Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dorothy Valcarcel Craig is a professor of education, certified online instructor, and program coordinator in the Department of Educational Leadership at the College of Education and Behavioral Science, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee. She previously held the position of associate dean for Teacher Education.

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Action Research Essentials offers students, faculty, and practitioners an accessible and practical guide on how and when to do action research most effectively. Dorothy Valcarcel Craig, a leading expert on the topic of action research, provides step-by-step approaches and shows how to gather the right data, conduct a comprehensive and useful literature review, analyze the data, design and implement a resulting action plan, and present the findings. Designed to be broadly applied, the book is filled with illustrations from the field of education, as well as from social work, psychology, sociology, nursing, medicine, and counseling.

Action Research Essentials contains a variety of online resources as well as rubrics and checklists to help students design questions, evaluate online sources, write the literature review, and create the action research report.

Praise for Action Research Essentials

"Action Research Essentials provides educators with an informative, detailed, and well-organized resource that guides them through the process of reflective inquiry."
Teresa Dalle, English Department, University of Memphis

"Among the dozens of research texts available, this new text by Dorothy Varcarcel Craig serves a valuable purpose: communicating clearly the essentials of action research, for enterprising college and university students."
Porter King, Trevecca Nazarene University; editor, Tennessee Educational Leadership

"Action Research Essentials thoroughly describes the steps involved in action research, scenarios where action research is appropriate, and guidelines for writing the action research report."
Donna J. Urban, instructional design manager, Jones Knowledge

Aus dem Klappentext

Action Research Essentials offers students, faculty, and practitioners an accessible and practical guide on how and when to do action research most effectively. Dorothy Valcarcel Craig, a leading expert on the topic of action research, provides step-by-step approaches and shows how to gather the right data, conduct a comprehensive and useful literature review, analyze the data, design and implement a resulting action plan, and present the findings. Designed to be broadly applied, the book is filled with illustrations from the field of education, as well as from social work, psychology, sociology, nursing, medicine, and counseling.

Action Research Essentials contains a variety of online resources as well as rubrics and checklists to help students design questions, evaluate online sources, write the literature review, and create the action research report.

Praise for Action Research Essentials

"Action Research Essentials provides educators with an informative, detailed, and well-organized resource that guides them through the process of reflective inquiry."
—Teresa Dalle, English Department, University of Memphis

"Among the dozens of research texts available, this new text by Dorothy Varcarcel Craig serves a valuable purpose: communicating clearly the essentials of action research, for enterprising college and university students."
—Porter King, Trevecca Nazarene University; editor, Tennessee Educational Leadership

"Action Research Essentials thoroughly describes the steps involved in action research, scenarios where action research is appropriate, and guidelines for writing the action research report."
—Donna J. Urban, instructional design manager, Jones Knowledge

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Action Research Essentials

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After reading Chapter One, you should be able to:

* Discuss several definitions applied to action research

* Identify the steps involved in the action research process

* Examine the rationale for selecting action research as an appropriate method

* Discuss the role and responsibilities of the ethical researcher

INTRODUCTION

We live in an information age driven by accountability issues that influence practice across many disciplines. The classroom teacher faced with designing effective instruction that meets the needs of a diverse population of students must also address the demand to prepare students for end-of-year standardized tests. Social workers-in order to give attention to multiple cases-must examine procedures and practices to develop effective strategies that reflect sound performance. Professionals in the field of nursing-faced with budget cuts and shortages-examine current practices as they address accountability concerns in order to support needs and improve conditions. Graduate students are encouraged to examine a variety of issues in their field of study-many of which involve some type of accountability related to practice-as they build skills needed to be effective researchers. These are just a few examples of practitioner-based environments where professionals-whether it be teachers, nurses, social workers, graduate students, or human resource coordinators-face the need to examine a variety of issues and concerns in order to gather information systematically and formulate a plan to improve practice. This chapter presents information that is covered in depth in later chapters. Examine the information presented here, and seek additional explanations in other chapters.

