i need to write an action research because

Embrace Action Research

Improve classroom practice with action research ... and tell the story

The action research process can help you understand what is happening in your classroom and identify changes that improve teaching and learning. Action research can help answer questions you have about the effectiveness of specific instructional strategies, the performance of specific students, and classroom management techniques.

Educational research often seems removed from the realities of the classroom. For many classroom educators, formal experimental research, including the use of a control group, seems to contradict the mandate to improve learning for all students. Even quasi-experimental research with no control group seems difficult to implement, given the variety of learners and diverse learning needs present in every classroom.

Action research gives you the benefits of research in the classroom without these obstacles. Believe it or not, you are probably doing some form of research already. Every time you change a lesson plan or try a new approach with your students, you are engaged in trying to figure out what works. Even though you may not acknowledge it as formal research, you are still investigating, implementing, reflecting, and refining your approach.

Qualitative research acknowledges the complexity of the classroom learning environment. While quantitative research can help us see that improvements or declines have occurred, it does not help us identify the causes of those improvements or declines. Action research provides qualitative data you can use to adjust your curriculum content, delivery, and instructional practices to improve student learning. Action research helps you implement informed change!

The term “action research” was coined by Kurt Lewin in 1944 to describe a process of investigation and inquiry that occurs as action is taken to solve a problem. Today we use the term to describe a practice of reflective inquiry undertaken with the goal of improving understanding and practice. You might consider “action” to refer to the change you are trying to implement and “research” to refer to your improved understanding of the learning environment.

Action research also helps you take charge of your personal professional development. As you reflect on your own actions and observe other master teachers, you will identify the skills and strategies you would like to add to your own professional toolbox. As you research potential solutions and are exposed to new ideas, you will identify the skills, management, and instructional training needed to make the changes you want to see.

The Action Research Cycle

Action research is a cycle of inquiry and reflection. During the process, you will determine 1) where you are, 2) where you want to be, and 3) how you are going to get there. In general terms, the cycle follows these steps:

Identify the problem and envision success
Develop a plan of action
Collect data
Analyze data and form conclusions
Modify your theory and repeat the cycle
Report the results

Identify the Problem

The process begins when you identify a question or problem you want to address. Action research is most successful when you have a personal investment, so make sure the questions you are asking are ones YOU want to solve. This could be an improvement you want to see happen in your classroom (or your school if you are a principal), or a problem you and your colleagues would like to address in your district.

Learning to develop the right questions takes time. Your ability to identify these key questions will improve with each iteration of the research cycle. You want to select a question that isn’t so broad it is almost impossible to answer or so narrow that the only answer is yes or no. Choose questions that can be answered within the context of your daily teaching. In other words, choose a question that is both answerable and worthy of the time investment required to learn the answer.

Questions you could ask might involve management issues, curriculum implementation, instructional strategies, or specific student performance. For example, you might consider:

How successful is random grouping for project work?
Why is the performance of one student lacking in a particular area?
Will increasing the amount of feedback I provide improve students’ writing skills?
What is the best way to introduce the concept of fractions?
Which procedure is most effective for managing classroom conflict?

Determining the question helps focus your inquiry.

Before you can start collecting data, you need to have a clear vision of what success looks like. Start by brainstorming words that describe the change you want to see. What strategies do you already know that might help you get there? Which of these ideas do you think might work better than what you are currently doing?

To find out if a new instructional strategy is worth trying, conduct a review of literature. This doesn’t have to mean writing up a formal lit review like you did in graduate school. The important thing is to explore a range of articles and reports on your topic and capitalize on the research and experience of others. Your classroom responsibilities are already many and may be overwhelming. A review of literature can help you identify useful strategies and locate information that helps you justify your action plan.

The Web makes literature reviews easier to accomplish than ever before. Even if the full text of an article, research paper, or abstract is not available online, you will be able to find citations to help you locate the source materials at your local library. Collect as much information on your problem as you can find. As you explore the existing literature, you will certainly find solutions and strategies that others have implemented to solve this problem. You may want to create a visual map or a table of your problems and target performances with a list of potential solutions and supporting citations in the middle.

Develop an Action Plan

Now that you have identified the problem, described your vision of how to successfully solve it, and reviewed the pertinent literature, you need to develop a plan of action. What is it that you intend to DO? Brainstorming and reviewing the literature should have provided you with ideas for new techniques and strategies you think will produce better results. Refer back to your visual map or table and color-code or reorder your potential solutions. You will want to rank them in order of importance and indicate the amount of time you will need to spend on these strategies.

How can you implement these techniques? How will you? Translate these solutions into concrete steps you can and will take in your classroom. Write a description of how you will implement each idea and the time you will take to do it.

Once you have a clear vision of a potential solution to the problem, explore factors you think might be keeping you and your students from your vision of success. Recognize and accept those factors you do not have the power to change–they are the constants in your equation. Focus your attention on the variables–the parts of the formula you believe your actions can impact.

Develop a plan that shows how you will implement your solution and how your behavior, management style, and instruction will address each of the variables. Sometimes an action research cycle simply helps you identify variables you weren’t even aware of, so you can better address your problem during the next cycle!

Collect Data

Before you begin to implement your plan of action, you need to determine what data will help you understand if your plan succeeds, and how you will collect that data. Your target performances will help you determine what you want to achieve. What results or other indicators will help you know if you achieved it? For example, if your goal is improved attendance, data can easily be collected from your attendance records. If the goal is increased time on task, the data may include classroom and student observations.

There are many options for collecting data. Choosing the best methodologies for collecting information will result in more accurate, meaningful, and reliable data.

Obvious sources of data include observation and interviews. As you observe, you will want to type or write notes or dictate your observations into a cell phone, iPod, or PDA. You may want to keep a journal during the process, or even create a blog or wiki to practice your technology skills as you collect data.

Reflective journals are often used as a source of data for action research. You can also collect meaningful data from other records you deal with daily, including attendance logs, grade reports, and student portfolios. You could distribute questionnaires, watch videotapes of your classroom, and administer surveys. Examples of student work are also performances you can evaluate to see if your goal is being met.

Create a plan for data collection and follow it as you perform your research. If you are going to interview students or other teachers, how many times will you do it? At what times during the day? How will you ensure your respondents are representative of the student population you are studying, including gender, ability level, experience, and expertise?

Your plan will help you ensure that you have collected data from many different sources. Each source of data provides additional information that will help you answer the questions in your research plan.

You may also want to have students collect data on their own learning. Not only does this provide you with additional research assistants, it empowers students to take control of their own learning. As students keep a journal during the process, they are also reflecting on the learning environment and their own learning process.

Analyze Data and Form Conclusions

The next step in the process is to analyze your data and form conclusions. Start early! Examining the data during the collection process can help you refine your action plan. Is the data you are collecting sufficient? If not, you have an opportunity to revise your data collection plan. Your analysis of the data will also help you identify attitudes and performances to look for during subsequent observations.

Analyzing the data also helps you reflect on what actually happened. Did you achieve the outcomes you were hoping for? Where you able to carry out your actions as planned? Were any of your assumptions about the problem incorrect?

Adding data such as opinions, attitudes, and grades to tables can help you identify trends (relationships and correlations). For example, if you are completing action research to determine if project-based learning is impacting student motivation, graphing attendance and disruptive behavior incidents may help you answer the question. A graph that shows an increase in attendance and a decrease in the number of disruptive incidents over the implementation period would lead you to believe that motivation was improved.

Draw tentative conclusions from your analysis. Since the goal of action research is positive change, you want to try to identify specific behaviors that move you closer to your vision of success. That way you can adjust your actions to better achieve your goal of improved student learning.

Action research is an iterative process. The data you collect and your analysis of it will affect how you approach the problem and implement your action plan during the next cycle.

Even as you begin drawing conclusions, continue collecting data. This will help you confirm your conclusions or revise them in light of new information. While you can plan how long and often you will collect data, you may also want to continue collecting until the trends have been identified and new data becomes redundant.

As you are analyzing your data and drawing conclusions, share your findings. Discussing your results with another teacher can often yield valuable feedback. You might also share your findings with your students who can also add additional insight. If they agree with your conclusions, you have added credibility to your data collection plan and analysis. If they disagree, you will know to reevaluate your conclusions or refine your data collection plan.

Modify Your Theory and Repeat

Now that you have formed a final conclusion, the cycle begins again. In light of your findings, you should have adjusted your theory or made it more specific. Modify your plan of action, begin collecting data again, or begin asking new questions!

Report the Results

While the ultimate goal of your research is to promote effective change in your classroom or schools, do not underestimate the value of sharing your findings with others. Sharing your results helps you further reflect on the process and problem, and it allows others to use your results to help them in their own endeavors to improve the education of their students.

You can report your findings in many different ways. You most certainly will want to share the experience with your students, parents, teachers, and principal. Provide them with an overview of the process and share highlights from your research journal. Because each of these audiences is different, you will need to adjust the content and delivery of the information each time you share. You may also want to present your process at a conference so educators from other districts can benefit from your work.

As your skill with the action research cycle gets stronger, you may want to develop an abstract and submit an article to an educational journal. To write an abstract, state the problem you were trying to solve, describe your context, detail your action plan and methods, summarize your findings, state your conclusions, and explain your revised action plan.

If your question focused on the implementation of an action plan to improve the performance of a particular student, what better way to show the process and results than through digital storytelling? Using a tool like Wixie , you can share images, audio, artifacts and more to show the student’s journey. Action research is outside-the-box thinking… so find similarly unique ways to report your findings!

All teachers want to reach their students more effectively and help them become better learners and citizens. Action research provides a reflective process you can use to implement changes in your classroom and determine if those changes result in the desired outcome.

Your ideas and experience combined with action research are a powerful formula for effective change!

Grady, M.P. (1998). Qualitative and Action Research. Bloomington: Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation.

Sagor, R. (2005). The Action Research Handbook. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.

by Melinda Kolk

Melinda Kolk ( @melindak ) is the Editor of Creative Educator and the author of Teaching with Clay Animation . She has been helping educators implement project-based learning and creative technologies like clay animation into classroom teaching and learning for the past 15 years.

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Linking Research to Action: A Simple Guide to Writing an Action Research Report

What Is Action Research, and Why Do We Do It?

Action research is any research into practice undertaken by those involved in that practice, with the primary goal of encouraging continued reflection and making improvement. It can be done in any professional field, including medicine, nursing, social work, psychology, and education. Action research is particularly popular in the field of education. When it comes to teaching, practitioners may be interested in trying out different teaching methods in the classroom, but are unsure of their effectiveness. Action research provides an opportunity to explore the effectiveness of a particular teaching practice, the development of a curriculum, or your students’ learning, hence making continual improvement possible. In other words, the use of an interactive action-and-research process enables practitioners to get an idea of what they and their learners really do inside of the classroom, not merely what they think they can do. By doing this, it is hoped that both the teaching and the learning occurring in the classroom can be better tailored to fit the learners’ needs.

You may be wondering how action research differs from traditional research. The term itself already suggests that it is concerned with both “action” and “research,” as well as the association between the two. Kurt Lewin (1890-1947), a famous psychologist who coined this term, believed that there was “no action without research; no research without action” (Marrow, 1969, p.163). It is certainly possible, and perhaps commonplace, for people to try to have one without the other, but the unique combination of the two is what distinguishes action research from most other forms of enquiry. Traditional research emphasizes the review of prior research, rigorous control of the research design, and generalizable and preferably statistically significant results, all of which help examine the theoretical significance of the issue. Action research, with its emphasis on the insider’s perspective and the practical significance of a current issue, may instead allow less representative sampling, looser procedures, and the presentation of raw data and statistically insignificant results.

What Should We Include in an Action Research Report?

The components put into an action research report largely coincide with the steps used in the action research process. This process usually starts with a question or an observation about a current problem. After identifying the problem area and narrowing it down to make it more manageable for research, the development process continues as you devise an action plan to investigate your question. This will involve gathering data and evidence to support your solution. Common data collection methods include observation of individual or group behavior, taking audio or video recordings, distributing questionnaires or surveys, conducting interviews, asking for peer observations and comments, taking field notes, writing journals, and studying the work samples of your own and your target participants. You may choose to use more than one of these data collection methods. After you have selected your method and are analyzing the data you have collected, you will also reflect upon your entire process of action research. You may have a better solution to your question now, due to the increase of your available evidence. You may also think about the steps you will try next, or decide that the practice needs to be observed again with modifications. If so, the whole action research process starts all over again.

In brief, action research is more like a cyclical process, with the reflection upon your action and research findings affecting changes in your practice, which may lead to extended questions and further action. This brings us back to the essential steps of action research: identifying the problem, devising an action plan, implementing the plan, and finally, observing and reflecting upon the process. Your action research report should comprise all of these essential steps. Feldman and Weiss (n.d.) summarized them as five structural elements, which do not have to be written in a particular order. Your report should:

Describe the context where the action research takes place. This could be, for example, the school in which you teach. Both features of the school and the population associated with it (e.g., students and parents) would be illustrated as well.
Contain a statement of your research focus. This would explain where your research questions come from, the problem you intend to investigate, and the goals you want to achieve. You may also mention prior research studies you have read that are related to your action research study.
Detail the method(s) used. This part includes the procedures you used to collect data, types of data in your report, and justification of your used strategies.
Highlight the research findings. This is the part in which you observe and reflect upon your practice. By analyzing the evidence you have gathered, you will come to understand whether the initial problem has been solved or not, and what research you have yet to accomplish.
Suggest implications. You may discuss how the findings of your research will affect your future practice, or explain any new research plans you have that have been inspired by this report’s action research.

