Action Research: A Methodological Introduction

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Action research: a methodological introductionDavid TrippMurdoch UniversityAbstractAs a result of its greatly increased in popularity and range ofapplication, action research has now become a loosely appliedterm for any kind of attempt to improve or investigate practice.In view of the confusion that frequently arises from this, themain aim of this author is to clarify the term. After a brief historyof the method, the makes a case for regarding action research asone of a number of different forms of action inquiry which hebriefly defines as any ongoing, systematic, empirically basedattempt to improve practice. The author them discusses the roleof theory in action research before describing what he sees asthe distinguishing characteristics of the process. Next, a moredetailed examination of the action research cycle is prefaced byan account of the way in which action research stands betweenroutine practice and academic research. The author then moveson to discuss some common issues with the method, suchparticipation, the role of reflection, the need for knowledgemanagement, and the ethics of the process. The last part of thepaper covers five different ‘modes’ of action research, and itconcludes with an outline of the structure of an action researchdissertation.KeywordsResearch-action - Participation - Inquiry-action - Methodology ofresearch.Contact:David Trippe-mail: d.tripp@murdoch.edu.au

Brief historyIt is not certain who invented actionresearch. The creation of the process is oftenattributed to Lewin (1946), and whilst he appearsto have been the first to publish his work usingthe term, he may have earlier encountered it inGermany from work performed in Vienna in 1913(Altrichterand Gestettner,1992). Alternatively,Deshler and Ewart (1995) suggest that actionresearch was first used by John Collier to improverace relations at the community level when hewas the Commissioner of Indian Affairs prior toand during the Second World War, and Cooke(undated) appears to provide strong support forthis. Then Selener (1997:9) points out thatBuckingham’s (1926) book Research for Teachersadvocates a recognisable action research process,so it is unlikely we will ever know when or wherethe method originated, simply because peoplehave always investigated their practice in order tobetter improve it. Rogers’ (2002) account of JohnDewey’s (1933) notion of reflection, for instance,shows that it is very similar, and one could alsopoint to the ancient Greek empiricists as using anaction research cycle.Action research is difficult to define for twolinked reasons: first, it is such a natural processthat it comes in many different guises, andsecond, it has been developed differently fordifferent applications. Almost immediately uponLewin’s coining of the term in the literature,action research was seen as a general term forfour different processes: diagnostic, participant,empirical and experimental (Chein, Cook andHarding, 1948). By the end of the century Deshlerand Ewart (1995) could identify six main kindsdeveloped in different fields of application. It wasin use in administration (Collier), communitydevelopment (Lewin, 1946), organisationalchange (Lippitt, Watson and Westley, 1958) andteaching (Corey, 1949, 1953) in the late 1940sand early 1950s; it appeared in political change,conscientization and empowerment in the 1970’s(Freire, 1972, 1982), in national development inagriculture soon thereafter (Fals-Borda, 1985,1991), and most recently in banking, health andtechnology generation via the World Bank andothers such as Hart and Bond (1997).Educational action research is principally astrategy for the development of teachers asresearchers so that they can use their research toimprove their teaching and thus their students’learning, but even within educational action researchdistinct varieties have emerged. Stephen Coreyadvocated a strongly technical form in the USA, andtwo other main trends are a British form moreorientated to the development of teacherprofessional judgement (Elliott and Adleman, 1976;Elliott, 1991), and a socially critical, emancipationallyorientated variety in Australia (Carr and Kemmis,1986). Other related varieties have since beenadded, perhaps most recently Sachs’ (2003) notionof the “activist professional”. It was this kind ofdiversity led to educational action research beingdescribed as “a family of activities” (Kemmis, 1981),for as Heikkinen, Kakkori and Huttunen (2001:22)concluded, ‘a multi-paradigmatic situation seems toexist amongst action researchers’.The action inquiry cycleIt’s important to recognise action research asone of a number of different kinds of action inquiry.Action Inquiry is a generic term for any process thatfollows a cycle in which one improves practice bysystematically oscillating between taking action inthe field of practice, and inquiring into it. 0ne plans,implements, describes, and evaluates an improvingchange to one’s practice, learning more about boththe practice and action inquiry in the process.Diagram 11: The 4-phase representation of the basic actioninquiry cycle

