Collaborative Action Research Supporting Teachers' Professional Development as Exemplified by One Teacher Team's Action Research on a Study of Silent Reading

This paper focuses on one teacher team and the university facilitators who supported their collaborative action research within a province-wide professional development initiative designed by the provincial elementary teacher union to bring together teachers and university faculty in teacher-directed action research. The paper is collaboratively written by three teachers, their principal, two university facilitators, and the teacher union's director of the project. We identify the principal's and university facilitators' involvement as important contributors to the success of the initiative, but underline the significance of the research as being teacher-led and collaborative with funding for release days as features that follow the democratic principles of teacher autonomy and equality to support teachers' professional learning for change. The success of the initiative, "Teachers Learning Together", is exemplified by a report of one team's research methods and findings. (Contains 1 table.)