The overall structure of your paper will actually look more or less the same as what we commonly see in traditional research papers.

What Else Do We Need to Pay Attention to?

We discussed the major differences between action research and traditional research in the beginning of this article. Due to the difference in the focus of an action research report, the language style used may not be the same as what we normally see or use in a standard research report. Although both kinds of research, both action and traditional, can be published in academic journals, action research may also be published and delivered in brief reports or on websites for a broader, non-academic audience. Instead of using the formal style of scientific research, you may find it more suitable to write in the first person and use a narrative style while documenting your details of the research process.

However, this does not forbid using an academic writing style, which undeniably enhances the credibility of a report. According to Johnson (2002), even though personal thoughts and observations are valued and recorded along the way, an action research report should not be written in a highly subjective manner. A personal, reflective writing style does not necessarily mean that descriptions are unfair or dishonest, but statements with value judgments, highly charged language, and emotional buzzwords are best avoided.

Furthermore, documenting every detail used in the process of research does not necessitate writing a lengthy report. The purpose of giving sufficient details is to let other practitioners trace your train of thought, learn from your examples, and possibly be able to duplicate your steps of research. This is why writing a clear report that does not bore or confuse your readers is essential.

Lastly, You May Ask, Why Do We Bother to Even Write an Action Research Report?

It sounds paradoxical that while practitioners tend to have a great deal of knowledge at their disposal, often they do not communicate their insights to others. Take education as an example: It is both regrettable and regressive if every teacher, no matter how professional he or she might be, only teaches in the way they were taught and fails to understand what their peer teachers know about their practice. Writing an action research report provides you with the chance to reflect upon your own practice, make substantiated claims linking research to action, and document action and ideas as they take place. The results can then be kept, both for the sake of your own future reference, and to also make the most of your insights through the act of sharing with your professional peers.

Feldman, A., & Weiss, T. (n.d.). Suggestions for writing the action research report . Retrieved from http://people.umass.edu/~afeldman/ARreadingmaterials/WritingARReport.html

Johnson, A. P. (2002). A short guide to action research . Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Marrow, A. J. (1969). The practical theorist: The life and work of Kurt Lewin . New York, NY: Basic Books.

Tiffany Ip is a lecturer at Hong Kong Baptist University. She gained a PhD in neurolinguistics after completing her Bachelor’s degree in psychology and linguistics. She strives to utilize her knowledge to translate brain research findings into practical classroom instruction.

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4 Preparing for Action Research in the Classroom: Practical Issues

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

What sort of considerations are necessary to take action in your educational context?
How do you facilitate an action plan without disrupting your teaching?
How do you respond when the unplanned happens during data collection?

An action research project is a practical endeavor that will ultimately be shaped by your educational context and practice. Now that you have developed a literature review, you are ready to revise your initial plans and begin to plan your project. This chapter will provide some advice about your considerations when undertaking an action research project in your classroom.

Maintain Focus

Hopefully, you found a lot a research on your topic. If so, you will now have a better understanding of how it fits into your area and field of educational research. Even though the topic and area you are researching may not be small, your study itself should clearly focus on one aspect of the topic in your classroom. It is important to maintain clarity about what you are investigating because a lot will be going on simultaneously during the research process and you do not want to spend precious time on erroneous aspects that are irrelevant to your research.

Even though you may view your practice as research, and vice versa, you might want to consider your research project as a projection or megaphone for your work that will bring attention to the small decisions that make a difference in your educational context. From experience, our concern is that you will find that researching one aspect of your practice will reveal other interconnected aspects that you may find interesting, and you will disorient yourself researching in a confluence of interests, commitments, and purposes. We simply want to emphasize – don’t try to research everything at once. Stay focused on your topic, and focus on exploring it in depth, instead of its many related aspects. Once you feel you have made progress in one aspect, you can then progress to other related areas, as new research projects that continue the research cycle.

Identify a Clear Research Question

Your literature review should have exposed you to an array of research questions related to your topic. More importantly, your review should have helped identify which research questions we have addressed as a field, and which ones still need to be addressed . More than likely your research questions will resemble ones from your literature review, while also being distinguishable based upon your own educational context and the unexplored areas of research on your topic.

Regardless of how your research question took shape, it is important to be clear about what you are researching in your educational context. Action research questions typically begin in ways related to “How does … ?” or “How do I/we … ?”, for example:

Research Question Examples

How does a semi-structured morning meeting improve my classroom community?
How does historical fiction help students think about people’s agency in the past?
How do I improve student punctuation use through acting out sentences?
How do we increase student responsibility for their own learning as a team of teachers?

I particularly favor questions with I or we, because they emphasize that you, the actor and researcher, will be clearly taking action to improve your practice. While this may seem rather easy, you need to be aware of asking the right kind of question. One issue is asking a too pointed and closed question that limits the possibility for analysis. These questions tend to rely on quantitative answers, or yes/no answers. For example, “How many students got a 90% or higher on the exam, after reviewing the material three times?

Another issue is asking a question that is too broad, or that considers too many variables. For example, “How does room temperature affect students’ time-on-task?” These are obviously researchable questions, but the aim is a cause-and-effect relationship between variables that has little or no value to your daily practice.

I also want to point out that your research question will potentially change as the research develops. If you consider the question:

As you do an activity, you may find that students are more comfortable and engaged by acting sentences out in small groups, instead of the whole class. Therefore, your question may shift to:

How do I improve student punctuation use through acting out sentences, in small groups ?

By simply engaging in the research process and asking questions, you will open your thinking to new possibilities and you will develop new understandings about yourself and the problematic aspects of your educational context.

Understand Your Capabilities and Know that Change Happens Slowly

Similar to your research question, it is important to have a clear and realistic understanding of what is possible to research in your specific educational context. For example, would you be able to address unsatisfactory structures (policies and systems) within your educational context? Probably not immediately, but over time you potentially could. It is much more feasible to think of change happening in smaller increments, from within your own classroom or context, with you as one change agent. For example, you might find it particularly problematic that your school or district places a heavy emphasis on traditional grades, believing that these grades are often not reflective of the skills students have or have not mastered. Instead of attempting to research grading practices across your school or district, your research might instead focus on determining how to provide more meaningful feedback to students and parents about progress in your course. While this project identifies and addresses a structural issue that is part of your school and district context, to keep things manageable, your research project would focus the outcomes on your classroom. The more research you do related to the structure of your educational context the more likely modifications will emerge. The more you understand these modifications in relation to the structural issues you identify within your own context, the more you can influence others by sharing your work and enabling others to understand the modification and address structural issues within their contexts. Throughout your project, you might determine that modifying your grades to be standards-based is more effective than traditional grades, and in turn, that sharing your research outcomes with colleagues at an in-service presentation prompts many to adopt a similar model in their own classrooms. It can be defeating to expect the world to change immediately, but you can provide the spark that ignites coordinated changes. In this way, action research is a powerful methodology for enacting social change. Action research enables individuals to change their own lives, while linking communities of like-minded practitioners who work towards action.

Plan Thoughtfully

Planning thoughtfully involves having a path in mind, but not necessarily having specific objectives. Due to your experience with students and your educational context, the research process will often develop in ways as you expected, but at times it may develop a little differently, which may require you to shift the research focus and change your research question. I will suggest a couple methods to help facilitate this potential shift. First, you may want to develop criteria for gauging the effectiveness of your research process. You may need to refine and modify your criteria and your thinking as you go. For example, we often ask ourselves if action research is encouraging depth of analysis beyond my typical daily pedagogical reflection. You can think about this as you are developing data collection methods and even when you are collecting data. The key distinction is whether the data you will be collecting allows for nuance among the participants or variables. This does not mean that you will have nuance, but it should allow for the possibility. Second, criteria are shaped by our values and develop into standards of judgement. If we identify criteria such as teacher empowerment, then we will use that standard to think about the action contained in our research process. Our values inform our work; therefore, our work should be judged in relation to the relevance of our values in our pedagogy and practice.

Does Your Timeline Work?

While action research is situated in the temporal span that is your life, your research project is short-term, bounded, and related to the socially mediated practices within your educational context. The timeline is important for bounding, or setting limits to your research project, while also making sure you provide the right amount of time for the data to emerge from the process.

For example, if you are thinking about examining the use of math diaries in your classroom, you probably do not want to look at a whole semester of entries because that would be a lot of data, with entries related to a wide range of topics. This would create a huge data analysis endeavor. Therefore, you may want to look at entries from one chapter or unit of study. Also, in terms of timelines, you want to make sure participants have enough time to develop the data you collect. Using the same math example, you would probably want students to have plenty of time to write in the journals, and also space out the entries over the span of the chapter or unit.

In relation to the examples, we think it is an important mind shift to not think of research timelines in terms of deadlines. It is vitally important to provide time and space for the data to emerge from the participants. Therefore, it would be potentially counterproductive to rush a 50-minute data collection into 20 minutes – like all good educators, be flexible in the research process.

Involve Others

It is important to not isolate yourself when doing research. Many educators are already isolated when it comes to practice in their classroom. The research process should be an opportunity to engage with colleagues and open up your classroom to discuss issues that are potentially impacting your entire educational context. Think about the following relationships:

Research participants

You may invite a variety of individuals in your educational context, many with whom you are in a shared situation (e.g. colleagues, administrators). These participants may be part of a collaborative study, they may simply help you develop data collection instruments or intervention items, or they may help to analyze and make sense of the data. While the primary research focus will be you and your learning, you will also appreciate how your learning is potentially influencing the quality of others’ learning.

We always tell educators to be public about your research, or anything exciting that is happening in your educational context, for that matter. In terms of research, you do not want it to seem mysterious to any stakeholder in the educational context. Invite others to visit your setting and observe your research process, and then ask for their formal feedback. Inviting others to your classroom will engage and connect you with other stakeholders, while also showing that your research was established in an ethic of respect for multiple perspectives.

Critical friends or validators

Using critical friends is one way to involve colleagues and also validate your findings and conclusions. While your positionality will shape the research process and subsequently your interpretations of the data, it is important to make sure that others see similar logic in your process and conclusions. Critical friends or validators provide some level of certification that the frameworks you use to develop your research project and make sense of your data are appropriate for your educational context. Your critical friends and validators’ suggestions will be useful if you develop a report or share your findings, but most importantly will provide you confidence moving forward.

Potential researchers

As an educational researcher, you are involved in ongoing improvement plans and district or systemic change. The flexibility of action research allows it to be used in a variety of ways, and your initial research can spark others in your context to engage in research either individually for their own purposes, or collaboratively as a grade level, team, or school. Collaborative inquiry with other educators is an emerging form of professional learning and development for schools with school improvement plans. While they call it collaborative inquiry, these schools are often using an action research model. It is good to think of all of your colleagues as potential research collaborators in the future.

Prioritize Ethical Practice

Try to always be cognizant of your own positionality during the action research process, its relation to your educational context, and any associated power relation to your positionality. Furthermore, you want to make sure that you are not coercing or engaging participants into harmful practices. While this may seem obvious, you may not even realize you are harming your participants because you believe the action is necessary for the research process.

For example, commonly teachers want to try out an intervention that will potentially positively impact their students. When the teacher sets up the action research study, they may have a control group and an experimental group. There is potential to impair the learning of one of these groups if the intervention is either highly impactful or exceedingly worse than the typical instruction. Therefore, teachers can sometimes overlook the potential harm to students in pursuing an experimental method of exploring an intervention.

If you are working with a university researcher, ethical concerns will be covered by the Institutional Review Board (IRB). If not, your school or district may have a process or form that you would need to complete, so it would beneficial to check your district policies before starting. Other widely accepted aspects of doing ethically informed research, include:

Confirm Awareness of Study and Negotiate Access – with authorities, participants and parents, guardians, caregivers and supervisors (with IRB this is done with Informed Consent).

Promise to Uphold Confidentiality – Uphold confidentiality, to your fullest ability, to protect information, identity and data. You can identify people if they indicate they want to be recognized for their contributions.
Ensure participants’ rights to withdraw from the study at any point .
Make sure data is secured, either on password protected computer or lock drawer .

Prepare to Problematize your Thinking

Educational researchers who are more philosophically-natured emphasize that research is not about finding solutions, but instead is about creating and asking new and more precise questions. This is represented in the action research process shown in the diagrams in Chapter 1, as Collingwood (1939) notes the aim in human interaction is always to keep the conversation open, while Edward Said (1997) emphasized that there is no end because whatever we consider an end is actually the beginning of something entirely new. These reflections have perspective in evaluating the quality in research and signifying what is “good” in “good pedagogy” and “good research”. If we consider that action research is about studying and reflecting on one’s learning and how that learning influences practice to improve it, there is nothing to stop your line of inquiry as long as you relate it to improving practice. This is why it is necessary to problematize and scrutinize our practices.

Ethical Dilemmas for Educator-Researchers

Classroom teachers are increasingly expected to demonstrate a disposition of reflection and inquiry into their own practice. Many advocate for schools to become research centers, and to produce their own research studies, which is an important advancement in acknowledging and addressing the complexity in today’s schools. When schools conduct their own research studies without outside involvement, they bypass outside controls over their studies. Schools shift power away from the oversight of outside experts and ethical research responsibilities are shifted to those conducting the formal research within their educational context. Ethics firmly grounded and established in school policies and procedures for teaching, becomes multifaceted when teaching practice and research occur simultaneously. When educators conduct research in their classrooms, are they doing so as teachers or as researchers, and if they are researchers, at what point does the teaching role change to research? Although the notion of objectivity is a key element in traditional research paradigms, educator-based research acknowledges a subjective perspective as the educator-researcher is not viewed separately from the research. In action research, unlike traditional research, the educator as researcher gains access to the research site by the nature of the work they are paid and expected to perform. The educator is never detached from the research and remains at the research site both before and after the study. Because studying one’s practice comprises working with other people, ethical deliberations are inevitable. Educator-researchers confront role conflict and ambiguity regarding ethical issues such as informed consent from participants, protecting subjects (students) from harm, and ensuring confidentiality. They must demonstrate a commitment toward fully understanding ethical dilemmas that present themselves within the unique set of circumstances of the educational context. Questions about research ethics can feel exceedingly complex and in specific situations, educator- researchers require guidance from others.