Most improvement processes follow thesame cycle. Problem solving, for instance,begins with identifying the problem, planninga solution, implementing it, monitoring andevaluating its effectiveness. Similarly, medicaltreatment also follows the cycle: monitoring ofsymptoms, diagnosis of disease, prescription ofremedy, treatment, monitoring and evaluationof results. Most development processes alsofollow the same cycle, whether it’s personal orprofessional, or of a product such as a bettermouse trap, a curriculum, or a policy. It is clear,however, that different applications anddevelopments of the basic action inquiry cyclewill require different actions in each phase andwill start in different places.Some of the different developments of thebasic action inquiry process include actionresearch (Lewin, 1946), action learning(Revons,1971), reflective practice (Schon 1983),action design (Argrys, 1985), experiential learning(Kolb 1984), the PDCA cycle (Deming 1986), PLA,PAR, PAD, PALM, PRA1 , etc (Chambers, 1983),deliberative practice (McCutcheon, 1988), praxisresearch (Whyte, 1964;1991), appreciative inquiry(Cooperrider; Shrevasteva, 1987), diagnosticpractice (Generic in medicine, remedial teaching,etc.), action evaluation (Rothman 1999), softsystems methodology (Checkland 1998), andtransformational learning (Marquardt, 1999).There are several reasons for theproduction of the many different kinds ofaction inquiry because some people haverecognised and conceptualised the cyclewithout knowledge of the other versionsalready in existence, and one can name thesame cycle and its steps in many differentways. Also people have developed versionscustomized to particular uses and situationsbecause there are many different ways of usingthe cycle, and one can perform each of the fouractivities of the cycle in many different ways.Thus different kinds of action inquiry tend touse different processes in each step, and havedifferent outcomes that are likely to be reportedin different ways to different audiences.What kind of process one uses, and howone uses it, depend on aims and circumstances,and even with ‘the same’ aims and circumstances,different people may have different skills,intentions, time-lines, levels of support, ways ofcollaborating, and so on, all of which will affectthe processes and outcomes. The importantpoint is that the kind of action inquiry used isappropriate to the aims, practices, participants,situation (and its enablers and constraints).The characteristics of actionresearchIt makes some sense to differentiate actionresearch from other kinds of action inquiry, bydefining it as using recognised research techniquesto produce the description of the effects of thechanges to practice in the action inquiry cycle. Themain reason for using the term ‘action inquiry’ asa superordinate process that subsumes actionresearch is that the term ‘action research’ isbecoming so widely and loosely applied that it isbecoming meaningless. A definition such as,“Action research is a term which is applied toprojects in which practitioners seek to effecttransformations in their own practices ” (Brownand Dowling, 2001, p.152), for instance, isaccurate in some aspects, but it uses the term‘research’ in the very open fashion of any kind ofcareful study, and using it in that way deprivesacademics of using it to distinguish the form ofaction inquiry that employs the more specificmeaning attached to research in academia.This is important because if any kind ofreflection on action is called action research, werisk rejection by the very people on whom mostof us rely for approving or funding universitywork. As it was with qualitative research twodecades ago, I am now regularly contacted byhigher degree students who are not beingallowed to use action research for their1. PLA: Participatory Learning and Action; PAR: Participatory Actionresearch; PAD: Participatory Action Development; PALM: ParticipatoryLearning Methods; PRA: Participatory Rural Appraisal.

