Action Research to Enhance Quality Teaching

Abstract

Quality teaching is and will remain a challenge for procedural educational innovation, as it is both the target objective and the vehicle of change. The main contributor to this process is always the teacher who has to adhere to the process of change for the purposes of developing his/her own career and improving the quality of teaching. This study aims to determine how action research would improve quality teaching in pre-service and in-service teacher training, and shed light on the reciprocal relationship between action research and innovation. In this paper, action research is considered as a constant independent variable that can enhance the dependent variables of pre-service/in-service teacher training and quality teaching requirements. The latter are supposed to be two purposes of innovation. Innovation is, thus, performed as the usual practice of innovative teachers who take risks of improving quality teaching in a methodological procedure according to their teaching contexts. The study attempts to answer the following questions: What is quality teaching and how does it impact innovation within the quality teaching assurance framework? What is action research and how does it help teachers improve their research and innovation potential? What does the ENS programme course provide as qualitative training to improve quality teaching and innovation? And, What are the results achieved, so far, at the ENS Constantine? We will illustrate the whole procedure with a specific example of teacher training at Ecole Normale Supérieure of Constantine.

Keywords: Action research, innovation, quality teaching, teacher training