Think about it this way. As a part-time historian and former history teacher I often problematized who we regard as good and bad people in history. I (Clark) grew up minutes from Jesse James’ childhood farm. Jesse James is a well-documented thief, and possibly by today’s standards, a terrorist. He is famous for daylight bank robberies, as well as the sheer number of successful robberies. When Jesse James was assassinated, by a trusted associate none-the-less, his body travelled the country for people to see, while his assailant and assailant’s brother reenacted the assassination over 1,200 times in theaters across the country. Still today in my hometown, they reenact Jesse James’ daylight bank robbery each year at the Fall Festival, immortalizing this thief and terrorist from our past. This demonstrates how some people saw him as somewhat of hero, or champion of some sort of resistance, both historically and in the present. I find this curious and ripe for further inquiry, but primarily it is problematic for how we think about people as good or bad in the past. Whatever we may individually or collectively think about Jesse James as a “good” or “bad” person in history, it is vitally important to problematize our thinking about him. Talking about Jesse James may seem strange, but it is relevant to the field of action research. If we tell people that we are engaging in important and “good” actions, we should be prepared to justify why it is “good” and provide a theoretical, epistemological, or ontological rationale if possible. Experience is never enough, you need to justify why you act in certain ways and not others, and this includes thinking critically about your own thinking.

Educators who view inquiry and research as a facet of their professional identity must think critically about how to design and conduct research in educational settings to address respect, justice, and beneficence to minimize harm to participants. This chapter emphasized the due diligence involved in ethically planning the collection of data, and in considering the challenges faced by educator-researchers in educational contexts.

Planning Action

After the thinking about the considerations above, you are now at the stage of having selected a topic and reflected on different aspects of that topic. You have undertaken a literature review and have done some reading which has enriched your understanding of your topic. As a result of your reading and further thinking, you may have changed or fine-tuned the topic you are exploring. Now it is time for action. In the last section of this chapter, we will address some practical issues of carrying out action research, drawing on both personal experiences of supervising educator-researchers in different settings and from reading and hearing about action research projects carried out by other researchers.

Engaging in an action research can be a rewarding experience, but a beneficial action research project does not happen by accident – it requires careful planning, a flexible approach, and continuous educator-researcher reflection. Although action research does not have to go through a pre-determined set of steps, it is useful here for you to be aware of the progression which we presented in Chapter 2. The sequence of activities we suggested then could be looked on as a checklist for you to consider before planning the practical aspects of your project.

We also want to provide some questions for you to think about as you are about to begin.

Have you identified a topic for study?
What is the specific context for the study? (It may be a personal project for you or for a group of researchers of which you are a member.)
Have you read a sufficient amount of the relevant literature?
Have you developed your research question(s)?
Have you assessed the resource needed to complete the research?

As you start your project, it is worth writing down:

a working title for your project, which you may need to refine later;
the background of the study , both in terms of your professional context and personal motivation;
the aims of the project;
the specific outcomes you are hoping for.

Although most of the models of action research presented in Chapter 1 suggest action taking place in some pre-defined order, they also allow us the possibility of refining our ideas and action in the light of our experiences and reflections. Changes may need to be made in response to your evaluation and your reflections on how the project is progressing. For example, you might have to make adjustments, taking into account the students’ responses, your observations and any observations of your colleagues. All this is very useful and, in fact, it is one of the features that makes action research suitable for educational research.

Action research planning sheet

In the past, we have provided action researchers with the following planning list that incorporates all of these considerations. Again, like we have said many times, this is in no way definitive, or lock-in-step procedure you need to follow, but instead guidance based on our perspective to help you engage in the action research process. The left column is the simplified version, and the right column offers more specific advice if need.

Figure 4.1 Planning Sheet for Action Research

My topic of research is about …
Why do you wish to research this topic
Are your plans realistic, doable, and/or supported?
Write down a working title. What is your research question or aspect you are intending to study? What do you know and not know about your topic of study?
Who will be involved in the research? What is the timeline? What ethical procedures do you need?
Where will I search for literature?
What data do you need to collect? Why do you need each of them?
What are the possible outcomes of my research?
What is your research question?

Action Research Copyright © by J. Spencer Clark; Suzanne Porath; Julie Thiele; and Morgan Jobe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Action Research in Education: What You Need to Know

Action research involves taking actions to improve teaching and learning practices and collecting data to measure the impact of those actions.

Researchers who use this approach believe that it is the best way to ensure that the needs of students are being met.

Table of Contents

What Is the Purpose of Action Research in Education

The purpose of action research in education is to improve teaching and learning by taking a collaborative, reflective, problem-solving approach to investigating classroom practice. Action research involves cycles of planning, implementing, observing, and reflecting on changes made to improve practice.

Why Action Research Is a Preferred Method of Inquiry in Education

There are several reasons why action research is becoming more popular in education:

It is an inclusive process that allows all stakeholders to be involved in the research. This includes teachers, students, administrators, and even parents.
It is a very effective way to get feedback from teachers and students about what is working and what needs improvement.
It helps build educators’ shared understanding of teaching and learning.
It allows teachers to reflect on their practice and learn new strategies for improving student outcomes .
It is focused on practical solutions to real problems faced by educators.
It has been found to be particularly effective in professional development contexts. Many teacher education programs now require their students to complete an action research project as part of their degree.
It is more effective than traditional research methods, which often fail to address the unique needs of specific groups.
It is a cyclical and recursive process, which means that it allows for constant reflection and improvement.

How Does Action Research Differ From Other Research Methods

One of the main differences between action research and other research methods is that action research focuses on solving specific problems. It is also designed to be interactive so that researchers can get feedback from those impacted by their work. This makes it an effective tool for changing schools and other educational settings.

How Does Action Research Work

Action research is a cyclical process that involves four steps: planning, action, observation, and reflection.

During the planning stage , researchers identify a problem or question they would like to explore. They then develop a plan for how they will go about investigating this question.

The action stage is when the research takes place. It involves conducting experiments, changing teaching practices, or collecting student data.

The observation stage is when researchers collect data about what is happening during the action stage. This data can be used to measure the impact of the actions taken and determine if they successfully achieved their goals.

The reflection stage is when researchers analyze the data collected during observation and discuss what they have learned. It allows them to change their plan and continue with the cycle.

What Are the Benefits of Action Research for Teachers and Students

There are several benefits of using action research in education, including the following:

It helps teachers to become more reflective practitioners. Through reflection, teachers can learn new strategies for improving student outcomes.
It helps teachers to develop a shared understanding of teaching and learning. This can lead to collaboration among educators and improved communication between teachers and students.
It is a collaborative process that encourages teamwork and builds relationships among educators.
It allows teachers to try new ideas and see how they work in practice.
It encourages teacher-student dialogue about learning and helps students become more engaged in their education.
It promotes professional development among educators.
It is a cyclical process, so researchers can continue to refine their practices based on the feedback they receive.
It can lead to positive changes in the classroom and the school.

What Examples of How Action Research Has Been Used to Improve Teaching and Learning Practices

One example of how action research has been used to improve teaching and learning practices is using portfolios . A portfolio is a collection of student work used to assess their learning progress. Portfolios can track students’ development over time and identify areas where they need assistance. They are also used to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching practices.

Another example is the use of formative assessments . Formative assessments are tests throughout the school year to measure students’ understanding of a topic. They help teachers to determine which concepts students understand and which ones they need more help with. They are also used to adjust teaching strategies based on students’ needs.

Action research can also be used to improve instruction for English Language Learners (ELLs) . ELLs are students who are new to English or who are not yet proficient in the language. Instruction for ELLs should be differentiated based on their level of proficiency. Additionally, it should be tailored to meet their individual needs. Action research can help educators to identify the best ways to teach ELLs and help them to achieve success in school.

What Are the Challenges Associated With Action Research

There are also some challenges associated with Action Research, including the following:

It can be time-consuming, especially if researchers are working alone.
Finding the resources needed to implement action research projects can be difficult.
Getting buy-in from stakeholders, including administrators, teachers, and students, can be challenging.
Not all research projects will yield positive results, discouraging those involved.

There are also some challenges associated with action research that can be difficult to overcome:

It can be challenging to get everyone on board with the changes being made. This is especially true if the changes are controversial or involve significant changes to the status quo.
It can be difficult to measure the impact of actions taken, especially in the short term. This can make it hard to determine whether or not the changes positively impact students.

These obstacles, however, can be overcome by following a few simple steps:

Ensure that everyone involved in the research process understands why the changes are being made and what they hope to achieve.
Collect data regularly and track progress over time. This will help to determine whether or not the changes are having a positive impact on students.
Be willing to adapt and change course if necessary to achieve desired results.

Action research is a powerful tool that can help to improve teaching and learning practices. However, it is important to be aware of the challenges associated with this type of research to overcome them.

By taking the steps outlined above, researchers can ensure that they can make the most of action research and its potential benefits.

What Are the Limitations of Action Research

This method is effective for meeting the needs of students, but there are some limitations to consider.

One limitation of action research is that it can be time-consuming . Researchers often have to collect and analyze data on their own, which can take a significant amount of time. Furthermore, taking action and then measuring the impact of those actions can also be lengthy.

Another limitation of action research is that it can be expensive . To measure the impact of changes made in the classroom, researchers often need to purchase or rent equipment and pay for software licenses or subscriptions (e.g. IBM SPSS Statistics , Microsoft Excel ).

Finally, action research can be challenging to implement . It requires a certain level of expertise and can be difficult to carry out without proper training.

How Do You Get Started In Action Research

If you are interested in using action research, there are a few things you need to know.

First, it is essential to understand that action research is a process, not a product. It takes time and effort to complete a successful action research project.

Second, you must clearly understand the problem or question you want to investigate. This should be something you are passionate about and think can make a difference in the lives of your students.

Third, you need to be willing to take action. One of the key characteristics of action research is that it involves taking real-world actions to improve teaching and learning practices. This can be challenging, but it is also exciting and rewarding.

Finally, you must be prepared to collect data and measure the impact of your actions. This is essential for documenting the success of your project and sharing your findings with others.

If you are ready to start using action research in your classroom or school, many resources are available to help you get started. The best place to start is with your school’s division office . They can provide information on how to get started and connect you with other educators who are also interested in using action research.

DepEd Research Management Guidelines

DepEd Action Research Topics and Sample Titles

Teacher Quality as a Key Factor Influencing Student Learning Outcomes

DepEd Supplemental Research Guides and Tools

DepEd School Research Manager Duties and Responsibilities

In addition, several books and articles can help you learn more about action research. These resources will provide an overview of the process and give you some practical tips for getting started.

Action Research an Essential Writing Guide for Teacher and Would Be Teachers by Darwin D. Bargo, Ed.D., Ph.D.

With these things in mind, you can start your journey toward becoming an action researcher today.

As educators, we must constantly look for ways to improve our teaching and learning practices. Action research is a great way to do that, as it allows us to take steps to improve student outcomes and then collect data to measure the impact of those actions.

It would be best if you considered using this approach in your work, as it is the best way to ensure that students get the most out of their education.

How to Cite this Article

Llego, M. A. (2022, August 28). Action Research in Education: What You Need to Know. TeacherPH. Retrieved August 28, 2022 from, https://www.teacherph.com/action-research-education/

Mark Anthony Llego

Mark Anthony Llego, hailing from the Philippines, has made a profound impact on the teaching profession by enabling thousands of teachers nationwide to access crucial information and engage in meaningful exchanges of ideas. His contributions have significantly enhanced their instructional and supervisory capabilities, elevating the quality of education in the Philippines. Beyond his domestic influence, Mark's insightful articles on teaching have garnered international recognition, being featured on highly respected educational websites in the United States. As an agent of change, he continues to empower teachers, both locally and internationally, to excel in their roles and make a lasting difference in the lives of their students, serving as a shining example of the transformative power of knowledge-sharing and collaboration within the teaching community.

How Action Research Can Improve Your Teaching

Do you ever find yourself looking at a classroom problem with not a clue in the world about how to fix it? No doubt, teaching art is difficult. Sometimes the issues we face don’t have easy solutions.

One method that is worth looking into is action research. In action research, a teacher takes the time to analyze a problem and then cycles through specific steps to solve it. If you’re struggling with a problem in your classroom, this might be the perfect strategy to try!

What is action research?

Simply put, action research describes a research methodology used to diagnose and address problems. In a school setting, the teacher plays the role of the researcher, and the students represent the study participants. Action research is a meaningful way for a teacher to find out why students perform the way they do.

The term, “action research,” was coined in 1933 by Kurt Lewin to describe a scenario in which a researcher and participants collaborate to solve a specific problem. Donald Schön developed this idea further with the term, “reflective practitioner,” to describe a researcher who thinks systematically about their practice.

Educators have taken both of these ideas into the classroom to better serve their students.

Here is a look at the basic structure of an action research cycle. You might notice it looks a lot like the Design Thinking Process.

