Science Teacher Action Research in Top Tier Science Education Journals: A Review of the Literature

Action research (AR) has long been promoted as a way teachers can improve their practice and increase their understanding of their educational situations. In this article we examine the impact of AR on science teacher education through a critical review of the literature. We sought to identify the goals and purposes of the AR, its mode, and the role of science teachers in authoring the articles. We selected 10 top tier science education journals and searched in them for the term action research in titles, abstracts, and key words. This resulted in 63 articles that met our criteria. The articles were analyzed using three frameworks: theoretical orientation, purpose, and mode. We found overall that there has been a dearth of articles about science teacher AR published in these journals; most had an interactive mode in which teachers were guided by and collaborated with university researchers; only three were authored or coauthored by science teachers; and almost none had political or emancipatory purposes. These findings raise questions about whether there is much AR done in science teacher education, why science teacher educators rarely publish their work in the top tier journals, why there is a lack of AR studies that are participatory in nature, and what our expectations are for practitioners to publish their work in research journals. These questions are discussed in this article.