Educational research and project design
Practice-based research and action research are the basic ways in which educational quality can develop. There is an old culture which thinks of research as something that professors supervise in university institutes. However the experiences of action researchers, especially in the English speaking world over forty years has shown that practitioners can carry out very effective research which is specifically designed to solving problems, rather creating grand theories. This movement has much in common with the democratisation of the social sciences and is related to the study of history from the bottom up, the social history of real people rather than just the kings and generals, which provided us with a much more richly textured picture of human history.
We believe that every practitioner can research their practice in useful and meaningful ways that not only lead to better, more founded practice, but to the development of faculty, observational skills and simply better understanding. Ideally this practitioner research is not carried out by single individuals but by teams of colleagues in research cluster or communities because the sum value of that research is the greater all round.
Given that teachers generally don’t have a lot of time free for other activities, ipf have developed a number of project management approaches for action research that can realistically be integrated into the life of the institution and that can be flexibly adapted to different situations.
We offer an introduction into action research methods, evaluation procedures and data collection and analysis tools. We can also advise on research project planning for your specific situation.