The teacher recognizes and wonders about a problem in the classroom.
The teacher thinks about possible reasons students are having trouble.
The teacher collects and analyzes data.
The teacher comes up with solutions to try.
The teacher analyzes the solution.

In this model, if the first solution is not effective, the cycle starts over again. The teacher recognizes what remains of the problem and repeats the steps to collect more evidence and brainstorm new and different solutions.

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Because the process is cyclical, the teacher can loop through the steps as many times as needed to find a solution. Perhaps the best part of action research is that teachers can see which solutions have made a real impact on their students. If you’re looking for an even more in-depth take on the topic, The Art of Classroom Inquiry: A Handbook for Teacher-Researchers by Hubbard and Powers is a great place to start.

Action research can be as informal or formal as you need it to be. Data is collected through observation, questioning, and discussion with students. Student artwork, photographs of your classroom at work, video interviews, and surveys are all valid forms of data. Students can be involved throughout the whole process, helping to solve the problem within the classroom. With a formal study for a university, there will be requests for permission to use student data through the Institutional Research Board (IRB) process.

How can action research be implemented in your classroom?

I discovered action research while working on my higher degree. Using action research allowed me to find real solutions for real issues in my classroom and gave me my topic of study for my dissertation at the same time!

The problem I chose to address was how to engage students in an analog photography course in the digital age.

I broke my classes into two groups. I taught the district curriculum to one group and an altered curriculum to another. In the altered version, I included big ideas and themes that were important to students such as family, identity, and community.

To gather data, I observed, compared the quality of the photos, and conducted student interviews. I found students were much more engaged when I switched the projects from a technical study (i.e., demonstrating depth of field) to a more personal focus (breaking the teenage stereotype.)

What are the benefits of action research?

Using action research in my classroom allowed me to involve students in the curriculum process. They were actively more engaged within the classroom and felt ownership of their learning.

I was able to show them that teachers can be lifelong learners, and that inquiry is a powerful way to enact change within the classroom. The students cheered me on as I was writing and defended the results of my study. Plus, I was able to connect with them on a personal level, as we were all students. Furthermore, my teaching practice became more confident, and my understanding of art education theory deepened.

Conducting action research also allowed me to become a leader in my community. I was able to present a way to be a reflective practitioner within my classroom and model it for other teachers. I shared my new knowledge with the other art teachers in my district and invited them to try their own informal studies within their classrooms. We were able to shift our focus from one of compliance to one of inquiry and discovery, thus creating a more engaging learning environment for our students.

Action research provides a way to use your new knowledge immediately in your classroom. It allows you to think critically about why and how you run your art classroom. What could be better?

What kinds of issues are you facing in the classroom right now?

What kind of research study might you be interested in conducting?

Magazine articles and podcasts are opinions of professional education contributors and do not necessarily represent the position of the Art of Education University (AOEU) or its academic offerings. Contributors use terms in the way they are most often talked about in the scope of their educational experiences.

Alexandra Overby

Alexandra Overby, a high school art educator, is one of AOEU’s Adjunct Instructors. She immerses herself in topics of photography practice, visual ethnography, technology in the art room, and secondary curriculum.

Build a Creative Practice That Sticks By Harnessing the 4 Laws of Atomic Habits

Daring Art Crimes for the Art Teacher That You Won’t Be Able to Put Down!

3 Things to Appreciate in Each Phase of an Art Teacher’s Career

2 Incredible Ways to Revive Your Passion for Art Education This Spring

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Writing Up Your Action Research Project

DOI link for Writing Up Your Action Research Project

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Many practice-based researchers have expert knowledge of doing research but often experience difficulties when writing it up and communicating the significance of what they have done. This book aims to help bridge the gap. Packed with practical advice and strong theoretical resources it takes you through the basics of designing and producing your text so that it will meet established standards and high quality assurance expectations.

Divided into 3 distinctive parts, key points include:

understanding writing practices
engaging with the literatures
how to write up a project report or dissertation
how writing is judged in terms of professional and academic writing practices
developing ideas for further study and publication

Writing up Your Action Research Project is an essential text for practitioners on professional education and undergraduate courses across disciplines who want their writing to reflect the excellence of their research. It is the ideal companion to the author’s You and Your Action Research Project , now in its fourth edition .

Chapter | 10 pages, introduction, chapter | 24 pages, prologue: what do i need to know about action research why do i need to know it, part | 61 pages, designing and planning your text, chapter | 22 pages, getting ready to write: designing and planning, chapter | 17 pages, what goes into your text how do you communicate with your reader, chapter | 18 pages, developing communicative competence: writing for a reader, part | 55 pages, writing and producing a text, chapter | 15 pages, learning to be a writer: engaging with the literatures, chapter | 14 pages, learning to produce a text: the writing process, how do i write an action research report or master's dissertation, part | 37 pages, reflecting and evaluating, how is the quality of an action research text judged, the significance of your writing, chapter | 3 pages.

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Innovative Education in VT

Why do action research, 5 benefits of doing action research in the classroom.

Teachers are constantly tinkering, creating, learning, and growing. Action research is a slightly formalized version of what skilled teachers do every day.

By honoring action research as systematic professional inquiry, we empower teachers to improve their practice. It’s easy to get started undertaking a small, powerful action research project in your classroom. Let’s see what it can look like.

What it looks like and why it’s worth it

Classrooms are complex social environments. In addition to subject matter and developmental expertise, teachers possess very specific knowledge about the learning dynamics of a classroom. Teachers understand that everything from the culture of the school to the current dating status of particular class members may influence the success of a lesson.

This complexity means that large-scale education research has limited applicability on a day-to-day basis. There are just too many contextual factors affecting the implementation of any generalized approach. This means that most of the daily dilemmas of teaching, top-down policies and large-scale research are not detailed or nuanced enough to be useful.

Here are 5 benefits of doing action research in the classroom

1. action research powers professional growth.

Action research is a powerful form of teacher-driven professional development.

In Action Research for Professional Development , Jane McNiff suggests starting with the question “How do I improve my work?” She argues that action research is fundamentally a professional improvement strategy.

At the Middle Grades Institute each summer, participants seeking graduate credit use the Institute to launch their action research. Then, they present their findings to peers at a statewide gathering in January of each year.

2. Action research makes change manageable

Action research helps teachers focus on one aspect of their practice they would like to improve. Specific questions and a finite time period bind each iteration. This ensures natural pauses for reflection and planning.

Victoria Smith, a Language Arts teacher at Crossett Brook Middle School in Waterbury, Vermont, focused her research on a single unit where she experimented with a choice model which had been inspired by the art teacher at her school .

Michael Crocker, at The Cabot School, in Cabot VT, focused his research on a single day. He examined whether and how digital devices could enhance a field trip.

In the rapidly shifting world of education, action research helps prioritize which changes are worthy of extra attention. Action researchers pick a slice of their practice and dive into the research literature, then they use data to evaluate success and draw conclusions.

3. Action research promotes collaboration

The systematic nature of action research promotes purposeful collaboration.

A team from Hazen Union Middle School, in Hardwick, Vermont, sought to create a new interdisciplinary unit called “I Belong,” so they worked together on an action research project to document and study the results .

Educators can also collaborate between schools to share and compare related approaches. Check out this study looking at how student goal-setting is enhanced by digital tools , conducted by educators from Wallingford Elementary School and Shrewsbury Mountain School, in central Vermont.

4. Action research loves being shared

If you’ve ever wondered how to improve a certain aspect of your practice, then it’s entirely likely another teacher is wondering how to improve that exact same aspect of their own practice.

Get together and share

The Middle Grades Conference each January provides a venue for discussing action research and professional learning by teachers from around the state. Educators prepare presentations showcasing their driving question as well as the method they used to investigate it. They also prepare a short summary of their findings. The topics they pursue impact not only their own teaching but also intersect with issues and initiatives affecting teachers statewide.

Educators at Mill River Union High School showcased both the qualitative —

and quantitative —

using Google Forms to streamline your workflow

nature of their action research project. It examined the effect of formal professional development on the amount and nature of tech integration at the school.

In my experience, it is one of the best conferences to attend or at which to present. It’s a low-key way for educators to be seen as and receive recognition for, being experts in their classrooms. It also gives educators a way to peer into other classrooms and see solutions to common issues in teaching.

Get a chance to publish

Sam Nelson, a social studies teacher at Shelburne Community School in Vermont, recently published his action research in the journal Middle Grades Review . The article details his evolution in creating opportunities for students to practice within a proficiency-based learning environment.

5. Action research can power systems change

The share-ability of action research makes it a useful vehicle for influencing school and district policy, as argued in this ASCD article, Guiding School Improvement with Action Research .

That Mill River Union High School study on the effectiveness of professional development allowed the team to document the positive impact of intensive professional learning. The results allowed them to advocate for continued support moving forward.

Similarly, a team at Lamoille Union Middle School pioneered Student Led Conferences at the school. Their thorough data collection showed nearly unanimous support by parents and students, providing a strong rationale to expand the practice.

Experts in systemic change recognize that rapid cycles of experimentation and evaluation are more effective than detailed long term action planning. Some schools are even incorporating action research into their evaluation system.

The call to action (research)

Imagine the transformative potential if all teachers have the time and support to conduct action research. In the mean time, I hope that you have the chance to engage in professional inquiry that will benefit you, your teaching, and your students.

Next week, we’re going to break down the action research process into workable steps, so that wherever you are with your practice, you can begin designing your own small, manageable action research project to power up your teaching. Until then, consider the starting point, and think of one aspect of your teaching practice you’d like to improve.

What will you research?

4 thoughts on “why do action research”.

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I get a lot of information, thanks

thanks for post.

Action research is very relevant in business because there is always room for improvement with running a business. Action research offers opportunity for continued ideas. In business, the goal is to improve processes. Action research is beneficial in settings in which continued improvement is the focus.

Thanks for sharing

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Frequently asked questions

What is the main purpose of action research.

Action research is focused on solving a problem or informing individual and community-based knowledge in a way that impacts teaching, learning, and other related processes. It is less focused on contributing theoretical input, instead producing actionable input.

Frequently asked questions: Methodology

Attrition refers to participants leaving a study. It always happens to some extent—for example, in randomized controlled trials for medical research.

Differential attrition occurs when attrition or dropout rates differ systematically between the intervention and the control group . As a result, the characteristics of the participants who drop out differ from the characteristics of those who stay in the study. Because of this, study results may be biased .

Action research is conducted in order to solve a particular issue immediately, while case studies are often conducted over a longer period of time and focus more on observing and analyzing a particular ongoing phenomenon.

Action research is particularly popular with educators as a form of systematic inquiry because it prioritizes reflection and bridges the gap between theory and practice. Educators are able to simultaneously investigate an issue as they solve it, and the method is very iterative and flexible.

A cycle of inquiry is another name for action research . It is usually visualized in a spiral shape following a series of steps, such as “planning → acting → observing → reflecting.”

To make quantitative observations , you need to use instruments that are capable of measuring the quantity you want to observe. For example, you might use a ruler to measure the length of an object or a thermometer to measure its temperature.

Criterion validity and construct validity are both types of measurement validity . In other words, they both show you how accurately a method measures something.

While construct validity is the degree to which a test or other measurement method measures what it claims to measure, criterion validity is the degree to which a test can predictively (in the future) or concurrently (in the present) measure something.

Construct validity is often considered the overarching type of measurement validity . You need to have face validity , content validity , and criterion validity in order to achieve construct validity.

Convergent validity and discriminant validity are both subtypes of construct validity . Together, they help you evaluate whether a test measures the concept it was designed to measure.

Convergent validity indicates whether a test that is designed to measure a particular construct correlates with other tests that assess the same or similar construct.
Discriminant validity indicates whether two tests that should not be highly related to each other are indeed not related. This type of validity is also called divergent validity .

You need to assess both in order to demonstrate construct validity. Neither one alone is sufficient for establishing construct validity.

Discriminant validity indicates whether two tests that should not be highly related to each other are indeed not related

Content validity shows you how accurately a test or other measurement method taps into the various aspects of the specific construct you are researching.

In other words, it helps you answer the question: “does the test measure all aspects of the construct I want to measure?” If it does, then the test has high content validity.

The higher the content validity, the more accurate the measurement of the construct.

If the test fails to include parts of the construct, or irrelevant parts are included, the validity of the instrument is threatened, which brings your results into question.

Face validity and content validity are similar in that they both evaluate how suitable the content of a test is. The difference is that face validity is subjective, and assesses content at surface level.

When a test has strong face validity, anyone would agree that the test’s questions appear to measure what they are intended to measure.

For example, looking at a 4th grade math test consisting of problems in which students have to add and multiply, most people would agree that it has strong face validity (i.e., it looks like a math test).

On the other hand, content validity evaluates how well a test represents all the aspects of a topic. Assessing content validity is more systematic and relies on expert evaluation. of each question, analyzing whether each one covers the aspects that the test was designed to cover.

A 4th grade math test would have high content validity if it covered all the skills taught in that grade. Experts(in this case, math teachers), would have to evaluate the content validity by comparing the test to the learning objectives.

Snowball sampling is a non-probability sampling method . Unlike probability sampling (which involves some form of random selection ), the initial individuals selected to be studied are the ones who recruit new participants.

Because not every member of the target population has an equal chance of being recruited into the sample, selection in snowball sampling is non-random.

Snowball sampling is a non-probability sampling method , where there is not an equal chance for every member of the population to be included in the sample .

This means that you cannot use inferential statistics and make generalizations —often the goal of quantitative research . As such, a snowball sample is not representative of the target population and is usually a better fit for qualitative research .

