ACTION RESEARCH

1
ACTION RESEARCH
2
CONSIDERATIONS

• What is action research?
• What research questions are appropriate for an
  action research paradigm?
• Action research methodology
• Strengths and limitations of action research

3
INTRODUCTION

• Action research is what good professionals are
  doing all the time
• It is a form of reflection on self and
  professional practice in order to improve the
  quality of service offered to clients
• It involves becoming a researcher in relations to
  ones own practice with the goal of improving it.

4
What is action research

• Action research is a term which refers to a
  practical way of looking at your own work to
  check that it is as you would like it to be.
• Because action research is done by the
  practitioner, it is often referred to as
  practitioner based research
• Because it involves you thinking about and
  reflecting on your work, it can also be called a
  form of self-reflective practice.

5
DEFINITION (Koshy,V. 20052)

• I define action research as an enquiry
  undertaken with rigour and understanding so as to
  continually refine functions the emerging
  evidence based on outcomes will then contribute
  to the researching practitioners continuing
  professional development.

6
IN EDUCATION

• The quality of educational experience provided
  for children will depend on the ability of the
  teacher to stand back and reflect his or her
  practice and continually strive to make the
  necessary changes
• (Koshy,V. 20051)

How can I improve my practice
7
TERMS

• Practitioner based research
• Self reflective practice
• Reflective learning
• Participatory Research
• Emancipatory Research

8
ACTION RESEARCH

• First proposed by Kurt Lewin in the 1980s
• Research applied to practical issues
• Enter a social situation, attempt to change it
  and monitor results
• Widely used in
• Evaluating curriculum initiatives
• Improving professional practice

9
PROCESS

• Encourages professionals to be reflective in
  relation to their own practice
• Practitioner research
• Form of self reflective and critical enquiry
• Aim is to improve education
• Involves participants in own professional
  development

10
REFLECTIVE CYCLE
EXPERIENCE Thoughts Feelings Actions
RETURNING TO EXPERIENCE Feelings
Ideas Actions Re-evaluation
NEW PERSPECTIVE Change in behaviour
OUTCOME
REFLECTION
EXPERIENCE
11
Cycle
12

• professionals and administrators systematically
  reflect on their own work and make changes in
  their practice
• Can be conducted by professionals in their own
  classrooms
• Purpose is to improve practice and help develop
  professional judgement and expertise

13
Carr and Kemmis (1986)

• Action research is a form of self-reflective
  enquiry undertaken by participants
  (professionals, students, administrators or
  principals in order to improve the ratonality and
  justice for their own social and educational
  practices, their understanding of these practices
  and the situations in which these practices are
  carried out.

14
AIM

• The aim of action research is to contribute to
  practical concerns of people in an immediate
  problematic situation by joint collaboration
  within a mutually acceptable framework
• To enhance professional practice and the quality
  of service being offered.

15
HAS BEEN EMPLOYED

• Improving the process of teaching and learning
• School based curriculum development
• Systemic planning
• Policy development

• Personal Development
• Professional Development
• Interpersonal Relationships
• Family dynamics

16
Mc Cormack, C.
How can we avoid this in the future? How can be
make our relationship better?
17
Teaching
18
Professional Development
This is not working. How can I make it better?
Is this for real!
19
School Improvement
20
EDUCATIONAL ACTION RESEARCH

• Seen as the work of practitioners and being
  carried out by them as opposed to being
  undertaken by outside experts
• Encourages professionals to become researchers in
  their own practice
• Participatory and collaborative
• Research with people rather than on people

21
Ed. Action research

• Already being undertaken by good professionals
• Involves making implicit knowledge explicit
• Implies an openness to new experiences
• professionals gain personally and professionally
• professionals educating themselves
• Empowering professionals

22
INTEREST in AR

• Practitioners find they can be in leadership
  roles as they plan, conduct and evaluate research
  on their own practice
• V
• Relying on research conducted elsewhere which may
  nor be relevant to their work
• Empowers practitioners

23
ADVANTAGES

• Professionals Investigate their own practice
• Develop a deeper understanding
• Act a collaborators
• Solutions arrived at cooperatively
• More committed to implementation
• Ongoing process v product

24
FEATURES

• Requires commitment by practitioners to
  investigate and reflect on their own practice
• Can be intellectually and emotionally demanding
• Need to become aware of own values and tacit
  knowledge
• Requires critical reflection
• Making the unproblematic problematic

25
RATIONALE

• Naturalistic settings are best studied and
  researched by those participants experiencing the
  problem
• Behaviour is highly influenced by the settings in
  which it occurs
• Qualitative methodologies are best suited for
  researching naturalistic settings

