Janusz Korczak: legacy of a practitioner-researcher

For more than 30 years, Janusz Korczak (1878-1942) devoted his life to educating orphaned Jewish children, and he stayed with them to the end as they all perished in the Treblinka concentration camp. In his teaching and writing, Korczak encouraged teachers to become autonomous knowledge produc-ers by questioning and interrogating their work. Korczak not only conceptualized this perception but also embodied it throughout his work as an educator. He was a pioneer in recognizing the contributions of teacher research to serving the students ’ interests and to the teacher’s own sense of empowerment. He respected the capabilities of science and objective measurement but at the same time appreciated the uniqueness and mysterious nature of the human soul that requires subjective, context-related, and intuitive perspective. For Korczak, research was the practical tool that would allow practitioner-researchers to spread their wings and dream of possibilities