dissertations. Their research supervisors, if theyconsider it to be research at all (rather than, forinstance, professional development), do notconsider what they see termed action research tobe sufficiently methodologically rigorous toproduce a higher degree research thesis.Rather than adhering to a more opendefinition of action research, such as the“identification of strategies of planned actionwhich are implemented, and then systematicallysubmitted to observation, reflection and change”(Kemmis, 1981), I have come to favour a narrowerdefinition such as, “Action research is a form ofaction inquiry that employs recognised researchtechniques to inform the action taken to improvepractice”, and I would add that the researchtechniques should meet the criteria common toother kinds of academic research (ie. withstandpeer-review of procedures, significance, originality,validity, etc.).That said, although action research tendsto be pragmatic, it is clearly distinguished frompractice, and although it is research it is alsoclearly distinguished from traditional scientificresearch, mainly because action research bothchanges what is being researched, and it isconstrained by the context and ethics of practice.The point is that action research requiresaction in the fields of both practice and research,so to a greater or lesser extent, it will havecharacteristics of both routine practice andscientific research; the following table shows howaction research stands in relation to some of thedifferences between these two. It should be notedthat whilst routine practice and scientific inquiryare shown as the poles of the continua, they havecontradictory tendencies, so they are not ‘pure’categories, but mixed oppositions. For example,in Row 1, routine practice is shown as habitual,though what have become habits were once bothinnovative and original in some respects. Similarly,there is much about scientific research that isroutine, particularly in a period of what Kuhn(1970) refers to as ‘normal’ science.Some other points illustrated in Table are:Row 2 Action research should be continualrather than either continuous or occasional,because one cannot continuously actionresearch one’s practice, but one shouldregularly work to improve an aspect of it, so itshould be more frequent than occasional.Row 3 Practice tends to be a matter ofresponding effectively and immediately to eventsas they arise, and scientific research tends tooperate according to set methodologicalprotocols. Action research comes between thetwo because it is pro-active with regard tochange, and its change is strategic in the sensethat it is action based upon understandingachieved through the analysis of researchinformation.Strategic action (Grundy and Kemmis, 1982)or ‘tactical action’ (Jacques, 1992) stands incontrast to action which is instant, a result ofroutine or habit, though it is informed by thewisdom of experience applied to goodinformation which can only be produced bysound research processes.It also stands in contrast to action that isconstrained by research protocols: methodologyis always paramount in scientific research, but inaction research, research methodology shouldalways be subservient to practice, so that onedoes not decide not to try to evaluate change,for instance, because one does not have a goodmeasure or adequate baseline data, rather oneseeks to make judgements on the best evidencethat one can produce.Row 4 Whereas routine practice tends to bethe sole responsibility of the practitioner, and

most research is carried out in teams thesedays, action research is participatory in that itincludes all those involved in various ways, andit is collaborative in its ways of working.Row 5 Routine practice is naturalistic in that itis not researched, so there is no manipulationof the situation; both action research andscientific research are experimental in thesense of making things happen to see whatactually happens, but because action researchoccurs in non-manipulated social settings, itdoes not follow the cannons of controlledvariables common to scientific research, so itcan be termed more generally interventionistrather than more narrowly experimental.Row 6 Routine practice does not normallyallow for much examination of its procedures,values and effectiveness, but as animprovement process, action research alwaysstarts from some kind of a problem, and theterm ‘problematise’ is often applied becauseaction research, in common with Argrys andSchon’s (1974 ) idea of ‘double-looplearning’ in reflective practice, treats ‘theproblem’ as a problem itself. In fact, sociallycritical action research often starts with anexamination of who owns the problem, whichis one form of problematisation. Scientificresearch, according to Kuhn, is generally amatter of proceeding with a given agenda,and that, coupled with the need for funding,means that it is generally commissioned eitherby government or commercial interests, or bypeer review. Action research is sometimescommissioned too, of course, but even thenis far less constrained by this than scientificresearch.Row 7 On-going routine practice is generallysimply experienced by the participants,though when significant professionaljudgement is required, deliberation occurs,and the process moves more towards actioninquiry, as the practitioner will usually followup the results of the judgement in order tolearn from it. Action research is alwaysdeliberative because when one intervenes inroutine practice one is venturing into theunknown, so one has to make expertjudgements about what, for instance, is mostlikely to improve the situation mosteffectively. Scientific research is more oftenargued in the formal sense of in- and deductive theorisation. Those processes areemployed in action research, of course, butnot for the production of positivisticconclusions and predictions, which are verydifferent from good professional judgements.Row 8 Again, action research standssomewhere between the non-recording ofmuch that happens in routine practice andthe rigorous peer review of method, data andconclusions in scientific research. Actionresearch tends to document its progress,often through compiling a portfolio of thekind of information that is regularlyproduced by routine practice, such as testscores or in education, client satisfactionindices in service organisations. or theminutes of production team meetings inbusiness.Row 9 The main criterion for routine practiceis that it works well, and concerns with howand why it works only arise when there areproblems or improvements could be made,under which conditions the practitioner willmove into an action inquiry, if not an actionresearch mode where understanding theproblem and knowing why it occurs areessential to designing changes to improve thesituation. Theories are conceptual systemsconstructed to explain other knowledge, andthey are a major concern of scientificresearch. One does need to explainphenomena in action research, it is not itspurpose to construct the kind of web ofexplanations that comprise scientific theory.Row 10 This needs no explanation: thecontext, processes and results of routinepractice are limited to those of thepractitioner concerned, where as scientificresearch aims for as wide generalisation aspossible.

