Action Research
Reviewed and Updated: December 2007
This page has been kept for reference.
It will no longer be updated by ICVET.
Action research is a research methodology which in which research and action (change) outcomes are pursued at the same time. The process is participative, with clients being viewed as partners or active participants in improving the way issues are addressed. The action research methodology is responsive to changing needs, emergent, in that the process is iterative and cyclic and takes place gradually. As the process is cyclic, it allows systematic reflection on current practices.
The following articles are a good introduction to the concept:
A beginner’s guide to action research
Wadsworth (1998), What is Participatory Action Research?
Websites
Reconnect Action Research Kit
This kit, published by the Australian Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, is designed to explain Action Research and how it 'fits' into the Department’s “Reconnect” Program. It provides practical examples and tools for applying Action Research, information about other resources and
Action Learning and boys’ education
This section of the website for Queensland Department of Education, Training and the Arts, contains accessible, practical information about why action learning suits teachers and educators, tools for data gathering and useful resources.
Action research resources
This site is an Australian one, which links to many useful resources
and networks, both Australian and international, as well as to a refereed
online journal, Action Research International
Martin Ryder, Uni of Colorado @ Denver; School of Education
Ryder’s (US) site is great value for money! (although visiting will cost you nothing but your time). It contains many links to definitions of action research, to a variety of articles and to other useful sites.
Australian National Training Authority, Reframing the Future
An Australian site that showcases many projects, including action research type ones. Go to publications section and look for reports like, 40 Ways of Shaping Our Future, and 110 ways to implement the national training system.
Publications
Educational Action
Research
This journal is one of the Triangle (UK) publications, and has several articles of interest to those using action research in their teaching. The publishers have a policy of making volumes accessible online free of charge (except the most recent ones).
FISHER, T 2004, Putting good practice into effect: analysing and telling people's stories.
Paper presented at NCVER Research Conference, Tweed Gold Coast Campus, Southern Cross University. Fisher gives some very good tips for working collaboratively, preparing for analysing data, for doing the actual analysis, and for reporting on findings.
KEMBER, D 2002, Long-term Outcomes of Educational Action Research Projects, Educational Action Research, Vol 10, No 1.
This is a useful article for both teachers and VET managers, for it contains sufficient information on the different types of research carried out by teachers in over 90 projects to be of interest to teachers, as well as good argument for managers to support teachers’ action learning and action research.
PONTE, P 2002, How teachers become action researchers and how teacher educators become their facilitators, Educational Action Research, Vol 10, No 3.
The first section of this article is informative in its approach to building capability for action research in teachers, although the case study is of school-based teachers. It outlines a number of actions and skills that teachers need to master in order to learn how to do action research.