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Educational training programs, at times, are criticized for inadequately addressing issues that occur in the field (Brydon-Miller, Greenwood, & Maguire, 2003). This omission in relevancy might possibly be attributed to the fact that teacher education faculty no longer engage with K-12 students on a daily basis. We have decided to fill that relevancy void through our graduate student action research projects. Action research projects, undertaken by graduate students within our program, not only foster reflection upon the needs of the students within their K-12 classrooms, but also inform us, as education faculty, as we prepare our undergraduate students for the world of teaching. In this chapter, we outline action research as a framework of inquiry. We argue in the chapter that engaging students in the individualized action research projects has benefits for multiple stakeholders ranging from the learners in K-12 classrooms to students in pre-service teacher education programs. Using four case studies, we illustrate how the action research process works and the ways it fosters inclusivity in classrooms at numerous levels. We will discuss the benefits and challenges to our approach and will conclude by discussing the lessons that can be learned from our experiences in humanistic education.

Research in higher education provides the foundation for the future of education and hence attracts the attention of policymakers who debate the merits and demerits of it in various contexts. Research in higher education is expected to anticipate emerging trends, problems faced by educationists, and to develop concepts that would be reliable to generate the curriculum needed for knowledge-based nations. Universities that are conscious of the future and want to contribute to coping with this rapidly changing world have been engaged in meaningful research agendas. Education now has to deal with issues like globalization, climate change, refugee crisis, new models for education systems, steering the entire system toward internationalization, and manage the institution with a scarcity of resources. These challenges call for extensive research and in-depth analysis of the problems so that a possible solution can be worked out by academics in identifying thematic areas of work and emerging fields of education. Research-based universities occupy a prime position in the 21st-century global knowledge economy. These institutions have multiple roles to play besides teaching–learning and academic achievement of their students. This book demonstrates how research is being viewed in different countries having completely diverse socio-cultural backgrounds. The authors have explored the university’s contribution toward the advancement of global science and scholarship in countries like Turkey, Kosovo, Latin America, and the United States. Authors have also explored new information and processes that are contributing to emerging trends that are significant in understanding the human condition through multiple academic and societal roles. These authors discuss issues related to culture, technology, and society, which are the foundation of intellectual and scientific trends.

Despite the breadth of knowledge on self and identity formation across the study of organizations, the field of organizational development and change has limited research on the construction of professional identity. Much has been written to describe the “self-concepts” of those practicing and researching in the field, but there have been no investigations that have explored how these “self-concepts” form. In addition, although women have contributed to defining the “self” in the field, men have held the dominant perspective on the subject. Thus, in this chapter, we address a disparity in the research by exploring the construction of professional identity in the field of organizational development and change, and we give voice to the renowned women who helped to build the field. Using the profiles of 17 American women included in The Palgrave Handbook of Organizational Change Thinkers, we perform a narrative analysis based upon the concepts and models prevalent in the literature on identity formation. By disentangling professional identity formation of the notable women in the field, we can begin to see the nuance and particularities involved in its construction and gain deeper understandings about effective ways to prepare individuals to work in and advance the field.