Row 11 This has to do with knowledgemanagement: knowledge gained in routinepractice tends to remain with the individualpractitioner, and knowledge gained in actionresearch is more often be shared with knownothers in the same organisation or profession; ittends to be disseminated through networkingand teaching rather than through publicationas in the case of scientific research. The factthat action research tends towards thepractitioner end of these last two continua issomething that needs addressing if it is to makemuch contribution to practitioner knowledge inthe wider sphere of, for instance, the strategiesof qualified practitioners across a wholeoccupation.To return to the point that thesecharacteristics are a tension between action inthe fields of practice and research, it is essentialnot to lose sight of action research as a processin which practitioners “gather evidence abouttheir practices and critique assumptions, beliefsand values embedded in them” (Elliott,2000:209). Similarly, McNiff (2002:7) writesthat action research involves becoming awareof the principles that drive us in our work: weneed to be clear about both what we are doingand why we are doing it.Whilst most would agree that such anorientation is essential to action research, it isalso central to other kinds of action inquiry,especially reflective practice, and without thedistinction of the role of research methods in theprocess, the two would appear to be identical.Separating the two, however, is more a matter ofemphasis than kind. For instance, an earlychildhood educator student of minedemonstrated this approach when reflecting onwhat she wanted to achieve in her actionresearch project: “For me that means I will notonly become play-based in my approach toeducation, but I will also come to understandwhy I have become so.” As the supervisor of heraction research, in contrast to reflective practice,for instance, I would see it as my job to ensurethat she came to reorientate her practice anddeepen her understanding of herself in asmethodologically sound a way (rather thenmerely pragmatically effective) as possible.Another characteristic of the reciprocalrelationship between research and improvedpractice is that one does not just understandpractice in order to improve it in actionresearch, one also gains an improvedunderstanding of routine practice throughimproving it, so improvement is the context,means and main end of understanding.Context: As action research is animprovement process, one cannot actionresearch routine practice: action researchcreates a moving research target by disruptingroutine practice, and it leaves many loose endsin its wake (see for instance, the example of“action theorising” below).Means: As changes are reactive,monitoring what changes and how, leads notonly to understanding one’s own practice, butalso to further understanding aspects of thesituation, people, and one’s practices that onehas not set out to change. For example, manyteachers learn a great deal about their students’perceptions of good teaching when they shiftfrom teacher transmission to collaborativeconstruction of knowledge (Ker 1999).End: Dissemination and publication ofthe understanding of practice gained fromimproving it can also be made into animportant spin-off of action research.For example, a student who had thoughtthat she had started her action research project‘with where the students are’ wrote at the endof the first cycle:I realise now that I should have got moreinformation about the students before I mademy initial project plans. I have discovered thatnearly all the learning strategies I planned onusing to move both myself and the learnersinto a more student-centred approach provedtoo confronting to the students to allow themto engage with the strategies successfully.

