The document discusses the key features of effective action research including having a pedagogical aim to change practice based on evidence gathered, ensuring teacher reflexivity, and improving interactions between teachers and pupils. It notes that for action research to be effective, it should impact curriculum delivery and content as well as draw data from multiple perspectives like teachers, students, peers and outsiders to reconstruct theories and guide future practice. Finally, it states that action research itself should define quality indicators as the goal is to establish what constitutes good practice through research.

1. What is good action
research?
Reflections on Elliott's – What is Good Action Research?
By W.P.N Pietrek

2. The Main features
• Pedagogical aim and ideal to which all participants are committed to realising in
practice
• The changing of practice to reflect the pedagogical aim
• Gathering of evidence
• Awareness of inconsistencies between aspiration and practice problematises the
assumptions and beliefs which underpin practice in classrooms
• The testing of new approaches to realise aspirations which will in turn reconstruct
theories and guide future practice
• Teacher reflexivity

3. • The essence of good action research is identifying an issue and developing
responses to address it in practice.
• A key test of the effectiveness of action research – 'does it improve
interaction between teacher and pupil?'
• If there is no evidence that research is bringing about positive changes to
practice, then it is dubious that it is effective action research – effective
action research should "fuse teaching and research into a singular activity".

4. Impact on the curriculum
• Effective action research should impact upon the curriculum:
• It should examine how content within subjects is best delivered
• Always consider how your subject is best articulated

5. Where does the data come from?
• Action research needs to be reflexive as well as reflective.
• Data needs to come from a wide range of perspectives:
• Teachers' own accounts of their practice
• Students' accounts of their teachers' practice
• Peer observations
• Outsiders' observational accounts of their children's experiences
• Video and audio recordings of interactions between teachers and pupils

6. Quality indicators to be defined by action research
• Cannot predefine quality indicators. The task of action research is to define
them.
• The quest is to qualify what constitutes good practice and the research of
this is what will establish the indicators for quality.