Action Research as ‘Systematic Investigation of Experience’

Abstract

This chapter presents the theoretical groundings of action research as investigating experience. Action research can be traced back to its use by the activists, Collier, working with indigenous Indian populations on reservations in 1930. In 1944 Kurt Lewin defined the term as “a comparative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action and research leading to social action” that uses “a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action and fact-finding about the result of the action”. Since then, action research has become a well-known methodological approach mainly in the fields of education and health care, geared to the systematic investigation of practitioners’ actions with the aim of producing guidelines for best practice and improving practitioners’ strategies, practices and knowledge of the environments within which they practice. Action research can be initiated to solve an immediate problem or as a reflective process of progressive inquiry into pedagogical, social and political aspects of teachers’ work, in order to transform their practice. The strength of teacher action research lies in its potential for empowering practitioners to become researchers into their own practices, while implementing their research in practice and becoming agents of change. The chapter discusses the theoretical groundings of action research, with a focus on studies conducted in teacher education on the uses, processes and outcomes of action research as a pedagogy as a pedagogy for mediating teacher learning. The second part presents concrete examples of action research cycles in teacher education practices from published studies. The third part presents a synthesis of the major themes identified in the literature on the use of action research in teacher education. The synthesis is organized around purposes, processes, outcomes and target audience studied. This is followed by a comprehensive checklist of selected articles, books and handbooks on action research by decades (from 1990 onwards).