Action Research:
Is educative
Deals with individuals as members of social groups
Is problem-focused, context-specific and future-orientated
Involves a change intervention
Involves a cyclic process in which research, action and
evaluation are interlinked
Aims at improvement and involvement
Is founded on a research relationship in which those involved
are participants in the change process
(Hart E and Bond M - 1995)
Good action research is developmental; namely, it is
a form of reflective inquiry which enables practitioners
to better realise such qualities in their practice. The
tests for good action research are very pragmatic ones.
Does it improve the professional quality of the transactions
between practitioners and clients/colleagues? Mission Statement,
CARN
Literature and websites
The following selection of references offer a range of
perspectives on action-research applicable to educational
development. Many of these texts are written with schoolteachers
in mind though they are transferable to any field of education.
I have derived key principles from these references for
the action-research checklist below.
Carr W and Kemmis S (1983) Becoming Critical: Education,
Knowledge and Action Research, Falmer. This is a theoretical
exploration into reflective practice and epistemology in
education. The authors privilege action research as a method
that can produce transformative practice in contrast to
positivist or interpretivists research methods. Carr and
Kemmis argue that action research can problematise the socio-historic
context of research and can sustain a dialectic between
theory and practice in ways that other methods fail.
Elliott, J. (1996) Action Research for Educational
Change, Open University Press. This book is concerned
with action research as a form of teacher professional development.
See especially Ch.5 on the dilemmas and temptations
of the reflective practioner for a discussion about
insider research and teaching as craft v. reflective practice.
Hart E and Bond M (1995) Action-Research for Health
and Social Care: A Guide to Practice, Open University
Press. An assessment of the usefulness and the distinctiveness
of action-research over other methodologies; much can be
transferred to educational development.
Kemmis S and McTaggert R (1982) The Action Research
Planner, Deakin University Press. This is a guide
to implementing action research in education. The reader
is taken through a self-reflective spiral of planning, acting,
observing, reflecting, re-planning with suggested questions
and problem solving scenarios.
Lewin, K. (1946) Action Research and Minority Problems,
Journal of Social Issues, Vol.2. Lewin is a
US founding father of action research; he describes action
research as a spiral of steps that proceeds from planning
to action to observation and finally to reflection. Lewin
originally formulated action research for social problems
but educationalists have borrowed much from it.
McGill I and Beaty L (1995) Action Learning: a guide
for professional management and educational development,
Kogan Page. How to share and solve problems
through the use of action learning sets. The processes
described for developing professional practice follow similar
cycles as that of action research. A good supportive
text.
McNiff, J (1988) Action Research: Principles and Practice,
Routledge. This very accessible book focuses on the
methodology of action research and the aim of developing
a reflective practioner approach.. McNiff provides
a short and useful overview of the history and theoretical
underpinnings to action research. She critiques certain
models of action research (Kemmis, Elliott and Ebbutt) as
low on scope for self-reflexivity. Her approach follows
that of Whitehead (see below) which offers a dialetectical
logic founded on dialogue and on change as metamorphisis.
McNiff J (1993) Teaching as Learning: An action
research approach, Routledge. A teacher-user guide
to action research as praxis and self-development. This
book reviews a number of case studies of school based action
research. McNiff discusses the nature of knowledge and how
it can be generated from educational inquiry; she offers
a critique of what she calls the normative-analytic
approach which tests the processing of information but does
not engage with the quality of education. Action research,
according to McNiff, closes the gap between teaching and
learning.
McNiff J, Lomax P and Whitehead J (1996) You and Your
Action-Research Project, Routledge. This is a how
to book for an action researcher wanting clear, basic
guidelines and suggestions for their project. This book
is not theoretical but it gives references that are.
Schon, D.A (1983) The Refective Practioner: How professionals
think in action, Basic Books. Schon is the founding
father of professional development by reflective practice.
A classic read.
Somekh B and Thaler M (1997) Contradictions of Management
Theory, Organisational Cultures and the Self Educational
Action Research, Vol.5,1. Through transnational
case studies, this article looks at the role of participative
action research (PAR) in turning an organisation into a
learning one; it examines blockages created by defensive
routines; it urges organisation members to negotiate
multiple selves and relationships to maximise
their effectiveness and for the acquisition of Aristotlean
nous.
Stenhouse, L. (1979) Using research means doing research
in Dahl H et a (eds) Spotlight on educational
research, Oslo University Press. Strenhouse brought
action research to the field of education in Britain and
did much to popularise the idea of the teacher as a researcher,
the classroom as a laboratory and teachers as part of a
scientific community. This is one of a number
of articles that engage with this perspective.
Whitehead J (1987) Action Research and the
politics of educational knowledge, British Educational
Research Journal, Vol.13, No.2.
Winter, R (1998) Finding a Voice - thinking with
others: a conception of action-research Educational
Action Research, Vol.6,1. Winter focuses on the democratic,
collaborative aspect of action-research for the production
of really useful knowledge/theorising. This is a readable
snapshot of Winters perspective.