Snowball sampling relies on the use of referrals. Here, the researcher recruits one or more initial participants, who then recruit the next ones.

Participants share similar characteristics and/or know each other. Because of this, not every member of the population has an equal chance of being included in the sample, giving rise to sampling bias .

Snowball sampling is best used in the following cases:

If there is no sampling frame available (e.g., people with a rare disease)
If the population of interest is hard to access or locate (e.g., people experiencing homelessness)
If the research focuses on a sensitive topic (e.g., extramarital affairs)

The reproducibility and replicability of a study can be ensured by writing a transparent, detailed method section and using clear, unambiguous language.

Reproducibility and replicability are related terms.

Reproducing research entails reanalyzing the existing data in the same manner.
Replicating (or repeating ) the research entails reconducting the entire analysis, including the collection of new data .
A successful reproduction shows that the data analyses were conducted in a fair and honest manner.
A successful replication shows that the reliability of the results is high.

Stratified sampling and quota sampling both involve dividing the population into subgroups and selecting units from each subgroup. The purpose in both cases is to select a representative sample and/or to allow comparisons between subgroups.

The main difference is that in stratified sampling, you draw a random sample from each subgroup ( probability sampling ). In quota sampling you select a predetermined number or proportion of units, in a non-random manner ( non-probability sampling ).

Purposive and convenience sampling are both sampling methods that are typically used in qualitative data collection.

A convenience sample is drawn from a source that is conveniently accessible to the researcher. Convenience sampling does not distinguish characteristics among the participants. On the other hand, purposive sampling focuses on selecting participants possessing characteristics associated with the research study.

The findings of studies based on either convenience or purposive sampling can only be generalized to the (sub)population from which the sample is drawn, and not to the entire population.

Random sampling or probability sampling is based on random selection. This means that each unit has an equal chance (i.e., equal probability) of being included in the sample.

On the other hand, convenience sampling involves stopping people at random, which means that not everyone has an equal chance of being selected depending on the place, time, or day you are collecting your data.

Convenience sampling and quota sampling are both non-probability sampling methods. They both use non-random criteria like availability, geographical proximity, or expert knowledge to recruit study participants.

However, in convenience sampling, you continue to sample units or cases until you reach the required sample size.

In quota sampling, you first need to divide your population of interest into subgroups (strata) and estimate their proportions (quota) in the population. Then you can start your data collection, using convenience sampling to recruit participants, until the proportions in each subgroup coincide with the estimated proportions in the population.

A sampling frame is a list of every member in the entire population . It is important that the sampling frame is as complete as possible, so that your sample accurately reflects your population.

Stratified and cluster sampling may look similar, but bear in mind that groups created in cluster sampling are heterogeneous , so the individual characteristics in the cluster vary. In contrast, groups created in stratified sampling are homogeneous , as units share characteristics.

Relatedly, in cluster sampling you randomly select entire groups and include all units of each group in your sample. However, in stratified sampling, you select some units of all groups and include them in your sample. In this way, both methods can ensure that your sample is representative of the target population .

A systematic review is secondary research because it uses existing research. You don’t collect new data yourself.

The key difference between observational studies and experimental designs is that a well-done observational study does not influence the responses of participants, while experiments do have some sort of treatment condition applied to at least some participants by random assignment .

An observational study is a great choice for you if your research question is based purely on observations. If there are ethical, logistical, or practical concerns that prevent you from conducting a traditional experiment , an observational study may be a good choice. In an observational study, there is no interference or manipulation of the research subjects, as well as no control or treatment groups .

It’s often best to ask a variety of people to review your measurements. You can ask experts, such as other researchers, or laypeople, such as potential participants, to judge the face validity of tests.

While experts have a deep understanding of research methods , the people you’re studying can provide you with valuable insights you may have missed otherwise.

Face validity is important because it’s a simple first step to measuring the overall validity of a test or technique. It’s a relatively intuitive, quick, and easy way to start checking whether a new measure seems useful at first glance.

Good face validity means that anyone who reviews your measure says that it seems to be measuring what it’s supposed to. With poor face validity, someone reviewing your measure may be left confused about what you’re measuring and why you’re using this method.

Face validity is about whether a test appears to measure what it’s supposed to measure. This type of validity is concerned with whether a measure seems relevant and appropriate for what it’s assessing only on the surface.

Statistical analyses are often applied to test validity with data from your measures. You test convergent validity and discriminant validity with correlations to see if results from your test are positively or negatively related to those of other established tests.

You can also use regression analyses to assess whether your measure is actually predictive of outcomes that you expect it to predict theoretically. A regression analysis that supports your expectations strengthens your claim of construct validity .

When designing or evaluating a measure, construct validity helps you ensure you’re actually measuring the construct you’re interested in. If you don’t have construct validity, you may inadvertently measure unrelated or distinct constructs and lose precision in your research.

Construct validity is often considered the overarching type of measurement validity , because it covers all of the other types. You need to have face validity , content validity , and criterion validity to achieve construct validity.

Construct validity is about how well a test measures the concept it was designed to evaluate. It’s one of four types of measurement validity , which includes construct validity, face validity , and criterion validity.

There are two subtypes of construct validity.

Convergent validity : The extent to which your measure corresponds to measures of related constructs
Discriminant validity : The extent to which your measure is unrelated or negatively related to measures of distinct constructs

Naturalistic observation is a valuable tool because of its flexibility, external validity , and suitability for topics that can’t be studied in a lab setting.

The downsides of naturalistic observation include its lack of scientific control , ethical considerations , and potential for bias from observers and subjects.

Naturalistic observation is a qualitative research method where you record the behaviors of your research subjects in real world settings. You avoid interfering or influencing anything in a naturalistic observation.

You can think of naturalistic observation as “people watching” with a purpose.

A dependent variable is what changes as a result of the independent variable manipulation in experiments . It’s what you’re interested in measuring, and it “depends” on your independent variable.

In statistics, dependent variables are also called:

Response variables (they respond to a change in another variable)
Outcome variables (they represent the outcome you want to measure)
Left-hand-side variables (they appear on the left-hand side of a regression equation)

An independent variable is the variable you manipulate, control, or vary in an experimental study to explore its effects. It’s called “independent” because it’s not influenced by any other variables in the study.

Independent variables are also called:

Explanatory variables (they explain an event or outcome)
Predictor variables (they can be used to predict the value of a dependent variable)
Right-hand-side variables (they appear on the right-hand side of a regression equation).

As a rule of thumb, questions related to thoughts, beliefs, and feelings work well in focus groups. Take your time formulating strong questions, paying special attention to phrasing. Be careful to avoid leading questions , which can bias your responses.

Overall, your focus group questions should be:

Open-ended and flexible
Impossible to answer with “yes” or “no” (questions that start with “why” or “how” are often best)
Unambiguous, getting straight to the point while still stimulating discussion
Unbiased and neutral

A structured interview is a data collection method that relies on asking questions in a set order to collect data on a topic. They are often quantitative in nature. Structured interviews are best used when:

You already have a very clear understanding of your topic. Perhaps significant research has already been conducted, or you have done some prior research yourself, but you already possess a baseline for designing strong structured questions.
You are constrained in terms of time or resources and need to analyze your data quickly and efficiently.
Your research question depends on strong parity between participants, with environmental conditions held constant.

More flexible interview options include semi-structured interviews , unstructured interviews , and focus groups .

Social desirability bias is the tendency for interview participants to give responses that will be viewed favorably by the interviewer or other participants. It occurs in all types of interviews and surveys , but is most common in semi-structured interviews , unstructured interviews , and focus groups .

Social desirability bias can be mitigated by ensuring participants feel at ease and comfortable sharing their views. Make sure to pay attention to your own body language and any physical or verbal cues, such as nodding or widening your eyes.

This type of bias can also occur in observations if the participants know they’re being observed. They might alter their behavior accordingly.

The interviewer effect is a type of bias that emerges when a characteristic of an interviewer (race, age, gender identity, etc.) influences the responses given by the interviewee.

There is a risk of an interviewer effect in all types of interviews , but it can be mitigated by writing really high-quality interview questions.

A semi-structured interview is a blend of structured and unstructured types of interviews. Semi-structured interviews are best used when:

You have prior interview experience. Spontaneous questions are deceptively challenging, and it’s easy to accidentally ask a leading question or make a participant uncomfortable.
Your research question is exploratory in nature. Participant answers can guide future research questions and help you develop a more robust knowledge base for future research.

An unstructured interview is the most flexible type of interview, but it is not always the best fit for your research topic.

Unstructured interviews are best used when:

You are an experienced interviewer and have a very strong background in your research topic, since it is challenging to ask spontaneous, colloquial questions.
Your research question is exploratory in nature. While you may have developed hypotheses, you are open to discovering new or shifting viewpoints through the interview process.
You are seeking descriptive data, and are ready to ask questions that will deepen and contextualize your initial thoughts and hypotheses.
Your research depends on forming connections with your participants and making them feel comfortable revealing deeper emotions, lived experiences, or thoughts.

The four most common types of interviews are:

Structured interviews : The questions are predetermined in both topic and order.
Semi-structured interviews : A few questions are predetermined, but other questions aren’t planned.
Unstructured interviews : None of the questions are predetermined.
Focus group interviews : The questions are presented to a group instead of one individual.

Deductive reasoning is commonly used in scientific research, and it’s especially associated with quantitative research .

In research, you might have come across something called the hypothetico-deductive method . It’s the scientific method of testing hypotheses to check whether your predictions are substantiated by real-world data.

Deductive reasoning is a logical approach where you progress from general ideas to specific conclusions. It’s often contrasted with inductive reasoning , where you start with specific observations and form general conclusions.

Deductive reasoning is also called deductive logic.

There are many different types of inductive reasoning that people use formally or informally.

Here are a few common types:

Inductive generalization : You use observations about a sample to come to a conclusion about the population it came from.
Statistical generalization: You use specific numbers about samples to make statements about populations.
Causal reasoning: You make cause-and-effect links between different things.
Sign reasoning: You make a conclusion about a correlational relationship between different things.
Analogical reasoning: You make a conclusion about something based on its similarities to something else.

Inductive reasoning is a bottom-up approach, while deductive reasoning is top-down.

Inductive reasoning takes you from the specific to the general, while in deductive reasoning, you make inferences by going from general premises to specific conclusions.

In inductive research , you start by making observations or gathering data. Then, you take a broad scan of your data and search for patterns. Finally, you make general conclusions that you might incorporate into theories.

Inductive reasoning is a method of drawing conclusions by going from the specific to the general. It’s usually contrasted with deductive reasoning, where you proceed from general information to specific conclusions.

Inductive reasoning is also called inductive logic or bottom-up reasoning.

A hypothesis states your predictions about what your research will find. It is a tentative answer to your research question that has not yet been tested. For some research projects, you might have to write several hypotheses that address different aspects of your research question.

A hypothesis is not just a guess — it should be based on existing theories and knowledge. It also has to be testable, which means you can support or refute it through scientific research methods (such as experiments, observations and statistical analysis of data).

Triangulation can help:

Reduce research bias that comes from using a single method, theory, or investigator
Enhance validity by approaching the same topic with different tools
Establish credibility by giving you a complete picture of the research problem

But triangulation can also pose problems:

It’s time-consuming and labor-intensive, often involving an interdisciplinary team.
Your results may be inconsistent or even contradictory.

There are four main types of triangulation :

Data triangulation : Using data from different times, spaces, and people
Investigator triangulation : Involving multiple researchers in collecting or analyzing data
Theory triangulation : Using varying theoretical perspectives in your research
Methodological triangulation : Using different methodologies to approach the same topic

Many academic fields use peer review , largely to determine whether a manuscript is suitable for publication. Peer review enhances the credibility of the published manuscript.

However, peer review is also common in non-academic settings. The United Nations, the European Union, and many individual nations use peer review to evaluate grant applications. It is also widely used in medical and health-related fields as a teaching or quality-of-care measure.

Peer assessment is often used in the classroom as a pedagogical tool. Both receiving feedback and providing it are thought to enhance the learning process, helping students think critically and collaboratively.

Peer review can stop obviously problematic, falsified, or otherwise untrustworthy research from being published. It also represents an excellent opportunity to get feedback from renowned experts in your field. It acts as a first defense, helping you ensure your argument is clear and that there are no gaps, vague terms, or unanswered questions for readers who weren’t involved in the research process.

Peer-reviewed articles are considered a highly credible source due to this stringent process they go through before publication.

In general, the peer review process follows the following steps:

First, the author submits the manuscript to the editor.
Reject the manuscript and send it back to author, or
Send it onward to the selected peer reviewer(s)
Next, the peer review process occurs. The reviewer provides feedback, addressing any major or minor issues with the manuscript, and gives their advice regarding what edits should be made.
Lastly, the edited manuscript is sent back to the author. They input the edits, and resubmit it to the editor for publication.

Exploratory research is often used when the issue you’re studying is new or when the data collection process is challenging for some reason.

You can use exploratory research if you have a general idea or a specific question that you want to study but there is no preexisting knowledge or paradigm with which to study it.

Exploratory research is a methodology approach that explores research questions that have not previously been studied in depth. It is often used when the issue you’re studying is new, or the data collection process is challenging in some way.

Explanatory research is used to investigate how or why a phenomenon occurs. Therefore, this type of research is often one of the first stages in the research process , serving as a jumping-off point for future research.

Exploratory research aims to explore the main aspects of an under-researched problem, while explanatory research aims to explain the causes and consequences of a well-defined problem.

Explanatory research is a research method used to investigate how or why something occurs when only a small amount of information is available pertaining to that topic. It can help you increase your understanding of a given topic.

