Its methods rely heavily on quantitative measures, with relationships among variables commonly shown by mathematical means. Positivism, used in scientific and applied research, has been considered by many to be the antithesis of the principles of action research Susman and Evered , Winter Over the last half century, a new research paradigm has emerged in the social sciences to break out of the constraints imposed by positivism.
With its emphasis on the relationship between socially-engendered concept formation and language, it can be referred to as the Interpretive paradigm. Containing such qualitative methodological approaches as phenomenology, ethnography, and hermeneutics , it is characterized by a belief in a socially constructed, subjectively-based reality, one that is influenced by culture and history.
Nonetheless it still retains the ideals of researcher objectivity, and researcher as passive collector and expert interpreter of data.
Though sharing a number of perspectives with the interpretive paradigm, and making considerable use of its related qualitative methodologies, there are some researchers who feel that neither it nor the positivist paradigms are sufficient epistemological structures under which to place action research Lather , Morley Rather, a paradigm of Praxis is seen as where the main affinities lie.
Praxis, a term used by Aristotle, is the art of acting upon the conditions one faces in order to change them. It deals with the disciplines and activities predominant in the ethical and political lives of people. Aristotle contrasted this with Theoria - those sciences and activities that are concerned with knowing for its own sake. Both are equally needed he thought.
That knowledge is derived from practice, and practice informed by knowledge, in an ongoing process, is a cornerstone of action research. Action researchers also reject the notion of researcher neutrality, understanding that the most active researcher is often one who has most at stake in resolving a problematic situation. A German social and experimental psychologist, and one of the founders of the Gestalt school, he was concerned with social problems, and focused on participative group processes for addressing conflict, crises, and change, generally within organizations.
Eric Trist, another major contributor to the field from that immediate post-war era, was a social psychiatrist whose group at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London engaged in applied social research, initially for the civil repatriation of German prisoners of war. He and his colleagues tended to focus more on large-scale, multi-organizational problems. Both Lewin and Trist applied their research to systemic change in and between organizations. They emphasized direct professional - client collaboration and affirmed the role of group relations as basis for problem-solving.
Both were avid proponents of the principle that decisions are best implemented by those who help make them. The growing importance of labour-management relations led to the application of action research in the areas of Organization Development, Quality of Working Life QWL , Socio-technical systems e.
This traditional approach tends toward the conservative, generally maintaining the status quo with regards to organizational power structures. It is c ontextural, insofar as it entails reconstituting the structural relations among actors in a social environment; domain-based, in that it tries to involve all affected parties and stakeholders; holographic, as each participant understands the working of the whole; and it stresses that participants act as project designers and co-researchers.
The concept of organizational ecology, and the use of search conferences come out of contextural action research, which is more of a liberal philosophy, with social transformation occurring by consensus and normative incrementalism.
Participatory Action Research, often found in liberationist movements and international development circles, and Feminist Action Research both strive for social transformation via an advocacy process to strengthen peripheral groups in society. A fourth stream, that of Educational Action Research, has its foundations in the writings of John Dewey, the great American educational philosopher of the s and 30s, who believed that professional educators should become involved in community problem-solving.
Its practitioners, not surprisingly, operate mainly out of educational institutions, and focus on development of curriculum, professional development, and applying learning in a social context. It is often the case that university-based action researchers work with primary and secondary school teachers and students on community projects.
Action Research is more of a holistic approach to problem-solving, rather than a single method for collecting and analyzing data. Thus, it allows for several different research tools to be used as the project is conducted. These various methods, which are generally common to the qualitative research paradigm, include: keeping a research journal, document collection and analysis, participant observation recordings, questionnaire surveys, structured and unstructured interviews, and case studies.
Of all of the tools utilized by action researchers, the one that has been developed exclusively to suit the needs of the action research approach is that of the search conference, initially developed by Eric Trist and Fred Emery at the Tavistock Institute in , and first implemented for the merger of Bristol-Siddley Aircraft Engines in Eric Trist sums up the process quite nicely -. The group meets under social island conditions for days, sometimes as long as five.
The opening sessions are concerned with elucidating the factors operating in the wider contextual environment - those producing the meta-problems and likely to affect the future. The content is contributed entirely by the members. The staff are facilitators only. Items are listed in the first instance without criticism in the plenary session and displayed on flip charts which surround the room.
