial support and Jan Apschner and Malena Pflaum for the research assistance. Furthermore, the authors want to express many thanks to Peter Posch who was the initiator of the idea and is always ready to give us his support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors thank the overall administration of PFL, Franz Rauch and Burgi Wallner, for the financial support. This work was supported by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research.

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