Clean data are valid, accurate, complete, consistent, unique, and uniform. Dirty data include inconsistencies and errors.

Dirty data can come from any part of the research process, including poor research design , inappropriate measurement materials, or flawed data entry.

Data cleaning takes place between data collection and data analyses. But you can use some methods even before collecting data.

For clean data, you should start by designing measures that collect valid data. Data validation at the time of data entry or collection helps you minimize the amount of data cleaning you’ll need to do.

After data collection, you can use data standardization and data transformation to clean your data. You’ll also deal with any missing values, outliers, and duplicate values.

Every dataset requires different techniques to clean dirty data , but you need to address these issues in a systematic way. You focus on finding and resolving data points that don’t agree or fit with the rest of your dataset.

These data might be missing values, outliers, duplicate values, incorrectly formatted, or irrelevant. You’ll start with screening and diagnosing your data. Then, you’ll often standardize and accept or remove data to make your dataset consistent and valid.

Data cleaning is necessary for valid and appropriate analyses. Dirty data contain inconsistencies or errors , but cleaning your data helps you minimize or resolve these.

Without data cleaning, you could end up with a Type I or II error in your conclusion. These types of erroneous conclusions can be practically significant with important consequences, because they lead to misplaced investments or missed opportunities.

Data cleaning involves spotting and resolving potential data inconsistencies or errors to improve your data quality. An error is any value (e.g., recorded weight) that doesn’t reflect the true value (e.g., actual weight) of something that’s being measured.

In this process, you review, analyze, detect, modify, or remove “dirty” data to make your dataset “clean.” Data cleaning is also called data cleansing or data scrubbing.

Research misconduct means making up or falsifying data, manipulating data analyses, or misrepresenting results in research reports. It’s a form of academic fraud.

These actions are committed intentionally and can have serious consequences; research misconduct is not a simple mistake or a point of disagreement but a serious ethical failure.

Anonymity means you don’t know who the participants are, while confidentiality means you know who they are but remove identifying information from your research report. Both are important ethical considerations .

You can only guarantee anonymity by not collecting any personally identifying information—for example, names, phone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses, physical characteristics, photos, or videos.

You can keep data confidential by using aggregate information in your research report, so that you only refer to groups of participants rather than individuals.

Research ethics matter for scientific integrity, human rights and dignity, and collaboration between science and society. These principles make sure that participation in studies is voluntary, informed, and safe.

Ethical considerations in research are a set of principles that guide your research designs and practices. These principles include voluntary participation, informed consent, anonymity, confidentiality, potential for harm, and results communication.

Scientists and researchers must always adhere to a certain code of conduct when collecting data from others .

These considerations protect the rights of research participants, enhance research validity , and maintain scientific integrity.

In multistage sampling , you can use probability or non-probability sampling methods .

For a probability sample, you have to conduct probability sampling at every stage.

You can mix it up by using simple random sampling , systematic sampling , or stratified sampling to select units at different stages, depending on what is applicable and relevant to your study.

Multistage sampling can simplify data collection when you have large, geographically spread samples, and you can obtain a probability sample without a complete sampling frame.

But multistage sampling may not lead to a representative sample, and larger samples are needed for multistage samples to achieve the statistical properties of simple random samples .

These are four of the most common mixed methods designs :

Convergent parallel: Quantitative and qualitative data are collected at the same time and analyzed separately. After both analyses are complete, compare your results to draw overall conclusions.
Embedded: Quantitative and qualitative data are collected at the same time, but within a larger quantitative or qualitative design. One type of data is secondary to the other.
Explanatory sequential: Quantitative data is collected and analyzed first, followed by qualitative data. You can use this design if you think your qualitative data will explain and contextualize your quantitative findings.
Exploratory sequential: Qualitative data is collected and analyzed first, followed by quantitative data. You can use this design if you think the quantitative data will confirm or validate your qualitative findings.

Triangulation in research means using multiple datasets, methods, theories and/or investigators to address a research question. It’s a research strategy that can help you enhance the validity and credibility of your findings.

Triangulation is mainly used in qualitative research , but it’s also commonly applied in quantitative research . Mixed methods research always uses triangulation.

In multistage sampling , or multistage cluster sampling, you draw a sample from a population using smaller and smaller groups at each stage.

This method is often used to collect data from a large, geographically spread group of people in national surveys, for example. You take advantage of hierarchical groupings (e.g., from state to city to neighborhood) to create a sample that’s less expensive and time-consuming to collect data from.

No, the steepness or slope of the line isn’t related to the correlation coefficient value. The correlation coefficient only tells you how closely your data fit on a line, so two datasets with the same correlation coefficient can have very different slopes.

To find the slope of the line, you’ll need to perform a regression analysis .

Correlation coefficients always range between -1 and 1.

The sign of the coefficient tells you the direction of the relationship: a positive value means the variables change together in the same direction, while a negative value means they change together in opposite directions.

The absolute value of a number is equal to the number without its sign. The absolute value of a correlation coefficient tells you the magnitude of the correlation: the greater the absolute value, the stronger the correlation.

These are the assumptions your data must meet if you want to use Pearson’s r :

Both variables are on an interval or ratio level of measurement
Data from both variables follow normal distributions
Your data have no outliers
Your data is from a random or representative sample
You expect a linear relationship between the two variables

Quantitative research designs can be divided into two main categories:

Correlational and descriptive designs are used to investigate characteristics, averages, trends, and associations between variables.
Experimental and quasi-experimental designs are used to test causal relationships .

Qualitative research designs tend to be more flexible. Common types of qualitative design include case study , ethnography , and grounded theory designs.

A well-planned research design helps ensure that your methods match your research aims, that you collect high-quality data, and that you use the right kind of analysis to answer your questions, utilizing credible sources . This allows you to draw valid , trustworthy conclusions.

The priorities of a research design can vary depending on the field, but you usually have to specify:

Your research questions and/or hypotheses
Your overall approach (e.g., qualitative or quantitative )
The type of design you’re using (e.g., a survey , experiment , or case study )
Your sampling methods or criteria for selecting subjects
Your data collection methods (e.g., questionnaires , observations)
Your data collection procedures (e.g., operationalization , timing and data management)
Your data analysis methods (e.g., statistical tests or thematic analysis )

A research design is a strategy for answering your research question . It defines your overall approach and determines how you will collect and analyze data.

Questionnaires can be self-administered or researcher-administered.

Self-administered questionnaires can be delivered online or in paper-and-pen formats, in person or through mail. All questions are standardized so that all respondents receive the same questions with identical wording.

Researcher-administered questionnaires are interviews that take place by phone, in-person, or online between researchers and respondents. You can gain deeper insights by clarifying questions for respondents or asking follow-up questions.

You can organize the questions logically, with a clear progression from simple to complex, or randomly between respondents. A logical flow helps respondents process the questionnaire easier and quicker, but it may lead to bias. Randomization can minimize the bias from order effects.

Closed-ended, or restricted-choice, questions offer respondents a fixed set of choices to select from. These questions are easier to answer quickly.

Open-ended or long-form questions allow respondents to answer in their own words. Because there are no restrictions on their choices, respondents can answer in ways that researchers may not have otherwise considered.

A questionnaire is a data collection tool or instrument, while a survey is an overarching research method that involves collecting and analyzing data from people using questionnaires.

The third variable and directionality problems are two main reasons why correlation isn’t causation .

The third variable problem means that a confounding variable affects both variables to make them seem causally related when they are not.

The directionality problem is when two variables correlate and might actually have a causal relationship, but it’s impossible to conclude which variable causes changes in the other.

Correlation describes an association between variables : when one variable changes, so does the other. A correlation is a statistical indicator of the relationship between variables.

Causation means that changes in one variable brings about changes in the other (i.e., there is a cause-and-effect relationship between variables). The two variables are correlated with each other, and there’s also a causal link between them.

While causation and correlation can exist simultaneously, correlation does not imply causation. In other words, correlation is simply a relationship where A relates to B—but A doesn’t necessarily cause B to happen (or vice versa). Mistaking correlation for causation is a common error and can lead to false cause fallacy .

Controlled experiments establish causality, whereas correlational studies only show associations between variables.

In an experimental design , you manipulate an independent variable and measure its effect on a dependent variable. Other variables are controlled so they can’t impact the results.
In a correlational design , you measure variables without manipulating any of them. You can test whether your variables change together, but you can’t be sure that one variable caused a change in another.

In general, correlational research is high in external validity while experimental research is high in internal validity .

A correlation is usually tested for two variables at a time, but you can test correlations between three or more variables.

A correlation coefficient is a single number that describes the strength and direction of the relationship between your variables.

Different types of correlation coefficients might be appropriate for your data based on their levels of measurement and distributions . The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (Pearson’s r ) is commonly used to assess a linear relationship between two quantitative variables.

A correlational research design investigates relationships between two variables (or more) without the researcher controlling or manipulating any of them. It’s a non-experimental type of quantitative research .

A correlation reflects the strength and/or direction of the association between two or more variables.

A positive correlation means that both variables change in the same direction.
A negative correlation means that the variables change in opposite directions.
A zero correlation means there’s no relationship between the variables.

Random error is almost always present in scientific studies, even in highly controlled settings. While you can’t eradicate it completely, you can reduce random error by taking repeated measurements, using a large sample, and controlling extraneous variables .

You can avoid systematic error through careful design of your sampling , data collection , and analysis procedures. For example, use triangulation to measure your variables using multiple methods; regularly calibrate instruments or procedures; use random sampling and random assignment ; and apply masking (blinding) where possible.

Systematic error is generally a bigger problem in research.

With random error, multiple measurements will tend to cluster around the true value. When you’re collecting data from a large sample , the errors in different directions will cancel each other out.

Systematic errors are much more problematic because they can skew your data away from the true value. This can lead you to false conclusions ( Type I and II errors ) about the relationship between the variables you’re studying.

Random and systematic error are two types of measurement error.

Random error is a chance difference between the observed and true values of something (e.g., a researcher misreading a weighing scale records an incorrect measurement).

Systematic error is a consistent or proportional difference between the observed and true values of something (e.g., a miscalibrated scale consistently records weights as higher than they actually are).

On graphs, the explanatory variable is conventionally placed on the x-axis, while the response variable is placed on the y-axis.

If you have quantitative variables , use a scatterplot or a line graph.
If your response variable is categorical, use a scatterplot or a line graph.
If your explanatory variable is categorical, use a bar graph.

The term “ explanatory variable ” is sometimes preferred over “ independent variable ” because, in real world contexts, independent variables are often influenced by other variables. This means they aren’t totally independent.

Multiple independent variables may also be correlated with each other, so “explanatory variables” is a more appropriate term.

The difference between explanatory and response variables is simple:

An explanatory variable is the expected cause, and it explains the results.
A response variable is the expected effect, and it responds to other variables.

In a controlled experiment , all extraneous variables are held constant so that they can’t influence the results. Controlled experiments require:

A control group that receives a standard treatment, a fake treatment, or no treatment.
Random assignment of participants to ensure the groups are equivalent.

Depending on your study topic, there are various other methods of controlling variables .

There are 4 main types of extraneous variables :

Demand characteristics : environmental cues that encourage participants to conform to researchers’ expectations.
Experimenter effects : unintentional actions by researchers that influence study outcomes.
Situational variables : environmental variables that alter participants’ behaviors.
Participant variables : any characteristic or aspect of a participant’s background that could affect study results.

An extraneous variable is any variable that you’re not investigating that can potentially affect the dependent variable of your research study.

A confounding variable is a type of extraneous variable that not only affects the dependent variable, but is also related to the independent variable.

In a factorial design, multiple independent variables are tested.

If you test two variables, each level of one independent variable is combined with each level of the other independent variable to create different conditions.

Within-subjects designs have many potential threats to internal validity , but they are also very statistically powerful .

Advantages:

Only requires small samples
Statistically powerful
Removes the effects of individual differences on the outcomes

Disadvantages:

Internal validity threats reduce the likelihood of establishing a direct relationship between variables
Time-related effects, such as growth, can influence the outcomes
Carryover effects mean that the specific order of different treatments affect the outcomes

While a between-subjects design has fewer threats to internal validity , it also requires more participants for high statistical power than a within-subjects design .

Prevents carryover effects of learning and fatigue.
Shorter study duration.
Needs larger samples for high power.
Uses more resources to recruit participants, administer sessions, cover costs, etc.
Individual differences may be an alternative explanation for results.

Yes. Between-subjects and within-subjects designs can be combined in a single study when you have two or more independent variables (a factorial design). In a mixed factorial design, one variable is altered between subjects and another is altered within subjects.

In a between-subjects design , every participant experiences only one condition, and researchers assess group differences between participants in various conditions.

In a within-subjects design , each participant experiences all conditions, and researchers test the same participants repeatedly for differences between conditions.

The word “between” means that you’re comparing different conditions between groups, while the word “within” means you’re comparing different conditions within the same group.

Random assignment is used in experiments with a between-groups or independent measures design. In this research design, there’s usually a control group and one or more experimental groups. Random assignment helps ensure that the groups are comparable.

In general, you should always use random assignment in this type of experimental design when it is ethically possible and makes sense for your study topic.

To implement random assignment , assign a unique number to every member of your study’s sample .

Then, you can use a random number generator or a lottery method to randomly assign each number to a control or experimental group. You can also do so manually, by flipping a coin or rolling a dice to randomly assign participants to groups.

Random selection, or random sampling , is a way of selecting members of a population for your study’s sample.

In contrast, random assignment is a way of sorting the sample into control and experimental groups.