26
Experimental Tests
27
VERSATILITY

• Quantitative and qualitative measures may be used
• Methods may include, but are not limited to
• Behavioural observations
• Interviews
• Questionnaires
• Needs assessment
• Rating scales
• Student portfolios

28
EMPHASIS

• Action research concentrates on
• The here and now
• The social situation
• With the aim of improving teacher
• performance and the education provided
• Stenhouse (1993227) effective curriculum
  development depends on the capacity of
  professionals to take a research stance in
  relation to their own practice

29
CHARACTERISTICS (McKiernan 199131)

• Examines problems that are deemed problematic by
  practitioners
• These problems are deemed solvable
• Suspends a full definition of the situation until
  exploratory work is undertaken
• Goal is to deepen the researchers understanding
  of the problem

30
Characteristics Contd

• An attempt to tell a story about what is going on
  and how events hang together
• Uses the language of everyday discourse employed
  by participants
• Can only be validated in dialogue with the
  participants

31
HYPOTHESIS AREA OF INVESTIGATION - PROBLEM

• In action research we do not need to have a
  problem in the strict sense of the word
• All we ned to know is that there is something we
  would like to evaluate and improve
• An aspect of professional practice
• A curriculum initiative based on a perceived need

32
WHITEHEAD (1985)

• What is my concern?
• Why am I concerned?
• What do I think I can do about it?
• How will I do it?
• How will I gather the information?
• How will I know if things have improved?
• How will I evaluate effectiveness?
• How will I change my practice?

33
CRITERIA

• How important is the issue to you?
• How important is it for your students?
• What opportunities are there to explore the area?
• Who might be interested in helping?
• The manageability of the task?
• Is it something you can do something about?

34
INVOLVES

• Identification of a problem
• Collection of evidence
• Analysis
• Using theory
• Communication of findings to others
• Modify practice

35
IMPLEMENTATION

• Evaluate, record and describe the present
  situation
• Plan how to improve the situation
• Implement the plan
• Evaluate the content and process of the
  implementation
• Provide evidence of change or improvement
• Use a validation group to discuss findings

36
INVOLVEMENT

• Commitment
• Collaboration
• Concern
• Consideration
• Change

37
METHODOLOGY

• Research methods are selected to respond to the
  specific question posed
• Will the methodology answer the research
  question?
• Qualitative methods are more common that
  quantitative approaches

38
METHODS include

• In-depth interviews
• Participant observation
• Case study
• Self study

39
DOCUMENTATION includes

• Detailed description of
• People
• Events
• Settings
• Field notes
• Interactive journals
• Memos
• Minutes of meetings

• Transcriptions
• Portfolios
• Photographs
• Vide recordings
• Audio recordings

40
ACTION RESEARCH CYCLE

• The statement of a problem
• The imagination of a solution
• The implementation of a solution
• The evaluation of a solution
• The modification of practice in the light of a
  solution

41
Research Questions

• What are the effects of drunkenness on peripheral
  vision?
• What is the relationship between social
  disadvantage and reading ability?

• How can I improve my interaction with parents
  during feedback sessions?
• How can I enhance the quality of content and
  process of my psychoeducational assessments?

42
DATA COLLECTION (Hopkins, 1993 McNiff, 1988).

• Field notes
• Tape recordings
• Video recordings
• Pupils diaries
• Interviews
• Discussions
• Questionnaires

• Sociometric measures
• Documentary evidence
• Photography

43
DECISIONS ON DATA COLLECTION

• Its relation to the research question
• Advantages and disadvantages
• Will it provide adequate evidence?
• What is necessary to ensure the descriptive
  validity of the data collected?
• Value of a critical friend
• Value of a validation group

44
MONITORING THE DATA

• Self monitoring
• Colleague monitoring
• Student monitoring
• Joint monitoring
• Interested parties monitoring

45
CONSIDERATIONS

• Does the research do what it set out to do?
• If not why not?
• Is there sufficient evidence to back up the
  claims?
• Can you point to incidences that act as evidence

• Is the evidence presented in a clear form?
• Is there an account of the researchers own
  progress and development as well as that of
  clients

46
EXAMPLES

• McGrattan, M. (1998) An Evaluation of a Music
  Programme on the Emotional, Social and Cultural
  Development of Deaf Children
• Ryan (2000) A Critical Evaluation of Teaching,
  Learning and Metacognitive Processes in Young
  Children
• Smyth Maguire, L. (2001) An Evaluation of the
  Samaritans Suicide Awareness Programme on the
  Levels of Awareness of Suicide and Related Issues
  in Transition Year Pupils

47
EXERCISE 1

• There is an aspect of my professional practiceI I
  would like to improve
• What can I do about it?
• What will I do about it?
• What data will I need?
• How will I collect the data?
• How will I analyse the data?
• How will I know if an improvement has taken
  place?