Winter, R (1987) Action Research and the Nature of Social
Inquiry: Professional innovation and educational work,
Gower. This somewhat dense book explores the theoretical
underpinning to action-research and its analytic capacities
against those of positivism. Winter promotes a reflexive
action research which treats action and research
or theory and practice dialectically
and which is sensitive to context.
Winter, R. (1989) Learning from Experience: Principles
and Practice in Action-Research, Falmer. Winter
discusses and describes the reasons for and process of action
research. His outline of six principles for the conduct
of action-research is useful both in terms of a theoretical
rationale for action research and for implementation procedures.
Zuber-Skerritt O (1996) Action Research in Higher Education:
examples and reflections, Kogan Page. This book
(also rather dense) is about the dialectic of theory and
practice within the framework of action-research. Exploration
is based on case studies in higher education in Australia.
Producing more effective HE learners is linked to the need
for students to have learning skills, i.e. to
know about the process of learning (metalearning) rather
than to learn study skill techniques only. Producing reflective
lecturers, the author urges, is about involving them in
the process of identifying, analysing and solving the problems
they confront themselves rather than presenting them with
research done by others.
Useful sites
A new on-line journal: Action Research International:
http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/gcm/ar/ari/arihome.html
Action research links to resources elsewhere: http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/gcm/ar/arr/links.html
The Centre for Action Research in professional Practice
(CARPP): http://www.bath.ac.uk/carpp/
The Collaborative Action Research Network (CARN): http://www.uea.ac.uk/care/carn/
An excellent site from Colorado University - http://www.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc/act_res.html
A good review of action research literature - http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/gcm/ar/arp/books.html
Here is an excellent article on action-research for teaching
- http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs/fqs-eng.htm
A checklist
for action research
There is no neat sequential process in action research.
All theorists of action-research offer models based on spirals
or cycles in which thinking, doing and watching are interwoven
and repeated throughout the research activity. Here are
some checklist points under three common headings for the
action-research process (planning, acting and reflecting).
Planning
- Identify a problem in your own practice. Write a
statement of this problem.
- Clarify what changes you can make to overcome the
problem. Write up your anticipated design of practice.
How does it differ from the status quo? What are the hoped
for outcomes?
- Share your thoughts, Ensure that your research is
question driven through dialogue with others (action learning
set members, critical friends, involved subjects,etc.)
- this helps you to be rigorous and to avoid bias; it
also helps you to avoid forms of self-validating inquiry
that presuppose the answer to a problem (e.g. I will change
this to see if it will rather than I will change this
because it will).
- Consider your own embeddedness (culturally, professionally,
socially, etc.) and the influence this has on your research
plan. Will your professional status affect your communication
with students? Are your questions skewed by your own social
and educational experiences?
- Keep your planning reasonably provisional. Be open
to the shifting focus your research might reveal (this
is the principle of generative action-research) and to
the revision of your original identification of the problem/need.
- Ensure that the scale of your research project is
realistic (starting small is usually best).
- Establish how long you have and/or need to watch
changes happening as a result of your action
- Ensure that supportive resources and involved people
can be mobilised for the research.
Acting
- Clarify the action part of the action-research.
What is its distinctive character?
- Experiment with not on students or colleagues.
Ideally, there is no subject-object dichotomy in action
research. Keep all concerned people informed as you progress
with your research. Ensure good quality feedback at important
points of the research process.
- Collect evidence, e.g. logs, personal field notes, video
observation, questionnaire data, evaluations, performance
measures, etc. Make it as rich as possible by thinking
about different ways of showing change (quantitative and
qualitative). Aim for triangulation (the process
of gathering data from many sources). Clarify with your
co-researchers their role in data gathering?
- Analyse your data as you gather it. Compare your observations
with those of your students/colleagues if applicable.
Critically assess the usefulness of your evidence. What
has changed? How can you show this? Identify what is missing/further
research questions.
- Synthesise your data and share it in various public
forms (meetings, publications, etc.) and encourage debate
about your findings.
Reflecting
- Adopt a formative approach to your research so that
you are open to new problems, directions and revisions.
Action-research is not a finite project because entering
its spiral processes is a way of being a reflective practitioner
at all times.
- Blur the distinction between your personal and your
professional development by asking questions about your
practice and assumptions from both areas.
- Do not inform your work with pre-defined quality indicators
because the research itself must throw up questions of
quality in the light of the practice researched.
- Be open to unintended outcomes and to mistakes or to
the possibility that the status quo worked better than
the change (which means reformulating the problem and
the imagined solution).
- Consider the ethical issues and those of value relating
to your research. For instance, are you making educational
judgements or political and wholly finance lead ones?
Will your practice create barriers for some groups or
will it expand access? Are all those implicated in your
research being informed of its purpose and progress?
- How are you checking that the judgements you are making
are reasonable ones?
|