Action research: educational tools and the improvement of practice

One way to attain professionalism among teachers is through action-research. In this article, an in-service training project is presented and discussed. The project was, over a period of two-and-a-half years, carried out with pre-school work teams in an area of Göteborg, Sweden. During this time, each team met regularly and had access to an in-service leader. In the process, diary writing and observation were used, and together with this access to an in-service leader, they were seen as educational tools. Data was collected through interviews and surveys with open-ended questions from six of the work teams. Subsequently, the data was analysed through the action research-spiral and it was then seen that the educational tools were important for practitioners if they were to continue improvement at school. A key issue for the teachers seems to be how the educational tools and the actions are related to everyday practice.