Random sampling enhances the external validity or generalizability of your results, while random assignment improves the internal validity of your study.

In experimental research, random assignment is a way of placing participants from your sample into different groups using randomization. With this method, every member of the sample has a known or equal chance of being placed in a control group or an experimental group.

“Controlling for a variable” means measuring extraneous variables and accounting for them statistically to remove their effects on other variables.

Researchers often model control variable data along with independent and dependent variable data in regression analyses and ANCOVAs . That way, you can isolate the control variable’s effects from the relationship between the variables of interest.

Control variables help you establish a correlational or causal relationship between variables by enhancing internal validity .

If you don’t control relevant extraneous variables , they may influence the outcomes of your study, and you may not be able to demonstrate that your results are really an effect of your independent variable .

A control variable is any variable that’s held constant in a research study. It’s not a variable of interest in the study, but it’s controlled because it could influence the outcomes.

Including mediators and moderators in your research helps you go beyond studying a simple relationship between two variables for a fuller picture of the real world. They are important to consider when studying complex correlational or causal relationships.

Mediators are part of the causal pathway of an effect, and they tell you how or why an effect takes place. Moderators usually help you judge the external validity of your study by identifying the limitations of when the relationship between variables holds.

If something is a mediating variable :

It’s caused by the independent variable .
It influences the dependent variable
When it’s taken into account, the statistical correlation between the independent and dependent variables is higher than when it isn’t considered.

A confounder is a third variable that affects variables of interest and makes them seem related when they are not. In contrast, a mediator is the mechanism of a relationship between two variables: it explains the process by which they are related.

A mediator variable explains the process through which two variables are related, while a moderator variable affects the strength and direction of that relationship.

There are three key steps in systematic sampling :

Define and list your population , ensuring that it is not ordered in a cyclical or periodic order.
Decide on your sample size and calculate your interval, k , by dividing your population by your target sample size.
Choose every k th member of the population as your sample.

Systematic sampling is a probability sampling method where researchers select members of the population at a regular interval – for example, by selecting every 15th person on a list of the population. If the population is in a random order, this can imitate the benefits of simple random sampling .

Yes, you can create a stratified sample using multiple characteristics, but you must ensure that every participant in your study belongs to one and only one subgroup. In this case, you multiply the numbers of subgroups for each characteristic to get the total number of groups.

For example, if you were stratifying by location with three subgroups (urban, rural, or suburban) and marital status with five subgroups (single, divorced, widowed, married, or partnered), you would have 3 x 5 = 15 subgroups.

You should use stratified sampling when your sample can be divided into mutually exclusive and exhaustive subgroups that you believe will take on different mean values for the variable that you’re studying.

Using stratified sampling will allow you to obtain more precise (with lower variance ) statistical estimates of whatever you are trying to measure.

For example, say you want to investigate how income differs based on educational attainment, but you know that this relationship can vary based on race. Using stratified sampling, you can ensure you obtain a large enough sample from each racial group, allowing you to draw more precise conclusions.

In stratified sampling , researchers divide subjects into subgroups called strata based on characteristics that they share (e.g., race, gender, educational attainment).

Once divided, each subgroup is randomly sampled using another probability sampling method.

Cluster sampling is more time- and cost-efficient than other probability sampling methods , particularly when it comes to large samples spread across a wide geographical area.

However, it provides less statistical certainty than other methods, such as simple random sampling , because it is difficult to ensure that your clusters properly represent the population as a whole.

There are three types of cluster sampling : single-stage, double-stage and multi-stage clustering. In all three types, you first divide the population into clusters, then randomly select clusters for use in your sample.

In single-stage sampling , you collect data from every unit within the selected clusters.
In double-stage sampling , you select a random sample of units from within the clusters.
In multi-stage sampling , you repeat the procedure of randomly sampling elements from within the clusters until you have reached a manageable sample.

Cluster sampling is a probability sampling method in which you divide a population into clusters, such as districts or schools, and then randomly select some of these clusters as your sample.

The clusters should ideally each be mini-representations of the population as a whole.

If properly implemented, simple random sampling is usually the best sampling method for ensuring both internal and external validity . However, it can sometimes be impractical and expensive to implement, depending on the size of the population to be studied,

If you have a list of every member of the population and the ability to reach whichever members are selected, you can use simple random sampling.

The American Community Survey is an example of simple random sampling . In order to collect detailed data on the population of the US, the Census Bureau officials randomly select 3.5 million households per year and use a variety of methods to convince them to fill out the survey.

Simple random sampling is a type of probability sampling in which the researcher randomly selects a subset of participants from a population . Each member of the population has an equal chance of being selected. Data is then collected from as large a percentage as possible of this random subset.

Quasi-experimental design is most useful in situations where it would be unethical or impractical to run a true experiment .

Quasi-experiments have lower internal validity than true experiments, but they often have higher external validity as they can use real-world interventions instead of artificial laboratory settings.

A quasi-experiment is a type of research design that attempts to establish a cause-and-effect relationship. The main difference with a true experiment is that the groups are not randomly assigned.

Blinding is important to reduce research bias (e.g., observer bias , demand characteristics ) and ensure a study’s internal validity .

If participants know whether they are in a control or treatment group , they may adjust their behavior in ways that affect the outcome that researchers are trying to measure. If the people administering the treatment are aware of group assignment, they may treat participants differently and thus directly or indirectly influence the final results.

In a single-blind study , only the participants are blinded.
In a double-blind study , both participants and experimenters are blinded.
In a triple-blind study , the assignment is hidden not only from participants and experimenters, but also from the researchers analyzing the data.

Blinding means hiding who is assigned to the treatment group and who is assigned to the control group in an experiment .

A true experiment (a.k.a. a controlled experiment) always includes at least one control group that doesn’t receive the experimental treatment.

However, some experiments use a within-subjects design to test treatments without a control group. In these designs, you usually compare one group’s outcomes before and after a treatment (instead of comparing outcomes between different groups).

For strong internal validity , it’s usually best to include a control group if possible. Without a control group, it’s harder to be certain that the outcome was caused by the experimental treatment and not by other variables.

An experimental group, also known as a treatment group, receives the treatment whose effect researchers wish to study, whereas a control group does not. They should be identical in all other ways.

Individual Likert-type questions are generally considered ordinal data , because the items have clear rank order, but don’t have an even distribution.

Overall Likert scale scores are sometimes treated as interval data. These scores are considered to have directionality and even spacing between them.

The type of data determines what statistical tests you should use to analyze your data.

A Likert scale is a rating scale that quantitatively assesses opinions, attitudes, or behaviors. It is made up of 4 or more questions that measure a single attitude or trait when response scores are combined.

To use a Likert scale in a survey , you present participants with Likert-type questions or statements, and a continuum of items, usually with 5 or 7 possible responses, to capture their degree of agreement.

In scientific research, concepts are the abstract ideas or phenomena that are being studied (e.g., educational achievement). Variables are properties or characteristics of the concept (e.g., performance at school), while indicators are ways of measuring or quantifying variables (e.g., yearly grade reports).

The process of turning abstract concepts into measurable variables and indicators is called operationalization .

There are various approaches to qualitative data analysis , but they all share five steps in common:

Prepare and organize your data.
Review and explore your data.
Develop a data coding system.
Assign codes to the data.
Identify recurring themes.

The specifics of each step depend on the focus of the analysis. Some common approaches include textual analysis , thematic analysis , and discourse analysis .

There are five common approaches to qualitative research :

Grounded theory involves collecting data in order to develop new theories.
Ethnography involves immersing yourself in a group or organization to understand its culture.
Narrative research involves interpreting stories to understand how people make sense of their experiences and perceptions.
Phenomenological research involves investigating phenomena through people’s lived experiences.
Action research links theory and practice in several cycles to drive innovative changes.

Hypothesis testing is a formal procedure for investigating our ideas about the world using statistics. It is used by scientists to test specific predictions, called hypotheses , by calculating how likely it is that a pattern or relationship between variables could have arisen by chance.

Operationalization means turning abstract conceptual ideas into measurable observations.

For example, the concept of social anxiety isn’t directly observable, but it can be operationally defined in terms of self-rating scores, behavioral avoidance of crowded places, or physical anxiety symptoms in social situations.

Before collecting data , it’s important to consider how you will operationalize the variables that you want to measure.

When conducting research, collecting original data has significant advantages:

You can tailor data collection to your specific research aims (e.g. understanding the needs of your consumers or user testing your website)
You can control and standardize the process for high reliability and validity (e.g. choosing appropriate measurements and sampling methods )

However, there are also some drawbacks: data collection can be time-consuming, labor-intensive and expensive. In some cases, it’s more efficient to use secondary data that has already been collected by someone else, but the data might be less reliable.

Data collection is the systematic process by which observations or measurements are gathered in research. It is used in many different contexts by academics, governments, businesses, and other organizations.

There are several methods you can use to decrease the impact of confounding variables on your research: restriction, matching, statistical control and randomization.

In restriction , you restrict your sample by only including certain subjects that have the same values of potential confounding variables.

In matching , you match each of the subjects in your treatment group with a counterpart in the comparison group. The matched subjects have the same values on any potential confounding variables, and only differ in the independent variable .

In statistical control , you include potential confounders as variables in your regression .

In randomization , you randomly assign the treatment (or independent variable) in your study to a sufficiently large number of subjects, which allows you to control for all potential confounding variables.

A confounding variable is closely related to both the independent and dependent variables in a study. An independent variable represents the supposed cause , while the dependent variable is the supposed effect . A confounding variable is a third variable that influences both the independent and dependent variables.

Failing to account for confounding variables can cause you to wrongly estimate the relationship between your independent and dependent variables.

To ensure the internal validity of your research, you must consider the impact of confounding variables. If you fail to account for them, you might over- or underestimate the causal relationship between your independent and dependent variables , or even find a causal relationship where none exists.

Yes, but including more than one of either type requires multiple research questions .

For example, if you are interested in the effect of a diet on health, you can use multiple measures of health: blood sugar, blood pressure, weight, pulse, and many more. Each of these is its own dependent variable with its own research question.

You could also choose to look at the effect of exercise levels as well as diet, or even the additional effect of the two combined. Each of these is a separate independent variable .

To ensure the internal validity of an experiment , you should only change one independent variable at a time.

No. The value of a dependent variable depends on an independent variable, so a variable cannot be both independent and dependent at the same time. It must be either the cause or the effect, not both!

You want to find out how blood sugar levels are affected by drinking diet soda and regular soda, so you conduct an experiment .

The type of soda – diet or regular – is the independent variable .
The level of blood sugar that you measure is the dependent variable – it changes depending on the type of soda.

Determining cause and effect is one of the most important parts of scientific research. It’s essential to know which is the cause – the independent variable – and which is the effect – the dependent variable.

In non-probability sampling , the sample is selected based on non-random criteria, and not every member of the population has a chance of being included.

Common non-probability sampling methods include convenience sampling , voluntary response sampling, purposive sampling , snowball sampling, and quota sampling .

Probability sampling means that every member of the target population has a known chance of being included in the sample.

Probability sampling methods include simple random sampling , systematic sampling , stratified sampling , and cluster sampling .

Using careful research design and sampling procedures can help you avoid sampling bias . Oversampling can be used to correct undercoverage bias .

Some common types of sampling bias include self-selection bias , nonresponse bias , undercoverage bias , survivorship bias , pre-screening or advertising bias, and healthy user bias.

Sampling bias is a threat to external validity – it limits the generalizability of your findings to a broader group of people.

A sampling error is the difference between a population parameter and a sample statistic .

A statistic refers to measures about the sample , while a parameter refers to measures about the population .

Populations are used when a research question requires data from every member of the population. This is usually only feasible when the population is small and easily accessible.

Samples are used to make inferences about populations . Samples are easier to collect data from because they are practical, cost-effective, convenient, and manageable.

There are seven threats to external validity : selection bias , history, experimenter effect, Hawthorne effect , testing effect, aptitude-treatment and situation effect.

The two types of external validity are population validity (whether you can generalize to other groups of people) and ecological validity (whether you can generalize to other situations and settings).

The external validity of a study is the extent to which you can generalize your findings to different groups of people, situations, and measures.

Cross-sectional studies cannot establish a cause-and-effect relationship or analyze behavior over a period of time. To investigate cause and effect, you need to do a longitudinal study or an experimental study .

Cross-sectional studies are less expensive and time-consuming than many other types of study. They can provide useful insights into a population’s characteristics and identify correlations for further research.

Sometimes only cross-sectional data is available for analysis; other times your research question may only require a cross-sectional study to answer it.

Longitudinal studies can last anywhere from weeks to decades, although they tend to be at least a year long.

The 1970 British Cohort Study , which has collected data on the lives of 17,000 Brits since their births in 1970, is one well-known example of a longitudinal study .

Longitudinal studies are better to establish the correct sequence of events, identify changes over time, and provide insight into cause-and-effect relationships, but they also tend to be more expensive and time-consuming than other types of studies.

Longitudinal studies and cross-sectional studies are two different types of research design . In a cross-sectional study you collect data from a population at a specific point in time; in a longitudinal study you repeatedly collect data from the same sample over an extended period of time.

Longitudinal study	Cross-sectional study
observations	Observations at a in time
Observes the multiple times	Observes (a “cross-section”) in the population
Follows in participants over time	Provides of society at a given point

There are eight threats to internal validity : history, maturation, instrumentation, testing, selection bias , regression to the mean, social interaction and attrition .

Internal validity is the extent to which you can be confident that a cause-and-effect relationship established in a study cannot be explained by other factors.

In mixed methods research , you use both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis methods to answer your research question .

