engleski

Action research in the eyes of the students

Incorporating research activities into higher education is a part of the national education strategy in Croatia. Modern higher education is student-oriented (Åkerlind, 2004 ; Kember and Kwan, 2002 ; Martin et al., 2002 ; Norton et al., 2005), considers students’ interests (Davis, 2005 ; Miočić, 2017 ; Peko et al., 2008 ; Pring, 2007) and develops competences (Lončar-Vicković and Dolaček-Alduk, 2009 ; Vizek Vidović, 2009). Important competence for the students of teacher studies is research competence, and doing action research during the study is the way to develop students’ research competence in context of “learning by doing” (Dewey, 1938 ; Ord, 2012). In the years 2017/2018 we conducted an action research on action research with our students in methodology courses. Participants were 24 prospective pre-school educators, 27 primary school teachers and 20 pedagogues. The aim of the action research was to improve their knowledge on and motivation for the action research in their future work. Qualitative and quantitative results showed progress in their understanding of action research as well as in their motivation for doing it in the future. The change of the biggest proportion was among primary school teacher students whose initial knowledge and motivation were poor, but in the end, regarding two other groups of students, showed the biggest improvement in both aspects. Action research was reflective tool for us, teachers-researchers, which gave us the insight into different aspects of our teaching strategies and students’ understandings from their own perspective.

action research, research competence, teacher studies

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