Repositioning Teacher Action Research in Science Teacher Education

For more than 50 years action research has been promoted as a way for teachers to engage in inquiry into their educational situations to improve their practice, their students’ learning, and to add to the knowledge base on teaching and learning (e.g., Corey 1953; Cochran-Smith and Lytle 1993; Zeichner and Noffke 2001; Altrichter et al. 2007). Teachers engage in action research as individuals or in groups, alone or in partnership with university researchers. They identify areas for improvement, if not transformation, in their practice and address them through the practices of inquiry, action, reflection, and learning shared by individuals and groups creating change for students, teachers, administrators, policy makers, and other major stakeholders in the field of education. Science educators have been part of this movement by studying and facilitating science teachers’ action research (e.g., Baird and Mitchell 1987; Feldman 1996; Capobianco 2007; Hodson and Bencze 1998; McDonald et al. 1997; Tabachnick and Zeichner 1999; van Zee 2006). In science education, action research has been conducted at both preservice and inservice teacher levels for the primary purpose of advancing knowledge about how science teachers teach and what students learn in science. That said, the positioning (i.e., specific image) of action research as quality, legitimate research in science teacher education has become almost illusive, if not, invisible, in the past few years. To what can this invisibility be attributed? The most common critiques of teacher action research revolve around issues related to epistemology, methodology, and