48
EXERCISE 2

• There is a gap in the curriculum being provided
  for students
• What can I do to fill/narrow the gap?
• What can I do about it?
• What will I do about it?
• What data will I need?
• How will I collect the data?
• How will I analyse the data?
• How will I know if the gap is filled/narrowed?

49
Cycle of Action Research
50
Features

• Identify a research issue
• Identify research aims
• Set out a research design
• Gather data
• Establish criteria for standards of judgement
• Generate evidence from the data
• Make a claim to knowledge
• Explain the significance of the research

51
ASSUMPTIONS

• Epistemological
• Methodological
• Social purpose

52
Epistemological

• Knowledge is always in process
• It is impossible to create a final answer
• Process of knowledge creation involve social
  processes
• While knowledge is the property of the
  individual, all answers should be regarded as
• Provisional
• Subject to social critique

53
Social Purposes

• Learning can be improved in relation to all
  social practices
• They way societies operate can be improved if
  their members
• Reflect on what they are doing
• Hold themselves responsible for their own
  thinking and action

54
(No Transcript)
55
VALIDITY

• Validity is a criteria common to all research and
  poses the question
• does the research do what it claims to do and
  are the results valid (can they be believed)?

56
DIMENSIONS OF VALIDITY

• Descriptive Validity refers to whether or not
  the description captures the relevant and
  essential features of the phenomenon being
  described
• Explanatory Validity concerned with whether or
  not an explanation captures accurately the set of
  causal factors that produced the phenomenon being
  explained

57
INTERNAL/EXTERNAL

• Internal Validity refers to whether or not one
  can have confidence that the effects observed was
  a product of the experimental treatment
• External Validity refers to the extent to which
  the results can be generalised to the wider
  population.

58
DESCRIPTIVE VALIDITY

• Was the instrument/test used valid/appropriate?
• Did it measure what it was intended to measure?
• Was the research instrument piloted?

• What changes (if any) were made on the basis of
  the piloting?
• Was there a common interpretative framework
  between the tester and the person taking the
  test?

59
Common Interpretative framework

• Pick the animal that can fly
• Dog
• Bird
• Elephant
• Concepts
• Share
• Straight line

60
CONSIDERATIONS

• Is the data used adequate to substantiate claims
  being made?
• Are there alternative, more plausable
  explanations
• Are there logical errors in reasoning
• A priori reasoning
• Post hoc propter hoc
• Psychomechanistic parallelism
• Theory of common elements

61
SOURCES

• Self validation
• Peer validation
• Learner validation
• Validation by other interested parties

62
LOMAX (1986)

• As action researchers we do not claim to find the
  final answer to a question, but we do claim to
  improve (and change) educational practice through
  the educational development of practitioners.
  The validity of what we claim would seem to be
  the degree to which it is useful (relevant) in
  guiding practice.

63
STENHOUSE (1993228)

• It is the teachers (practitioners) subjective
  perception which is critical for practice since
  (s)he is in a position to control the classroom.
  Accordingly we are concerned with the development
  of a sensitive self-critical subjective
  perspective and not with an aspiration towards
  unobtainable objectivity.

64
KEMMIS (1993 236)

• The aspiration to objectivity is mistaken in
  action research. In action research, the aim is
  self-critical reflection which helps the
  practitioner to emancipate him or herself from
  the dictates of habit, custom, precedent and
  coercive social structures.

65
ACTION PLANNNING

• What issue am I interested in researching?
• Why do I want to research this issue?
• What kind of evidence can I gather to show I am
  interested in this issue?
• What can I do? What will I do?
• What evidence do I need to show I am having an
  influence

66
OUTLINE

• Aims, objectives, rationale
• The research questions
• Literature review
• Methodology
• Findings
• Analysis of findings
• Strengths, limitations, future research
• Reflective account

67
PLANNING 2.

• How will I gather this evidence?
• How can I explain that influence?
• How can I ensure that the judgements I make are
  fair and accurate?
• How will I change my practice in the light of my
  evaluation?

68
METHODOLOGY

• Justification/rationale for research approach
  chosen by you
• What you did
• How you did it
• Interview and or questionnaire design
• How you analysed the data

69
FINDINGS

• Substantiate with reference to your data
• Interview transcripts
• Questionnaire analysis
• Pupils diaries
• Validation group
• Recordings
• Research diary
• Other relevant data