The material is discussed in greater depth in small groups and the composite picture checked out in plenary. The group next examines its own organizational setting or settings against this wider background and then proceeds to construct a picture of a desirable future. It is surprising how much agreement there often is. Only when all this has been done is consideration given to action steps Figure 3 provides a schematic of a typical search conference.
Pre-conference process. Introductory plenary. Small group session 1. Presentation plenary. Small group session 2. Small group session 3. Task Group sessions. Final plenary. Task Group reports, discuss future contacts, create new Advisory Group. Post-conference process. Figure 3 - Search Conference. To accomplish this, it may necessitate the adoption of many different roles at various stages of the process, including those of.
The main role, however, is to nurture local leaders to the point where they can take responsibility for the process. This point is reached they understand the methods and are able to carry on when the initiating researcher leaves. Because action research is carried out in real-world circumstances, and involves close and open communication among the people involved, the researchers must pay close attention to ethical considerations in the conduct of their work.
Richard Winter lists a number of principles:. To this might be added several more points:. To better illustrate how action research can proceed, three case studies are presented. Action research projects are generally situationally unique, but there are elements in the methods that can be used by other researchers in different circumstances. The first case study, an account taken from the writings of one of the researchers involved Franklin , involves a research project to stimulate the development of nature tourism services in the Caribbean.
It represents a fairly typical example of an action research initiative. The second and third case studies centre around the use of computer communications, and therefore illustrate a departure from the norm in this regard. They are presented following a brief overview of this potentially promising technical innovation. In , an action research process was initiated to explore how nature tourism could be instituted on each of the four Windward Islands in the Caribbean - St.
Lucia, Grenada, Dominica, and St. The government took the lead, for environmental conservation, community-based development, and national economic development purposes. Two action researchers from York University in Toronto, with prior experience in the region, were hired to implement the project, with a majority of the funding coming from the Canadian International Development Agency.
Multi-stakeholder national advisory councils were formed, and national project coordinators selected as local project liaisons. Their first main task was to organize a search conference on each island. At this point, extended advisory groups were formed on several of the islands, and national awareness activities and community sub-projects were implemented in some cases.
To maintain the process, regional project meetings were held, where project coordinators and key advisory members shared experiences, conducted self-evaluations and developed plans for maintaining the process e. One of the more valuable tools for building a sense of community was the use of a videocamera to create a documentary video of a local project. The outcomes varied. Vincent the research project was highly successful, with several viable local developments instituted.
Grenada and St. Lucia showed mixed outcomes, and Dominica was the least successful, the process curtailed by the government soon after the search conference took place. There is always a risk that this kind of research will empower stakeholders, and change existing power relations, the threat of which is too much for some decision-makers, but if given the opportunity, there are many things that a collaborative group of citizens can accomplish that might not be possible otherwise.
In the past ten years or so, there has been a marked increase in the number of organizations that are making use of information technology and computer mediated communications. This has led to a number of convergences between information systems and action research. In some cases, it has been a matter of managers of corporate networks employing action research techniques to facilitate large-scale changes to their information systems. In others, it has been a question of community-based action research projects making use of computer communications to broaden participation.
The emergence of the Internet has led to an explosion of asynchronous and aspatial group communication in the form of e-mail and computer conferences, and recently, v-mail and video conferencing. While there have been numerous attempts to use this new technology in assisting group learning, both within organizations and among groups in the community [this author has been involved with a dozen or more projects of this kind in the nonprofit sector in Canada alone], there is a dearth of published studies on the use of action research methods in such projects Lau and Hayward , in a recent review of the literature, found that most research on group support systems to date has been in short-term, experimental situations using quantitative methods..
There are a few examples, though, of longitudinal studies in naturalistic settings using qualitative methods; of those that did use action research, none studied the use and effects of communication systems in groups and organizations. We can now to turn to the case studies, both of which are situated in an area in need of more research - that of the use of information technology as a potentially powerful adjunct to action research processes.
Lau and Hayward used an action research approach in a study of their own to explore the structuration of Internet-based collaborative work groups. Over a two-year period, the researchers participated as facilitators in three action research cycles of problem-solving among approximately 15 instructors and project staff, and 25 health professionals from various regions striving to make a transition to a more community-based health program. The aim was to explore how Internet-based communications would influence their evolution into a virtual collaborative workgroup.
The first phase was taken up with defining expectations, providing the technology and developing the customized workgroup system.
