Action-research in Brazil: a bibliographical search of dissertations and thesis from 1986 to 2010

The aim of this paper is to present the result of a bibliographical search done in CAPES Data Bank concerning the dissertations and thesis which used the Action Research as a methodological approach to conduct researches in the area of English language teachers' education in the period of 1986 to 2010. The corpus of analyses restricts to the abstracts available by CAPES Data bank obtained through searches done with key-words. Considering the results, it was possible to identify the beginning of the publication of the dissertations and thesis about Action Research; the Brazilian regions where such researches were concluded; the knowledge area originated from those researches, and the different definitions and theoretical support used to make reference to Action Research. One of the contributions refers to the expansion of researches about Action Research bringing some appointments concerning the way those investigations have been made and understood in the Brazilian post-graduations programs.