Action Research

The main features of action research are as follows:

• It includes a developmental aim that embodies a professional ideal and that all those who participate are committed to realizing in practice.
• It focuses on changing practice to make it more consistent with the developmental aim.
• In identifying and explaining inconsistencies between aspiration and practice (such explanation may lie in the broader institutional, social, and political context), it problematizes the assumptions and beliefs (theories) that tacitly underpin professional practice.
• It involves professional practitioners in a process of generating and testing new forms of action for realizing their aspirations and thereby enables them to reconstruct the theories that guide their practice.
• It is a developmental process characterized by reflexivity on the part of the practitioner.

From an action research perspective, professional practice is ...