Action research for preschool teachers' professional development: Advantages and challenges ; Starfendarannsókn til starfsþróunar leikskólakennara: Ávinningur og áskoranir

Action research is an umbrella term used for research conducted with and by practitioners. The aim of action research is to improve practice and therefore the methodology has been effective for teachers’ professional development. Professional development deepens and widens teachers’ competences, knowledge, perspective, motivation and independence. This can happen both through formal and informal education and promotes teachers’ performance, satisfaction and reduces the likelihood of burnout or elimination from the profession. The study reported in this article was a collaborative action research project where two communities with different aims and demands meet: a scientific community and a practice community. Such research can be understood to involve two joint learning cycles that together create a process of change. In collaborative action research, in a school–university partnership, both parties benefit from the collaboration. It is suggested that from the collaboration of researchers and practitioners, a third space can emerge when a successful partnership is achieved. In this study, the collaboration was between seven preschool teachers in one Icelandic preschool and one university teacher. The research lasted over two years. The preschool teachers focused on their own professional development in relation to values education, which was the focus of Nordic research project this study was part of. The researcher’s role was to support and encourage the preschool teachers throughout the whole process and to collect the bulk of the data. In this article, the focus will be on the advantages and challenges the participating preschool teachers experienced during the research process, as well as how they experienced the collaboration with their colleagues and the university teacher. The focus here is not on findings related to values education, which was the research topic since these have been presented elsewhere.The data for this study was collected as follows: Firstly, three interviews were conducted at the end ...