ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the book, describes the philosophy, theoretical bases, and pedagogy of an innovative online M.Ed. program and briefly describes the book’s chapters. The M.Ed. Program in Global Education at Arizona State University is designed to support practicing teachers in engaging in authoritative equity-based research. It teaches practicing teachers to use epistemologically sound research to develop agency to advance culturally sustaining humanizing practices. Over 1.5 years, teachers take courses on theoretical framing, research design, and data collection methods, review the literature, develop a proposal, and implement an action research project. Using comparative education theory, inquiry-based pedagogy, and transformative learning, teachers thoroughly research a global topic connected to the UNESCO SDG4s with application to their local context through action research. After describing the program’s curriculum, the following chapters present students’ culminating project reports as examples of the benefits and challenges of teachers engaging in action research. The final chapter discusses the role of research in teachers’ professional knowledge, identifying it as a distinctive signature pedagogy of the profession urging the inclusion of research methods in the teacher education curriculum. This program may serve as a model to the education profession for transforming education toward sustainable equity.
