Understanding Action Research

Action research is a process of deep inquiry into one's practices in service of moving towards an envisioned future aligned with values. Action Research is the systematic, reflective study of one's actions and the effects of these actions in a workplace context. As such, it involves deep inquiry into one's professional action. The researchers examine their work and look for opportunities to improve. As designers and stakeholders, they work with others to propose a new course of action to help their community improve its work practices. As researchers, they seek evidence from multiple sources to help them analyze reactions to the action taken. They recognize their own view as subjective and seek to develop their understanding of the events from multiple perspectives. The researcher uses data collected to characterize the forces in ways that can be shared with practitioners. This leads to a reflective phase in which the designer formulates new plans for action during the next cycle. Action Research is a way of learning from and through one's practice by working through a set of reflective stages that helps a person develop a form of "adaptive" expertise. Over time, action researchers develop a deep understanding of how forces interact to create series of complex patterns. Since the forces are always changing, action research is a process of living one's theory into practice.

The researchers both act and seek to learn from the actions taken. The subject of action research is the actions taken, the change, and the theory of change that is held by the persons enacting the change. While the design of action research can originate with an individual, social actions taken without the collaborative participation of others are often less effective. To be successful, the action researchers have to plan in such a way as to draw an ever widening group of stakeholders into the arena of action. The goal is to work towards a better understanding of their situation in order to affect a positive personal and social change.

This form of research then is an iterative, cyclical process of reflecting on practice, taking an action, reflecting, and taking further action. Therefore, the research takes shape as it is being performed. Better understanding from each cycle points the way to improved actions.

Goals of Action Research include:

Developing Action Research Questions: A Guide to Progressive Inquiry

The questions a researcher asks can guide their process. A good question will inspire one to look closely and collect evidence that will help find possible answers.

What are good examples of action research questions? What are questions that are less likely to promote the process of inquiry that is at the heart of action research? The best question is the one that will lead you to look at your practice deeply and engage in cycles of continuous learning from your everyday practice of your craft. These questions come from a desire to have to have practice align with values and beliefs. Exploring these questions helps the researcher to be progressively more effective in reaching their personal goals and developing professional expertise.

Good questions often arise from visions of improved practice and emerging theories about the change that will move the researcher closer to the ideal state of working practices. When stated in an if/then format, they can take the shape of a research hypothesis. If I [insert the action to be taken], how will it affect [describe one or more possible consequences of the action]? We will look at two examples, one from education and one from a business setting.

Development of Action Research Questions in an Educational Context

Suppose the researcher is worried about designing the learning context to meet the needs of students who are not currently doing well in the classroom. The general question might be:
How can I personalize instruction to match the diverse needs of my students?

This forms a good overall goal which can then lead to a number of possible cycles of action research, each with a separate question.

Consider this question:

If I listen to students, will I have better understanding of them?

This question suggests an action and possible outcome but is vague in both in the description of the action and in the possible outcome.

Now consider:

If I set up community circle time to listen to students describe their learning experiences in my classroom, in what ways, if any, will the information about their learning processes help me redesign the way I teach?

Now it is clear what the researcher intends to do and what a possible outcome might be. In listening to students, the researcher might discover information that will lead directly to an experiment in instructional design or might refocus the overall goal to one that was not apparent when the researcher started the quest.

Development of Action Research Questions in an Corporate Context

Another example, this time from a business setting where people in diverse offices are working in ways that need more coordination.

The action researcher might identify the problem as "with current poor communication options, decisions are made without attending to the issues of how this decision affects other parts of the system." The researcher might see a role for technology in forging a solution to this problem. For example, creating a database for storing and sharing documents. The overall research question might be:

How can the development of a common location for shared knowledge and the use of interactive communication tools increase the collaborative effectiveness of team-based decision-making in our different regions?

The next step is to define what kind of communication tool will be used and how the researcher plans to measure collaborative effectiveness of the distant teams.

Cycle questions that might evolve should be specific with respect to the actions taken and the outcomes that will be monitored:

If I create a wiki to share documents and increase coordination, to what extent will the teams use this means of storing information to coordinate their decision-making?

A second cycle question that might follow when it is clear that other teams failed to use the wiki as effectively as the researcher had hoped:

How will making all day support available on instant messenger for questions about the use of the wiki affect the use of the wiki to organize group work?

Recognizing Weak Action Research Questions

• Questions with known answers where the goal is to "prove" it to others. For example, a person has been holding family math night for years and sees an effect on parent participation. A weak question for action research would be: Will holding a family math night increase parent participation? This might be a great evaluative research question where a controlled study could be set up to explore the connection. But evaluative research is different than action research. Action research is an experiment in design, it is trying an action to learn more about the consequences.
  
• Questions that can be answered yes or no. Generally these are questions that will not direct you to pay attention to the many nuances of the setting and the interactions. Although, like any guide, while some yes/no questions can provide direction, it is often helpful to think about how to transform the question into a different format. For example: Will the introduction of project-based learning lead to more student engagement? might be reworked to How will the introduction of project-based learning affect student engagement in my classroom? The first one, the researcher can answer the question with yes (an outcome that they might have expected). The second question guides them to look for the possible mechanism of project-based learning (maybe ownership, collaboration, or self-assessment) that seems to be related to increased engagement.
  
