ACTION RESEARCH AND SOCIOCULTURAL INCLUSION: A DOCUMENT ANALYSIS STUDY

Abstract

The constant and rapid change of today’s world, namely as a consequence of recent migration waves, implies the need to take intentional action to promote sociocultural inclusion, namely in the educational field, since schooling plays a determining role in the development of the necessary competences, of teachers and learners alike, to face the demands of a multicultural environment. This paper focuses on data collected from two PhD theses and three master’s dissertations available in the Open Access Scientific Repositories in Portugal (RCAAP) that report studies combining action research and intercultural inclusion practices. Thus, the aim is to identify teaching-learning strategies aimed at promoting sociocultural inclusion in school contexts and understand the extent to which adopting action-research as a teacher development methodology contributed to achieve that goal. The findings reveal that, despite some contextual difficulties, such as resistance to change, lack of time to get engaged in new projects, organizational obstacles to teacher collaboration, and teachers’ and learners’ low levels of intercultural awareness, all the participants benefited from the teacher development/ teachinglearning strategies adopted, which resulted in higher motivation and engagement levels, improvement of learners’ intercultural competence, and teachers’ stronger awareness of the importance of intercultural education.