At various times on this blog I've referred to 'action research', a term not used very often in the UK but quite well known in the north America and Australia. My view is that given that we don't live in Utopia, we still have to come up now with ways of working which are better than top-down, diktats.
Here's the wikipedia entry on 'Action Research'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_research
You can make this matter as theoretical or as practical, as short or as long as you like. I've just supervised 5 excellent students who developed projects of their own across a term in primary and secondary schools in classroom and after-school or library contexts. Next spring, I will be supervising another ten whilst being a co-convenor of the poetry 'action research' project we run at the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education 'Poetry Write Now'.
The previous blog shows teachers in the midst of a piece of Action Research of their own devising.