• Questions that can be answered by reading the literature. What does community of practice mean? might be a question that the researcher needs to answer, but the answer can be found by reading more readily than by engaging in action research. A better formulation for action research might be: How will increasing the time for teacher collaboration in grade level teams affect the development of a community of practice at our school?"

Sharing your Action Research with Others:

The purpose of the final report is to share ideas with others in your community of practice who would value the knowledge you gained. How are you going to share it with them? Action Researchers will need to decide what to write and to whom to write.

One of the strongest acts of leadership can be the quiet act of writing—of sharing what you have learned. Writing helps you to reach people that you will never see. It is a very powerful act. Through writing, you make a contribution to the body of knowledge that exists beyond yourself.

A Written Report

This is the template that we recommend to students at Pepperdine University for their Master of Arts Thesis, but there are multiple ways to organize an action research report.

INTRODUCTION:
The significance of the problem I am addressing. The reader needs to be invited to think about the problem at the widest level. This should answer the question --Why should a read this, why should I care about this study? This is not about the context but about the problem and how it is linked to your visions for a different future.

THE CONTEXT :

WORK/COMMUNITY CONTEXT:
Once you have a posed a problem at a general level, you will need to provide the context of your work. There are two parts to this. One if the local context (this section) and the other is the professional context (review of literature). These can come in whatever order makes sense to you.In your local context, you may want to describe your membership/position in your community of practice and how you worked in this setting to address the problem you have established.

LITERATURE REVIEW
The literature is other way to set the context for your work. What have others done that inform my understanding of the problem? What theories or predictions about outcomes come from past research? How is what you plan to do similar or different from what others have tried?

THE RESEARCH

RESEARCH QUESTION:
The research question sets up your inquiry. The overall question is the overarching problem selected. The cycles questions are sub questions that helped address this larger issue in different ways.

REPORT OF CYCLES OF RESEARCH
Action research takes place in cycles. Each cycles is a discrete experiment--taking action as a way of studying change. Your report needs to include --either a detailed report for each cycle as follows or a report of the cycles in a more summary format.

CYCLE RESEARCH QUESTION: This question needs to contain two very important parts. The first part clearly states what you will do in very specific language. The second part shares your best guess at an outcome. (The reactions of others that you expect to result from your action.) Your action research is a design experiment. You are designing with an eye toward deeper understanding of design action.

EVIDENCE USED TO EVALUATE THE ACTION: What evidence will you collect to tell you how others respond to your action? Where will you look to give you direct or indirect evidence of what happened?

EVALUATION: How will you/did you evaluate the outcomes of your action?.....(Indicate your plans for your analysis in a paragraph or two).

REFLECTION: Looking back on my action with the benefit of data, I now think... and if I were to do this again I would have.... The thing that worked best was... What most surprised me from the data was...

FINAL REFLECTION:

This is where the action research really takes stock of what was learned. It might be helpful to think of a reflection as a set of connections between the past, present and future. If this section is only a summary of what was happened, it will fail as a reflection. A reflection provides a deep understanding of why things happened as they did and how those outcomes help you address your overarching question. At the end of writing a good reflection, you will know more than you did when you started it. If you haven't gained some new insights about the problem and your actions to solve it, it is likely that you are only summarizing what happened. Reflection is a powerful learning experience. It is an essential part of action research.

REFERENCES

The references provide the context for your ideas. In many ways, the references indicated the community of researchers and writers that you are writing for.

Publishing on the Web in Portfolio:

An important part of the Action Research process is posting and sharing artifacts of the inquiry, so that the action researcher can continually reflect on practice and so that peers can contribute feedback and support. The Web Portfolio, then, becomes a place for both internal and external reflection.

A good action research portfolio, like a report, documents practices at each step of the inquiry. The accumulation of content provides critical mass for reflection and for recognizing change of practice. There is no perfect template for an Action Research Portfolio. One key idea, however, is to be sure to document each cycle and gather artifacts accordingly. That documentation process should utilize both descriptive and reflective writing.

The Center for Collaborative Action Research has collected Action Research Portfolios that serve as effective models. The model portfolios are categorized in two groups: School Action Research for projects that help improve instructional practices and Community Action Research for projects in University, Corporate, and other Community settings.

In general, your portfolio might include, but is not limited to the follow:

• A overview of your problem at a general level and why you (and others) see this as an important problem or challenge
• A description of the problem that you are researching with action
• A detailed description of the field of action, (the context)
• A review of literature as part of a planning process
• The Action Research Question(s) and perhaps some reflection on how they changed over the process
  
• The plan and timeline for your research
• Cycles reports that document the activity in each
• Data collected and details of the analysis process
• Collection of your artifacts, images, videos
• Research blogs
• Your final reflection