This paper aims to depict the valuable tools for pedagogical professional development through an action research on students’ significant learning in a context of higher education. This three-year educational action research was conducted with the participation of 108 pedagogy students to collect data through documenting evidence relevant to the research issues using the student’s feedback and the teacher’s self-reflective journal entry. | VNU Journal of Science: Education Research, Vol. 33, No. 2 (2017) 1-13 RESEARCH Students’ Significant Learning in Higher Education as a Valuable Tool for Pedagogical Professional Development1: An Action Research Nguyen Duy Khang* University of Gdańsk Received 12 January 2016 Revised 15 March 2016; Accepted 22 June 2017 Abstract: This paper aims to depict the valuable tools for pedagogical professional development through an action research on students’ significant learning in a context of higher education. This three-year educational action research was conducted with the participation of 108 pedagogy students to collect data through documenting evidence relevant to the research issues using the student’s feedback and the teacher’s self-reflective journal entry. The collected data was framed using Padilla’s Unfolding Matrix before being analyzed for findings and discussions. The study results contribute to the contextual practices of Fink’s taxonomy by exploiting the values of the action research in the classroom with attention to the signals of problems and resolve them with reference to the student’s feedback for improving their learning. Keywords: Action research, significant learning, Fink’s taxonomy, pedagogical professional development. The idea of writing this paper is to share the path of my pedagogical professional development when I did not even know what I have done to improve the teaching practice is popularly used as “action research”*1 in the world. Before 2011, the principles of action research have been applied in my teaching for a few years with a different name of “creative ideas from experiences” in my mother tongue. I recognized problems from my teaching and students’ learning and only wanted to improve the situations with all efforts. At that time, being ignorant distanced me from many studies, so-called “action research” from the classroom situations which could be resolved for better learning of the students. At the beginning, I tried to .
