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Collaborative Action Research as a Tool for Teachers’ Professional Development: A Study in a Private Lebanese University

Collaborative action research (CAR) is gaining currency as a teacher professional development strategy. This paper reports on the collaborative action research undertaken by two university teachers from different disciplines: a teacher of English and a teacher of Cultural Studies (CS) aiming to introduce a greater variety of activities in a predominantly lecture-based CS classroom and increase student involvement in class through the employment of active learning techniques. In addition to its main focus, the research brought to light the importance of taking into consideration such aspects peculiar to CAR as challenges of collaborative meaning-making, tensions arising in the process ofcollaboration, power relations between the researchers, and the pole of differing teachers ' perceptions. Observations, teacher diaries, transcripts of reflective dialogues of the Ovo researchers, and student questionnaires were used to document and analyse the classroom practice and the outcomes of the instructional changes. The research shows that professional development cannot be reduced to the use of new instructional techniques in class. Changes in instructional practices involve deeper changes in the teacher 's beliefs and teaching philosophy, and thus require time.