Although conditions for inquiry are present in a variety of practitioner-based settings, this text will specifically focus on teaching and learning environments such as classrooms and will present information to help graduate students build skills needed to identify problems, carry out research, and develop action plans to improve practice. Therefore, the expressions "work-based environment" and "practitioner-based environment," although they may be applied to a variety of settings, should be understood as specifically referring to the classroom setting in the P-16 environment.

WHAT IS ACTION RESEARCH?

Within the realm of teaching and learning comes the blended challenge of addressing accountability issues while at the same time using available information and experience to improve practice. Once immersed in the classroom, teachers often find the role of teacher expanding to that of teacher-as-researcher. This is in part based on their experience as professionals as well as their knowledge base as experts in the field. Elliot Eisner (1998), in The Enlightened Eye, suggests that experience has its genesis in the transactions one has with the environment. There is no better catalyst to inform practice than the teacher who interacts in the classroom on a daily basis. Drawing on professional experience, classroom teachers often find themselves engaged in inquiry regarding the intricacies of teaching and learning. This is possible due to the expertise of the practicing teacher and the data available in the environment. Data are sets of information collected during inquiry. They may consist of sets of numerical information. Data may also take the form of interview responses, observations, or survey responses. When considering the type of data typically available in the classroom environment, one might think of classroom test scores, recorded observations of interactions, inventories, journal entries, interview responses, standardized test scores, projects, and writing samples, to name a few. The inquiry process involves identifying problems, gathering data, analyzing data, and designing a plan of action. The plan is implemented-based on the inquiry-in the practicing environment. Additional data are collected and analyzed, which leads to conclusions-all for the sake of improving practice. This type of research is known as action research.

Action research is a common methodology employed for improving conditions and practice in classrooms and in other practitioner-based environments such as administrative, leadership, social, and community settings. Kurt Lewin, who was instrumental in establishing a research center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was perhaps one of the first researchers to use the term action research. Lewin (1951) suggested that in an effective community of practice, comparative research takes place. This comparative research consists of an examination of conditions and effects of different forms of social action. Unlike research that produces findings without action, the spiral and cyclical research process leads to action and improvement.

Through action research, teachers and others working in a practitioner-based environment use their expertise and knowledge to conduct systematic inquiry that helps improve conditions and solve problems. As practitioners interact in the environment, they gain experience. They use this experience to inform practice. However, experience must be matched with evaluative skills to improve the practicing environment. Effective evaluation of a program, situation, or condition-which is in essence based in systematic analysis-can be facilitated through action research. Action research encourages the researcher to consider the interconnectedness of the environment and everyone in it, the conditions present in the environment, and the interactions among the individuals in the environment. Action research is typically community-based. Community-based research is usually conducted in the practicing environment, individually or in teams. It involves the parties who naturally interact in that environment and is ordinarily conducted to improve the community as a whole. The community may be the individual classroom, a grade level of classrooms, the school, or the entire school system. Lewin (1951) uses the term community of practice to describe the community-based quality of action research.

In addition, action research is considered a field-intensive process. A field-intensive process is one that requires the researcher to take an active part in the environment being studied. The researcher is expected to be a participant observer as well as a researcher-as-instrument involved in the research process. A participant observer is a researcher who takes part in all activities in the environment being studied and interacts naturally with subjects in the environment. A researcher-as-instrument is able to rely on expertise, draw on experience, and use research skills in an unbiased manner in tasks such as conducting interviews and recording notes during observations. The field-intensive process also requires the researcher to collect multiple forms of data, organize the data effectively, analyze the data, and use the findings to design an action plan. The researcher uses the findings-matched with knowledge of the environment, expertise, and experience-to develop a plan for improvement. The action plan is a framework or blueprint that is implemented to improve practice, conditions, or the environment in general. The...