Action Research

Action research is one among four varieties of educational research—quantitative research, qualitative research, evaluation research, and action research. Action research stands alone as a research approach because it is directly importable into the classroom. Action research fits well in the lives of professionals, parents, and children and is a useful tool for improving the practice of teaching gifted and talented children.

Action research originated with Kurt Lewin in the 1940s as a means for studying social action. Since that time it has been relatively invisible in the United States. Action research has a greater following [Page 18]in the United Kingdom and Australia. The Holmes group, which advocated for teacher education reform in the 1990s, campaigned for it to become part of teacher educational programs and propelled it into the consciousness of researchers.

Action research has more than one form. The most well-known names and their developers are as follows: Chris Argyris's action science, John Heron and Peter Reason's cooperative inquiry, and Paulo Freire's participatory action research.

Action research is similar to other forms of social science research: All look at a question of interest or problem or an issue in the world in order to understand it. The methods are systematic, public, and limited. Systematic means a deliberate step-by-step approach is taken. Public means that the procedures and the analytic decisions in the process are transparent and available to others for review. Limited means that the study is tied to a research question.

The basic differences between action research and other forms of research are that action research makes no pretense to generalization, often is intended to produce a desired outcome or change, and has a cyclical recursive nature. Action research answers local questions generated by persons in that situation. Generalizing to another time or place is neither intended nor possible. The issue of selection of participants or subjects is constrained by their presence in the situation. One studies only those persons or events in the situation of interest. Representativeness of the larger population is irrelevant. Randomization does not make sense with this kind of research. In the education of gifted, talented, and creative, the questions grow out of the practices of teachers, administrators, or counselors. The research problem is defined by that person for the particular local situation in which the problem resides. The person doing the action research might say, “In my classroom or school, this problem is going on, so how can I improve this situation? What parts will I work on?” The implementation of systematic methods is determined by what is possible in that environment. Statistics are used infrequently because the forms of measurement—such as observation, narratives, and frequency counts—are generally not amenable to statistics. The meaning of reliability and validity in action research depends upon the purposes of the specific action research project, the outcomes, and the audience for whom it is intended.

The research process in action research welcomes changes. The assumption is that the problem or question will change and be reconceptualized as the researcher increasingly understands the context as the data are gathered. Standards of reliability, validity, and successful outcome are based on whether the procedures work according to evaluation criteria set by the action researcher. Lastly, as the practitioner–researcher moves through the process, feedback and reflection lead to changes in definition of the problem and the desired outcomes. This makes action research a more variable process than other methodologies.

...