We Almost Made It: Looking Back on an Evolving Democratic Classroom

ABSTRACT This is the account of a practitioner using action research in his classroom. Lamenting a lack of democracy in his teaching, the teacher is advised by his critical friends to present the problem to his sixth grade students. Together, they come up with a plan to try to democratize their classroom one period at a time. Using both student and teacher qualitative and quantitative self-evaluations and processing the data in class meetings, they see improvement and make progress as they strive for responsible democratic citizenship