That was something she would not havelearned about her students had she not triedto improve her teaching and their learning,and that kind of experience is quite common:we only discover the nature of some thingswhen we try to change them. In order tochange her teaching approach, this teacherhad to shift her intervention from her teachingstrategies to dealing with her students’attitudes and experiences. In this way newstudies, not just new cycles, are born fromexisting ones (Tillotson, 2000).Theory in action researchAs a practical improvement process, actionresearch is sometimes considered to beatheoretical, but whilst it is true that traditionaldisciplinary theory is not a major priority, it isnevertheless important to draw on it forunderstanding situations, planning effectiveimprovements, and explaining results. Elliott (1994)makes this point (that academic theorists provideresources for reflection and development ofpractice in action research), but also suggests thatpractitioners do not simply adopt ‘ready-made’theory, but that they problematise it throughapplication. In her excellent synthesis of theory inaction research, Somekh (2003:260) interprets thisas the practitioner coming to ‘personally own’others’ theories, but neither Elliott nor Somekhsubstantiate the extent to which school teachersuse ready-made theory in these ways or how theycontribute their experience to the furtherdevelopment of theory. In fact, my experience isthat it is only when school teachers work inpartnership with university academics that theyengage with ready-made theory, and I haveoutlined how we can work that in practiceelsewhere (Tripp, 1993:148-151).Drawing on my own experience again, Ihave found that what one does in actionresearch is often driven by the kind ofinductive theorisation that might be termed‘action theorising’, a process best described byexample.Data RecordI ask the class of in-service teachers toswap and silently read each other’s papers.I notice the first two do not do so, butone is reading hers aloud to her partner.Within a few minutes all but one pair arereading their papers aloud to each other.Research QuestionWhy are they not doing as asked?Hypothesis 1a) They haven’t heard my instructions; orb) they have not understood the activity.Verification of Hypothesis 1I repeat the instructions and observeresults, but they ignore my instructionsagain and continue to read aloud to eachother, so I discard Hypothesis 1.Hypothesis 2They are too shy to show each other theirwriting because —a) it’s rough notes/first draft, which wouldbe unintelligible to their partner;b) they have written private things (toopersonal? subversive?) to share.Verification of Hypothesis 2:I point out their behaviour to them, andask if it’s one or the other problem. Theyagree it’s the former, so I accepthypothesis 2.Implication for action planning:I make a note to introduce the activitydifferently next time.Further data:I collect their writing, and observe that noone’s is at all unintelligible, so I belatedlydiscard Hypothesis 2.Hypothesis 3The students are unwilling to show eachother their written work because they aredrawing on their (Asian) school experiencein which written work is competitive and

