Current challenges facing K-16 education, such as accountability, meeting standards, reaching diverse learners, curricular reform, and creating equitable conditions for teaching and learning, have fostered a greater interest in action research. To put it simply, action research is "a systematic, intentional inquiry by teachers' (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993, p. 53; Stenhouse, 1985, as cited in Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993, p. 7) designed to "bring about practical improvement[s], innovation, change or development of social practice" (Zuber-Skeritt, 1996, p. 83) and to "understand, improve and reform practice" (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2007, p. 297).