Cheryl vT on action research

"Do ed schools give good training, at all, in how to do action research??"

This probably depends on the ed school, but in my experience, the training on action research was abundant -- ridiculously abundant. Here's a good pdf that explains action research:

This paper explains the birth of action research back in the '70s:

"Education practitioners questioned the applicability of scientific research designs and methodologies as a means to solve education issues. The results of many of these federally funded projects were seen as theoretical, not grounded in practice" (page 14).

To me, this is the red flag... Examining your own practice in a thoughtful, meaningful way is great -- and hopefully all teachers conduct this reflective research as a matter of course.

But educators shouldn't simultaneously dismiss the (admittedly scarce) solid quantitative research out there because it's "too theoretical." In my view, that's educational malpractice...and sadly very common in ed school.

Generally speaking, I'm not inclined to spend a lot of time bashing the 1970s just because....because I'm not. No particular reason.

But there's no question the decade produced a number of very bad ideas, Exhibit A being constructivism. It wasn't until recently that I understood what constructivism is in the broad sense of the term. Constructivism is what progressive education became after it encountered postructuralism.

Traditional progressive ed (now there's a neologism for you!) probably wouldn't have been to my taste, but I would take it any day over constructivism.