only swapped for marking purposes.Verification of Hypothesis 3:Not possible as I don’t see this groupagain.New question:Why did these learners misrepresent theirmotivation to me?Whilst it is clear that I am engaged in someprocesses of inductive theorisation, theseare but a means to the end of improvingpractice, not an end in itself, whichexplains why practitioners do not developtheir theorising into disciplinary theory:they are too busy with their practice topursue ‘pure’ research questions.Action Research andResearched PracticeAs I pointed out above, it is very difficultto draw definitive lines between action researchand other kinds of action inquiry, but anotherimportant definitional misunderstanding thatoccurs in the field is the distinction betweenaction research and researched action. As longago as 1945, Lippitt wrote of action research toCollier, “It is not research-to-be-followed-byaction, or research-on-action, but research-asaction” Cooke (undated:7). As a reviewer ofaction research papers submitted forpublication in various journals, I notinfrequently find people who have done a casestudy of a developmental or change process,such as the production of an innovativeteaching and learning program, terming theirwork ‘action research’, though they have takenno action and the development has proceededwithout any research.I use two criteria to distinguish one fromthe other: Is the change process being drivenby the analysis and interpretation of adequate,valid, and reliable data? Is the main aim of theactivity the creation of theoretical knowledge,or the improvement of practice? This meansthat a case study of an action research processis not action research, though it should beaccepted for publication in an action researchjournal as research on action research.To return to the example of the kind oftheorising that occurs in action research toillustrate the difference, were I engaged inresearching that situation, I might go on toverify my third hypothesis and map the extentand nature of the phenomenon throughperforming the same task as an experimentalintervention with a purposeful sample of othergroups. To do that would be to engage in aprocess of ‘researched action’ rather than actionresearch, because I would have prioritised theknowledge gained over improving the practice.But although in seeking to explain the students’behaviour I was using elements of the theoryconstruction process, I was doing so only inorder to improve what works in my teaching.And it was as a practitioner that I did not pursuethe verification of Hypothesis 3, but made apractical professional judgement that if theworkshop participants were more comfortablereading aloud to each other, next time I wouldgive them the time to do so.In action research we tend to engage ininductive theorising only when there’s not anexisting explanation or theory that explains toour satisfaction whatever we’ve observed or aretrying to do, so action researchers often operatedeductively, especially in the early stages.It is often the case, however, that thereare no ready-made theories that fit our data orintentions, in which case we will workinductively, theorising our data throughcreating new categories. But when we do that,our purpose is entirely pragmatic: we don’t doit because we just want to know (that’s “pureresearch”), we ask why something is as it isonly so that we can better know how toimprove practice.It is, however, possible to combineseriously undertaken inductive theorising as thebasis for improvement through action research,though it is rare. A good example is Stead, etall (1991) who developed a theory of exclusionin a local mental health service in which they

identified four excluded identities (absent,difficult, mediated and elusive) that then servedas the basis for improving the service to thosepatients.Note that I would say I was engaged inreflective practice rather than action research inthe above example, as it met too few researchcriteria. However, I did think at the time that ifit were true that these teachers were still stuckin their school learning mode of behaviour, itwould improve their learning if they couldmove towards a more adult educationalculture. And were I working with the groupover a more extended period, I might well havechosen to action research how best to do that,probably beginning with a well plannedsituational analysis to identify othermanifestations of their adherence to schoollearning behaviours.The action research processThe action research cycleThe action research cycle includes all theactivities of the basic action inquiry cycle, andit is often represented in the same way (Kemmisand McTaggart, 1990), but although it looksclear enough initially, it is not entirely accuratein its separation and sequencing of the actionand monitoring phases. In most kinds of actioninquiry one often monitors the effects of one’saction during the action phase, and in actionresearch one will often produce data on theeffects of a change to practice duringimplementation (through observation, forinstance), and both before and afterimplementation (as when using a pre/postmethod to monitor the effects of a change).Nomenclature is also a problem becauseplanning, monitoring and evaluating are alldifferent forms of action, and so implementationis more appropriate for what is often termedthe action phase.It is clearer to represent the actionresearch cycle as a sequence of three phases ofaction in the two different fields of practiceand inquiry into the practice.This table makes two other aspects clear.First, it shows that though the basic sequenceremains the same in both fields, differentaction will be occurring in them. Second, it alsomakes explicit that one has to plan for both thechange in practice and the evaluation of theeffects of the change in practice. This isimportant in action research because planninghow to evaluate the effects of the change inpractice is generally much more rigorous thanin many other kinds of action inquiry.Action research begins with areconnaissanceThe reconnaissance is a situationalanalysis which produces a broad overview ofthe action research context, current practices,participants, and concerns. Apart fromdesigning and implementing the improvingchange to practice, the reconnaissance followsexactly the same action research cycle,planning how to monitor and evaluate thecurrent situation, doing so, and then

interpreting and evaluating the results in orderto plan an appropriate change to practice inthe first improving action research cycle.Action research i

PLA: Participatory Learning and Action; PAR: Participatory Action research; PAD: Participatory Action Development; PALM: Participatory Learning Methods; PRA: Participatory Rural Appraisal. . that it is action based upon understanding achieved through the analysis of research information. Strategic action (Grundy and Kemmis, 1982)

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