ALARA Membership and Submission Guidelines

ALARA membership information, and submission guidelines for ALAR Journa

Jack the lion – the making of a film about action research as action research

In the pages that follow, it will be argued that the process of action research and the production of a documentary film are structurally comparable. Based on this assumption, this text tells the story of the making of a film on action research. It describes the process starting with the decision about who will be the protagonists, followed by script writing, filming and editing. The core issue is the film director’s strong intervention during the filming phase which is reflected in the light of his different roles and with respect to ethical considerations. The paper closes with reflections on what a documentary film can convey about action research

Mobile Learning in the ELT Classroom: How to Improve Teaching English as a Foreign Language in a Vocational School

The main aim of this action research was to investigate the possibility of the improvement of teaching English as a foreign language in a vocational school in Croatia. The main research questions focused on discovering what could enhance student motivation while learning a foreign language, how a teacher could facilitate student ownership of learning, and what were the possibilities of using a mobile application and the topic of cultural heritage in order to foster learning. Previous studies have failed to address innovative foreign language teaching and learning approaches in secondary vocational schools. The action research methods included an anonymous survey, teachers' observation and written interviewing. The collected data was analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. Conclusions that could be drawn encompass the positive students' feedback and practical implications for the vocational school English language curriculum. Students' participation at all stages of the action research made them active partners and thus owners of their learning.  

New ways of representation – How can I represent Living Theory research in a way that creates new knowledge and resists hegemony?

This paper will explore whether a layered approach to writing up Living Theory research provides a way to show development of my new knowledge in which I resist hegemony. Each layer will present different forms of learning through the use of three voices. My storyteller voice will allow my story to stand for itself.My narrator voice will introduce my living-theory that is emerging from my research and an analysis using an Adlerian understanding from my early recollections.My meta-narrator voice will ask questions using an approach that is consistent with a Deleuzian ontology. This paper will weave my three voices as a new approach to representing Living Theory to show how I developed my values of love, hope, justice and participation in my challenge of dominant discourses. The dominant discourses explored are the cultural expectations for children in care, how to undertake a restructure and traditional forms of research

Action Research on Literature Circles in Moodle Chat

The aim of this paper is to study the benefits and drawbacks of using Moodle Chat for the implementation of literature circles (LC) in the English language classrooms among university students. LCs are widely used in language teaching to promote active learning, develop communication skills and encourage critical thinking, creativity and self-motivation. Furthermore, they are highly effective in developing other soft skills such as problem solving, leadership, teamwork and empathy which are in high demand in the contemporary job market. Technology advancements and the development of new e-learning tools have opened myriads of possibilities for developing language skills in less conventional ways. Therefore, instead of the traditional LC conducted in class, students have been given the opportunity to conduct LC discussions in the Moodle Chat environment in their own arrangement, without direct teacher intervention. The added value of Moodle Chat is that the conversations are recorded and provide material for further linguistic and discourse analysis and can be adapted and used to assess the students’ level of proficiency in both general and academic English. The respondents are first- and second-year students of English Language and Literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Osijek, Croatia. The aim of the study is to establish the suitability of online chats for implementing LCs, and to obtain student feedback and their assessment of the conducted activities.Keywords: communication skills, literature circles, Moodle chat, soft skills, TEF

ALAR Journal Vol 26 No 1 Cover and Table of Contents

Table of Content

The transformative possibility of literary métissage: An action research report

This report describes and exemplifies ongoing action research advancing an inquiry method with the potential to reveal evidence of individual and collective relational learning resulting from teacher professional development.  The method of literary métissage encourages the emergence and merging of voices, and may be appropriate for use in contexts other than schools.  The report traces the design, enactment and outcome of a workshop presented at the ALARA World Congress, 2018, in which participants concerned with transformative social change experienced the method's potential.  Participants' products, involvement in the validation of the project, and authors' reflections on modelling the method are shared

ALARA Membership and Submission Guidelines

Information about Action Learning, Action Research Association Ltd, and guidelines for submitting papers for this Journa

Keynote address: The action learning, action research experiences of professionals

This keynote relates the experiences of professional educational-practitioners, which contribute to the legacy of action learners, action researchers, and others concerned with transforming social change for the flourishing of humanity. It provides an evidence-based justification for claiming that this legacy includes the creation of an educational epistemology that is transforming globally what counts as educational knowledge in the Academy. This transformation takes into account the power relations that are supporting and hindering its legacy, including the power of epistemicide. The epistemology is being created in the explanations of practitioner-researchers of their educational influences in their own learning, in the learning of others and in the learning of the social formations in which the explanations are located. The energy-flowing values that constitute explanatory principles and living standards of judgement are clarified and evolved through the use of digital multi-media narratives. The freely available resources http://www.actionresearch.net  include 10 years of the Educational Journal of Living Theories (EJOLTS -  http://ejolts.net ). These are international resources for all Action Researchers, Action Learners and educational-practitioner researchers who want to research their practice to understand, improve and explain it in terms of their ontological and social values and their practice and to generate their own. These theories are generated from inquiries of the kind, “How do I improve what I am doing?” in which ‘I’ exists as a living contradiction and the researcher’s ontological and relational values form their explanatory principles and standards of judgement

ALARA 2018 World Congress Summary of Presentations

Summary of Presentations at the ALARA 2018 World Congress in Vermont USA in June 201