This document discusses key aspects of action research. It notes that action research has evolved over time from teachers being viewed as data gatherers for university researchers to practitioners conducting their own research. The document outlines four key aspects: 1) The history and evolution of action research, 2) Issues of quality and validity in action research compared to traditional research, 3) The political challenges action researchers may face when questioning the status quo, and 4) Implications for educators conducting action research through the practitioner-based inquiry module.

1. Action Research
A summary from Anderson et al. (2007) Merging Educational practice and Research
in Studying your own School: An Educator’s Guide to Practioner Action Research, California, Corwin Press.

2. Contents
1) Key Aspects of Action Research over time
2) Quality in Action Research
3) Politics of Action Research
4) Implications of this for our PBI module

3. 1) key Aspects of Action
Research
Action Research has a long and varied tradition - it is
nothing new!
Teachers were initially viewed as data gatherers for
university researchers, until Dewey pointed out that
teacher’s contributions were “a comparatively
neglected field […] an unworked mine.” (In
McKernan, 1988)
Importance of CONTEXT: Lewin’s stress on problem
solving in real - life situations, Argyris and Schön
(1991) refer to the “boundaries of the local context”
therefore teachers are well placed to carry out such
research.

4. Corey (1950s) suggested that teachers would find
the results of their own research more useful than
the work of outsiders, and would be more likely to
question current practice.
Later backed up Fullan (1982) who reported that
school based problem solving approaches to change
were more likely to be implemented successfully
than large, federally funded initiatives.

5. Participatory Research (1970 Freire) research viewed
as social action. Challenged academic model at every
point!
Unpopularity of questioning the status quo… teachers
not trained to do research = questions of legitimacy
and validity.
Challenging status quo is unpopular but necessary to
reform practice (Argyris, Putnam and Smith 1985)

6. What does Action Research look like?
All 4 could occur in 1 lesson or over weeks / months.
All practitioners reflect informally but Action Research makes
reflection more intentional and systematic.

7. Who does Action Research?
Best done collaboratively (Solomon 1987 said that Schön didn't make
enough of the social / collaborative aspect in his work)
But can also be done individually and lead to individual
professional growth. (Webb 1996 criticised the tendency to privilege the
group over the individual).
Older traditions of Action Research are generally associated with
(generally) male academics, but increasingly AR became and
continues to become a more broad based, grassroots movement.

8. 2) Quality in Action Research
[Validity and Trustworthiness]
p.36 ‘A study’s trustworthiness
involves the demonstration that the
researcher’s interpretations of the
data are credible or ring true to
those who provided the data, and
that multiple data sources have
been compared or “triangulated”’.

9. Formal vs. Practical knowledge Dualism Several
critics have dismissed Action Research as a
separate, lower class of research e.g. Richardson
(1994).
Others reject this dualism e.g. Cochran- Smith and
Lytle (1998) and Clandinin and Connelly (1995) who
highlight the lack of contextual awareness held by
‘outsiders’ doing research.

10. Action researchers need not justify
themselves by the same inquiry criteria as
for academic research, but rather they
should make a case for a different
conception of validity.

11. Criteria for ‘validity’ or
‘trustworthiness’ in Practitioner Action
Research
Outcome
The extent to which actions occur that
successfully resolve the problem / make
steps to resolve it / reframe the
question or pose new one!
Democratic
The extent to which research is
done with all parties who have a
stake in the problem under
investigation.
Catalytic
The extent to which the research process
focusses / energises participants to deepen
their understanding and be moved to act to
change their practice.
Dialogic
Peer reviews via AR groups, having critical friends,
which gives different responses tow irk and helps
the researcher to reflect on practice and validate
research claims.
Process
To what extent are problems framed and
solved in a way that permits ongoing
learning? Are findings the result of a
series of reflective cyclic processes?

12. Are Action Research findings generalisable? / Questioning its external
validity
“If there is to be transferability, the burden of proof lies less with the
original investigator than with the person seeking to make an
application elsewhere.”
Lincoln and Guba (1985)

13. 3) Politics of Action research
p.48 “AR, perhaps more than other innovations, must challenge the sociopolitical status quo of the
setting.”
Action Research, like all good qualitative research, has a natural tendency to spill over into areas one
had not expected to study.
Area studied
at classroom level
Area to be studied
at school level
Area studied
at district / national level
Area studied at
society-as-a-whole
level
will lead to Qs about
will lead to Qs about
will lead to Qs about

14. Political issues faced by Action Researchers
AR can come to rub up against what Schön (1971) called
the ‘dynamic conservatism’ of social institutions.
Practitioners undertaking AR will encounter a culture that
values CONFORMITY, as Hutchinson and Whitehouse
(1986) noted;
“While AR fosters collegiality, informality, openness and collaboration, Action Researchers have to
contend with educational institutions that are structured hierarchically with formal asymmetrical relations of
power and responsibility.”

15. Redefining professionalism
p.51 AR has been suggested as a way to re-professionalise
educational practice, particularly teaching.
The quest for professionalism saw a move away from practice
towards scientific research and created a hierarchy between
universities and schools.
p.54 Many see AR as a social movement in which practitioners
affirm and assert their own ways of knowledge creation as opposed
to external forces creating that knowledge and disseminating (top-
down) into schools.

16. 4) Implications for me as a teacher
on the PBI module
Feel empowered! Teachers are no longer data gatherers for university researchers - we have the
advantage of contextual awareness and can produce useful and valid AR!
Be prepared to challenge the status quo / conformity of education system (which will be unpopular,
but is necessary.) Be prepared that what you study will spill out into other areas.
Question yourself and your own reflection - how intentional and systematic is it? Does it follow the
cycle of Plan > Act > Observe > Reflect?
When conducting AR don’t PANIC about validity (in the sense that it is associated with scientific /
academic research) - remember that AR has a different conception of validity.