Action research as practitioner research

A topic in research methodology

By its nature, action research, AR is undertaken by practitioners, individually or in groups. It is often context-directed research. However, sometimes AR is undertaken by practitioners in collaboration with academic researchers. AR cannot be undertaken by academic researchers (including research students) carrying out research on practitioners and their practice.

“A key characteristic of AR as generally understood is that AR is carried out by practitioners. So, in education, AR may typically be undertaken by a teacher…. Empirical research has to be carried out somewhere, in some setting, with some participants. In traditional academic research, a key part of the planning process may concern characterising and identifying suitable research sites. However, in AR this is not necessary, as the research site is where the practitioner works. On this understanding, an external researcher coming into a particular setting to do research cannot be considered to be doing AR, unless they are involved in collaborative AR supporting the enquiry of the practitioner(s) normally working in that context. Even in this situation, the collaboration will only be AR when the issue being addressed has been identified as needing research attention in that context by the practitioner…”

Taber, 2013: 288-289

“Action research is a process in which participants examine their own educational practice systematically and carefully, using the techniques of research.”
“Action research specifically refers to a disciplined inquiry done by a teacher [or other professional] with the intent that the research will inform and change his or her practices in the future. This research is carried out within the context of the teacher’s environment—that is, with the students and at the school in which the teacher works—on questions that deal with educational matters at hand.” (p.1)
“Educators are working in their own environment, with their own students, on problems that affect them directly. They are at the place where research and practice intersect and real change can occur. Results of their actions can be seen first-hand, and they can build on this information.” (p.29)
“action research allows practitioners to address those concerns that are closest to them, ones over which they can exhibit some influence and make change.” (p.29)

Ferrance, 2000

It has been argued that practitioners in fields such as counselling my be especially suited to undertaking action research:

“Action research has the potential to advance the field of counseling by creating a pathway for resolving the long-standing disconnect between research and practice within the counseling profession. The results of action research are relevant to practitioners and easily translated into practice because the questions that action researchers pose are generated by the practitioners themselves. In addition, counseling practitioners are advantaged as action researchers because the requisite skills and values that inform quality action research, including creativity, reflexivity, the ethics of relationship power differentials, and advocacy for vulnerable clients, are central features of their clinical training. Action research, therefore, provides potential for counselors to produce a body of literature that is tailored to the unique needs of counselors and is consistent with the counseling field's developmental, ecological, multicultural, and advocacy-based traditions.”

Guiffrida, et al.,2011

Hammersley argued that

"the core feature of action research seems to be that there should be an intimate relationship between research and some form of practical or political activity – such that the focus of inquiry arises out of, and its results feed back into, the activity concerned."

Hammersley, 2004: 165

Where this action is political, then the AR may be considered to be critical action research.

Sources cited:

• Ferrance, E. (2000). Action Research, Themes in Education. Retrieved from http://www.alliance.brown.edu/pubs/themes_ed/act_research.pdf
• Guiffrida, D. A., Douthit, K. Z., Lynch, M. F., & Mackie, K. L. (2011). Publishing action research in counseling journals. Journal of Counseling and Development, 89(3), 282-287.
• Hammersley, M. (2004). Action research: a contradiction in terms? Oxford Review of Education, 30(2), 165-181.
• Taber, K. S. (2013). Action Research and the Academy: seeking to legitimise a ‘different’ form of research. Teacher Development, 17(2), 288-300.