ACTION RESEARCH

Action Research Diagram

Action research is often used in the field of education.

What Is Action Research?

There are many ways to conduct research. Each of these ways is used in various professional fields, including psychology, sociology, social work, medicine, nursing, education and so on. However, the field of education often uses action research, an interactive method of collecting information that's used to explore topics of teaching, curriculum development and student behavior in the classroom.

Action research is very popular in the field of education because there is always room for improvement when it comes to teaching and educating others. Sure, there are all types of methods of teaching in the classroom, but action research works very well because the cycle offers opportunity for continued reflection. In all professional fields, the goal of action research is to improve processes. Action research is also beneficial in areas of teaching practice that need to be explored or settings in which continued improvement is the focus.

Let's take a closer look at the cycle of action research. As you can see, the process first starts with identifying a problem. Then, you must devise a plan and implement the plan. This is the part of the process where the action is taking place. After you implement the plan, you will observe how the process is working or not working. After you've had time to observe the situation, the entire process of action research is reflected upon. Perhaps the whole process will start over again! This is action research!

Methods of Action Research

There are many methods to conducting action research. Some of the methods include:

• Observing individuals or groups
• Using audio and video tape recording
• Using structured or semi-structured interviews
• Taking field notes
• Using or taking photography
• Distributing surveys or questionnaires

Researchers can also use more than one of the methods above to assist them in collecting rich and meaningful data.

While there are various methods to conducting action research, there are also various types of action research in the fields of education, including individual action research, collaborative action research and school-wide action research. For example:

• Individual action research involves working independently on a project, such as an elementary school teacher conducting her own, in-class research project with her students.
• Collaborative action research involves a group of teachers or researchers working together to explore a problem that might be present beyond a single classroom, perhaps at the departmental level or an entire grade level.
• School-wide action research generally focuses on issues present throughout an entire school or across the district. Teams of staff members would work together using school-wide action research. As you can see, action research can be used in many educational settings.

We'll explore two examples of action research being used in the field of education. The first example discusses observation as the method of choice for collecting data in the classroom. The second example discusses using surveys as the method of choice for collecting data. The cycle of action research is emphasized in each of the examples.

Observation Example (Individual Action Research)

Step 1: Identify the Problem

You are a fifth grade teacher and have identified a problem in your classroom. The problem is that your students do not have much experience working in task groups, and you believe that they need to have more opportunities to do so. You want to assess the skill set of your students and observe their overall approach to group work. By doing this, you feel that next time you offer group work, you will have some new insight into what works well and what needs improvement regarding conducting group work in your class.

Step 2: Devise a Plan

Your plan includes having your students work together in groups for their upcoming science project. By doing this, you hope to explore a variety of information, such as how the students brainstorm together, how they interact with each other and how they distribute work among the task groups. You provide them an instruction sheet and a time frame to work from.

Step 3: Act to Implement a Plan

You act by assigning your students into groups and having them work through their science projects. This step can also be thought of as initiating and carrying out the plan.

Step 4: Observe

During this step of the action research process, you observe the groups of students working together. You take note on how they are progressing and what types of issues they are having, watch them brainstorm and form interesting ideas and even observe some students not getting along, arguing and not participating altogether. This is the observation and data collection phase.

Step 5: Reflect and Share

This final step is the end point of action research... however, it also might be the beginning! You have noticed that throughout the whole week of observing and watching your students work together, there were some things that just weren't working. You have also noticed some things that were working really well! Either way, this is the step where you determine if the plan needs to be observed again with some modifications or if the plan worked perfectly.

Surveys Example (Collaborative Action Research)

Step 1: Identify the Problem

You are a third grade teacher and have been asked to be a part of a collaborative action research project at your school. The primary project organizer has explained that a problem exists regarding a large majority of the third grade students not completing assigned homework. You are asked to be a part of an action research project where surveys are created and sent home to the parents asking for their thoughts on the issue. You and your team of researchers hope to identify reasons why students are not completing their homework and then be able to share the results with all staff at your school to garner some conversation on how to improve the problem.

Step 2: Devise a Plan

The plan includes creating a survey where both open-ended and multiple choice questions are used. You will work with three other third grade teachers to determine the best choice of questions and layout of the survey. Once the surveys are completed, you will ask the school principal to review the surveys and assist in distributing them through the mail to all parents of children in the third grade at your school.

Step 3: Act to Implement a Plan

You act by working with the other teachers, completing the surveys and having the school principal assist in mailing them out to all parents of the third grade students.

Step 4: Observe

After a few weeks have passed, the surveys are starting to be returned! You and your team of researchers (your colleagues) go through the surveys, take notes, organize the responses into categories and share in the task of summarizing each of the questions in regards to overall consensus of answers.

Step 5: Reflect and Share

You and your team of colleagues have learned very valuable information from the surveys. You have learned that many of the students come from dual-working families and have multiple siblings in the elementary school system. A large volume of the students go to an after-school childcare service until their parents are done working for the day. Each of these findings contributes to issues of students not completing their homework on a daily basis, so your team reflects on the issues and decides it is best to organize a presentation of the findings for the entire school staff. By being able to share the findings with the entire school staff, perhaps a resolution can be brainstormed to assist in the identified problem given more information is now available.

Lesson Summary

The action research process is an interactive method of collecting information. In the field of education, action research is used quite often to explore new ways of teaching and interacting in the classroom. Some types of action research involve individual action research, collaborative action research, and school-wide action research.

Remember the five steps of action research include:

1. Identify the problem
2. Devise a plan
3. Act to implement a plan
4. Observe
5. Reflect and share

Ultimately, the goal of action research is to improve processes.

If the results of a study are broadly applicable to many different types of people or situations, the study is said to have good generalizability. If the results can only be applied to a very narrow population or in a very specific situation, the results have poor generalizability.

Learning Outcomes

After reviewing this lesson, you should have the ability to:

• Define action research and identify its main goal
• List common methods of action research
• Describe individual action research, collaborative action research and school-wide action research
• Explain the five steps of action research