- UNESCO's goal for 2030 - "Ensure equitable, quality education and lifelong learning for ALL by 2030" - To meet this goal UNESCO holds that quality and relevant teaching is needed and that teacher's role is central to this. - Quality must be emphasized for good quality education to be considered as important. Quality Assurance (QA) is needed. Quality considers all aspects from teaching to staffing, infrastructure research etc. - QA is a participatory and cooperative process across all levels - staff, students and other stake holders as well. It embraces quality in terms of pedagogy, curriculum and assessment domains. - Philippines rolled out the Philippine Qualification Framework to synchronise their efforts. The primary objectives of the PQF are - Adopt national standards - Support development and maintenance of pathways to access qualifications and help people move across different sectors - Align framework with international qualifications - Teachers are the main agents of positive societal change. Their qualifications, competence and commitment are central to achieving any goals in education. - Teaching requires artistic and scientific processes and skills. Knowing what to teach, how to teach and what methods to use when and for whom broadly define the teaching expertise. - Teachers need to also be life long learners. Teachers' learning process must be based on andragogy and focus on strategies such as reflections and self evaluations. - Three main phases are present in teacher growth: - Pre teaching - Early teaching phase characterised by concerns for self - Late teaching phase characterised by concerns for students - Action research (AR) is a paradigm of inquiry where the primary purpose is to improve capacity and practices of the researcher rather than to produce theoretical knowledge. - Stenhouse in 1975 advocated that curriculum research and development must belong to teachers. It is not enough that teachers work is studied, they must study it themselves. - Noffke points out how AR is characterised by three dimensions - professional, personal and political. - People who are outside the phenomenon under study conduct traditional research, while people who are part of the phenomenon conduct action research. - It is an attribute of action research that the problem is defined by the people who believe and feel that the problem is really a problem in the local setting and the solution to the problem is within the same setting without intention of generalising its results. - Participatory action research (PAR) is a type of Action Research and includes participatory research, praxis, participatory inquiry, collaborative inquire and cooperative inquiry. It's aim is to empower people to provide deep processing through knowledge construction. - Some researchers described PAR as a form of AR in which the researchers operate full collaboration with those who they are studying. PAR has key components - A focus on change - Context specific - Emphases on collaboration - Cyclical process - Liberatory - Not just another method - Success is some personal or collective change - PAR is driven by participants, offers a democratic model, collaborative at every stage and is intended to result in some action or change. It is not a method but more of an approach or a set of principles and practices. - Lots of literature shows that for teachers to develop and improve their teaching they need to reflect on what they do on a regular bases. Classroom research is one way of improving reflectivity. - Cruickshank suggested five ways to develop one's reflective abilities - Dialogue journals - Discussions - Portfolios - On campus laboratory experiences and action research - Two broad types of reflection - reflection on individuals and processes and reflection on society and collective social action. Though both are emancipatory in nature and have goals aimed at challenging deep structures their starting points are different. - Reflection is defined as a cyclical problem-solving process, carried out in a systematic and intentional (deliberate) way in which theory (envisaged as research-based concepts) is related to practice - Reflection consists of exploring personal beliefs, thoughts and actions in a deliberate way that often becomes part of an action research cycle. - Action research despite it's major benefits is not something teachers prefer to do. It requires a heavy time commitment and preparation on the part of the teacher. Teachers are also not able to see the link between AR and the work they are doing. - Some benefits of doing AR and PAR - Enables self directed growth as a professional - Facilitates the linking of both theory and practice - Helps to explicate the expertise of teachers and subject it to critical evaluation - Participative research requires the long term skills of the participants to "solve their own problems and keep solving them" which is an outcome that extends beyond the project. - In AR the researcher is a facilitator of the process. In PAR they are more a co-producer of learning. - The paper cites a bunch of studies showing the effectiveness of PAR and AR in teacher development. - Typical teacher training like pre-service or in-service training can only focus on theory or practice. With PAR or AR we can combine these two with praxis. - Looking into the demographics and profile of the Philippine basic education, PAR cannot solely be used as Professional Development Framework since most teachers in the field need to be capacitated in terms of ways and conduct of action research ---- Morales, Marie Paz E. "Participatory action research (PAR) cum action research (AR) in teacher professional development: a literature review." _International Journal of Research in Education and Science_ 2.1 (2016): 156-165. - [Link](https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1105165.pdf)