Feedback from participants noted that shorter and more spaced training sessions, with instructions more focused on specific projects would have been more helpful. The next phase saw the full deployment of the system, and the main lesson learned was that the steepness of the learning curve was severely underestimated, with frustrations only minimally satisfied by a great deal of technical support provided by telephone.
The final cycle saw the stabilization of the system and the emergence of the virtual groups. The researchers found that those who used the system interactively were more likely to establish projects that were collaborative in nature, and that the lack of high quality information on community healthcare online was a drawback. The process begins when you identify a question or problem you want to address. Action research is most successful when you have a personal investment, so make sure the questions you are asking are ones YOU want to solve.
This could be an improvement you want to see happen in your classroom or your school if you are a principal , or a problem you and your colleagues would like to address in your district. Learning to develop the right questions takes time. Your ability to identify these key questions will improve with each iteration of the research cycle.
Choose questions that can be answered within the context of your daily teaching. In other words, choose a question that is both answerable and worthy of the time investment required to learn the answer. Questions you could ask might involve management issues, curriculum implementation, instructional strategies, or specific student performance. For example, you might consider:. Before you can start collecting data, you need to have a clear vision of what success looks like. Start by brainstorming words that describe the change you want to see.
What strategies do you already know that might help you get there? Which of these ideas do you think might work better than what you are currently doing?
To find out if a new instructional strategy is worth trying, conduct a review of literature. The important thing is to explore a range of articles and reports on your topic and capitalize on the research and experience of others. Your classroom responsibilities are already many and may be overwhelming. A review of literature can help you identify useful strategies and locate information that helps you justify your action plan.
The Web makes literature reviews easier to accomplish than ever before. Even if the full text of an article, research paper, or abstract is not available online, you will be able to find citations to help you locate the source materials at your local library. Collect as much information on your problem as you can find.
As you explore the existing literature, you will certainly find solutions and strategies that others have implemented to solve this problem.
You may want to create a visual map or a table of your problems and target performances with a list of potential solutions and supporting citations in the middle. Now that you have identified the problem, described your vision of how to successfully solve it, and reviewed the pertinent literature, you need to develop a plan of action.
What is it that you intend to DO? Brainstorming and reviewing the literature should have provided you with ideas for new techniques and strategies you think will produce better results.
Refer back to your visual map or table and color-code or reorder your potential solutions. You will want to rank them in order of importance and indicate the amount of time you will need to spend on these strategies. How can you implement these techniques? How will you? Translate these solutions into concrete steps you can and will take in your classroom. Write a description of how you will implement each idea and the time you will take to do it. Once you have a clear vision of a potential solution to the problem, explore factors you think might be keeping you and your students from your vision of success.
Recognize and accept those factors you do not have the power to change—they are the constants in your equation. Focus your attention on the variables—the parts of the formula you believe your actions can impact. Develop a plan that shows how you will implement your solution and how your behavior, management style, and instruction will address each of the variables.
Before you begin to implement your plan of action, you need to determine what data will help you understand if your plan succeeds, and how you will collect that data. Your target performances will help you determine what you want to achieve. What results or other indicators will help you know if you achieved it? For example, if your goal is improved attendance, data can easily be collected from your attendance records. If the goal is increased time on task, the data may include classroom and student observations.
There are many options for collecting data. Choosing the best methodologies for collecting information will result in more accurate, meaningful, and reliable data. Obvious sources of data include observation and interviews. As you observe, you will want to type or write notes or dictate your observations into a cell phone, iPod, or PDA. You may want to keep a journal during the process, or even create a blog or wiki to practice your technology skills as you collect data.
Reflective journals are often used as a source of data for action research. You can also collect meaningful data from other records you deal with daily, including attendance logs, grade reports, and student portfolios. You could distribute questionnaires, watch videotapes of your classroom, and administer surveys.
Examples of student work are also performances you can evaluate to see if your goal is being met. Create a plan for data collection and follow it as you perform your research. The general goal is to create a simple, practical, repeatable process of iterative learning, evaluation, and improvement that leads to increasingly better results for schools, teachers, or programs.
Action research may also be called a cycle of action or cycle of inquiry , since it typically follows a predefined process that is repeated over time.
A simple illustrative example:. Unlike more formal research studies, such as those conducted by universities and published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, action research is typically conducted by the educators working in the district or school being studied—the participants—rather than by independent, impartial observers from outside organizations.
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