The research methods you use depend on the type of data you need to answer your research question .

If you want to measure something or test a hypothesis , use quantitative methods . If you want to explore ideas, thoughts and meanings, use qualitative methods .
If you want to analyze a large amount of readily-available data, use secondary data. If you want data specific to your purposes with control over how it is generated, collect primary data.
If you want to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables , use experimental methods. If you want to understand the characteristics of a research subject, use descriptive methods.

A confounding variable , also called a confounder or confounding factor, is a third variable in a study examining a potential cause-and-effect relationship.

A confounding variable is related to both the supposed cause and the supposed effect of the study. It can be difficult to separate the true effect of the independent variable from the effect of the confounding variable.

In your research design , it’s important to identify potential confounding variables and plan how you will reduce their impact.

Discrete and continuous variables are two types of quantitative variables :

Discrete variables represent counts (e.g. the number of objects in a collection).
Continuous variables represent measurable amounts (e.g. water volume or weight).

Quantitative variables are any variables where the data represent amounts (e.g. height, weight, or age).

Categorical variables are any variables where the data represent groups. This includes rankings (e.g. finishing places in a race), classifications (e.g. brands of cereal), and binary outcomes (e.g. coin flips).

You need to know what type of variables you are working with to choose the right statistical test for your data and interpret your results .

You can think of independent and dependent variables in terms of cause and effect: an independent variable is the variable you think is the cause , while a dependent variable is the effect .

In an experiment, you manipulate the independent variable and measure the outcome in the dependent variable. For example, in an experiment about the effect of nutrients on crop growth:

The independent variable is the amount of nutrients added to the crop field.
The dependent variable is the biomass of the crops at harvest time.

Defining your variables, and deciding how you will manipulate and measure them, is an important part of experimental design .

Experimental design means planning a set of procedures to investigate a relationship between variables . To design a controlled experiment, you need:

A testable hypothesis
At least one independent variable that can be precisely manipulated
At least one dependent variable that can be precisely measured

When designing the experiment, you decide:

How you will manipulate the variable(s)
How you will control for any potential confounding variables
How many subjects or samples will be included in the study
How subjects will be assigned to treatment levels

Experimental design is essential to the internal and external validity of your experiment.

I nternal validity is the degree of confidence that the causal relationship you are testing is not influenced by other factors or variables .

External validity is the extent to which your results can be generalized to other contexts.

The validity of your experiment depends on your experimental design .

Reliability and validity are both about how well a method measures something:

Reliability refers to the consistency of a measure (whether the results can be reproduced under the same conditions).
Validity refers to the accuracy of a measure (whether the results really do represent what they are supposed to measure).

If you are doing experimental research, you also have to consider the internal and external validity of your experiment.

A sample is a subset of individuals from a larger population . Sampling means selecting the group that you will actually collect data from in your research. For example, if you are researching the opinions of students in your university, you could survey a sample of 100 students.

In statistics, sampling allows you to test a hypothesis about the characteristics of a population.

Quantitative research deals with numbers and statistics, while qualitative research deals with words and meanings.

Quantitative methods allow you to systematically measure variables and test hypotheses . Qualitative methods allow you to explore concepts and experiences in more detail.

Methodology refers to the overarching strategy and rationale of your research project . It involves studying the methods used in your field and the theories or principles behind them, in order to develop an approach that matches your objectives.

Methods are the specific tools and procedures you use to collect and analyze data (for example, experiments, surveys , and statistical tests ).

In shorter scientific papers, where the aim is to report the findings of a specific study, you might simply describe what you did in a methods section .

In a longer or more complex research project, such as a thesis or dissertation , you will probably include a methodology section , where you explain your approach to answering the research questions and cite relevant sources to support your choice of methods.

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The Importance of Action Research Analytical Essay

To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Professional development and action research are both very significant in the teaching profession. Worthwhile and effective professional developments are always being sought by principles, supervisors and even specialists.

In order to improve their service delivery, teachers are usually prompted to attend in-service meetings, conferences and even workshops. Some of these activities are usually frustrating and time consuming. There is great need therefore for teachers to impact their professional development which in the long run impacts on their proficiency.

An action plan is particularly significant in a situation whereby things are not running are expected or there is a need in the change of strategy. Practical solutions might be very much needed in such cases. Action research therefore ensures that a practical solution into whatever social situation is found. By using action research the tutor understands the situation deeply besides finding the most practical solution to it.

It involves a teacher’s research into his/her own actions and possible actions to be undertaken in order to improve the same. Action research is significant in ensuring that a viable solution to any situation is found. It is common for a one person’s solution working to the disadvantage of others especially if the solution is from outside, hence the need for action research. It gives insight into the past situation, the present as well as the future projections concerning the situation at hand.

Action research enables the teacher not only to practice but also improve the situation under which the practice is done. It is very vital in ensuring social change.

The teacher is therefore able to be empowered professionally as he/she is made to understand the workplace well. It is a significant tool in ensuring that the teacher understands his/her practice, ways of improving the same, enable him/her understands the ways in which the person is able to understand changes from outside and enable one to improve the practice through changing the outside.

Literature Review

Inquiry based learning has been in place for a long time and it is based on asking questions and finding possible solutions to the same (French, 2005, p.2). Action research usually ensures that teachers are constantly informed of any changes that occur particularly those involving their techniques of service delivery hence ensuring that the learning are kept abreast with the changing times as well as methods of learning like cooperative learning.

Action research has been found out to be the most effective way of ensuring the development of teachers in their profession. The paper examines the reactions of school teachers to the issue of action research.

Professional Development

Professional development is very vital in the improvement of a tutors craft or teaching practice and it is significant in improving the learning environment. It focuses on the basic practices that are vital in education. It ensures the development of skills, practice as well as knowledge all of which are very important in the learning process.

Action research is vital for the improvement of a learning institution. It is able to help the teacher in ensuring effective teacher development. Teachers are meant to believe that they are performing very important work hence no need to burnout as they act as moral educators. Any form of teacher development should be aimed at uplifting as well as inspiring those involved in it. It should be geared towards ensuring higher performance among the learners as well as improving collaboration and teamwork.

Several published lists which are aimed at highlighting professional development. These have been compiled by researchers and other organizations like the Education Testing Services as well as the department of education. There have been numerous debates concerning what professional development involves.

The common ground for all these arguments however lies in the fact that it involves the enhancement of leadership capabilities, enhancing effective time management, enhancing thinking skills as well as effective use of resources.

Reflective Practices

Action research has a lot to do with reflection. This involves being attentive to knowledge and believes. It dates back to the days of Buddha and Plato. It goes beyond examination and thinking. It is an active process that aims at gaining deeper understanding as well as ensuring improvement.

Reflection can be defined as an out-of-body experience whereby an analysis of the actions is made and they are viewed in the thinking as well as decision-making context. It is governed by intention which implies that it is not passive. Teachers therefore need to use reflection while trying to improve the student’s contextual learning as well as during the adapting process, the application as well as their evaluation of their knowledge.

Reflection can be in various forms for instance, on-line chats or discussion groups. It helps in bringing out different perspectives and various solutions to a given issue. It is crucial in narrowing down the gap that exists between theory and practice. The major reflection types include technical, practical as well as critical analysis.

Technical reflection for instance mainly deals with the ensuring of the attainment of goals and it puts a lot of emphasis on efficiency. Practical reflection on the other hand mainly focuses on the attainment of goals and the means or strategies involved in the attainment of the same.

Here effectiveness as well as goal justification is significant. In critical reflection, the goals and the means to the same are analyzed in accordance with the justice or morality context. The purpose and growth are put into account in this case. Reflection practices are able to fit into more of these types at the same time. Many models have been suggested over the effective professional development in the past some of which are short-term while others are long-term. Action research is just one of them.

Action Research in Professional Development

Action Research can be termed as the study of the learning environment like the school or classroom with the intention of improving the teaching. It is scientific and systematic, involving inquiry and contextual professional development. The process is reflective and it is usually motivated by growth and improvement in teaching.

There are various steps involved in action research. They basically involve the identification of the problem, determining the needs or methods of data collection, collection and analysis of data, creation of an action plan, description of the use of the findings, report as well as the future plan. The process is usually cyclical. The steps are vital in ensuring professionalism, completeness as well as validity of the action research. It usually requires regular observation.

Reflections

Most teachers when asked about action research have observed that it is usually very significant in ensuring professional or even professional growth. It helps them in becoming role models and in impacting their colleagues. They become agents of change and change their modes of giving instructions hence, witnessing general improvement in their service delivery.

They in the process become credible teachers. Teachers who have been consulted seem to be sure of the fact that action research aids in boosting their confidence and hence improving their efficiency in service delivery. They are able to redesign the way they issue the instructions.

They become empowered and hence are able effectively deliver their talents, and come up with creative ideas that help them to meet the needs of the learners. They are able to implement programs or even acquire others skills. Most of them after doing action research they are in a position to develop greater autonomy, they develop problem solving skills and they are able to effectively use data from their respective classrooms.

Action research is very vital in ensuring that the respective goals are accomplished. Action research enables the teachers to be the authors of their own research. They participate in the creation as well as accomplishment of their own goals and this drives them towards the accomplishment of the same. They take part in the setting of goals for development.

One of the teachers consulted observed that significant transformation was observed in his communication with the colleagues after action research occurred. The conversations from colleagues turned from polite talks to comprehensive conversations. The dialogues become helpful and the relationship with the other teachers was greatly enhanced. Collaboration and teamwork was greatly boosted.

Action research helps the teacher to turn from the traditional methods of teaching to those methods that are modern and effective hence ensuring the satisfaction of the needs of the students. It is therefore very important in ensuring professional development for the teachers. Studies have proved that action research is very vital in the overall improvement in the performance of a school on a long-term basis.

There are some teachers who have no idea about action research yet indulge in other activities that are geared towards ensuring professional development some of which include routine reflection by the teachers. A study done on two teachers Mary and Rita showed that even some of the qualified teachers from college have no idea about action research although some of them might have the knowledge of some of its elements like data collection as well as methods of analysis.

This greatly influences their service delivery. Some of them like Rita have an experience of many years in the teaching profession with the desire for professional development yet they might have no idea about action research. Most of the reflection done by them is informal and it might not necessarily be directed towards ensuring that their goals are met and the needs of the students are met as well. They do it unconsciously.

Analysis of the Situation

Teachers who do not employ action research in their teaching are less likely to meet the desired goals in their teaching and they might not be able to witness professional development. Some of them might encounter challenges which could be solved by carrying out action research, but because of ignorance, they might not be in a position to effectively tackle the problem. The reflective practices carried out by most of them can only be effective if it is coupled with action research.

According to the training done, it is quite evident that the action research process is systematic and it has to be carried out using the appropriate procedures and techniques like coming up with a research plan, outlining research questions, setting timeline with the intention of reviewing the information, implementing the action research project data collection as well as analysis and the sharing of the same.

Action research might in some cases involve experimenting of the possible solutions to the existing problem. In Mary’s case for instance, she had to try motivational tactics in trying to make her students handle their assignments and hand them in at the appropriate time. She tried the tactic of rewarding the students who handed in all their assignments on time.

Action research is very vital in determining those factors that might greatly influence the attitudes of the students and hence in the long run affect their performance. The teacher might for instance be forced to adapt new tactics while teaching so as to ensure effectiveness in the long run. When effectively done, action research is able to turn the teaching process from a cumbersome and tedious activity to an enjoyable one. It is therefore an important vehicle of change.

Action research is vital in clearing out any confusing issues that might emerge in the teaching process. Questions are formulated and answers to the same are formulated. Discussions might be held in some cases so as to enhance clarity of the issues at hand.

Frequent meetings held while carrying out the action process are vital in offering encouragement, excitement as well as mentorship opportunities to the participants. Interviews are usually crucial in the process of data collection. A reflection held at the end of the process is also significant. Action research is vital in enhancing accountability, awareness as well as ensuring that the teaching is done in a systematic manner. It enhances sharing and professionalism of the teacher.

Action research helps the teachers in being reflective. Through reflection, they are able to know whether there past practices or lessons were effective. It enables the researcher to rely on facts rather than trial and error. Its process of discovery is structured and one has to rely on facts from the experiment rather than depending on his/her memory.

These facts can be kept for future reference as well as improvement. The formal steps carried out during the action plan are very significant especially when one is informing his/her colleagues about the same. The data collected is usually important. Action research helps the teacher to reflect on his/her teaching process and enable the person to avoid prejudgments or depending on making guesses.

It helps in avoiding wrong and misguided judgments. This is vital for every teacher. It helps one to be more serous, reflective and attentive. It enables one to one to look at the results and make an analysis of the same without depending on assumptions. One is able to get the actual concept of what is going on rather than relying on his/her impression of what is going on.

The reflective practices are particularly significant in the teaching process. One is able to get substantive evidence of whatever is occurring rather than relying on abstract concept. It is important in establishing a connection between the teacher and the student. The teacher becomes attentive to whatever happens within the classroom rather than brushing everything else aside. It helps in eliminating biases as the teacher is able to depend on facts rather than speculations.

By carrying out action research, the teacher comes up with specific solutions to improving the teaching as well as ensuring the overall improvement in the performances of the students. The action research has formal and systematic processes which ensure that ideas and results that come up during the reflection are not lost or forgotten.

The process ensures that the issue at hand is kept on the mind the possible solutions formulated as opposed to mere reflection which only involves the thoughts which are likely to be forgotten within a short time. It helps the teacher in changing his/her perceptions about the occurrences within the classroom. It helps in bringing out abstract questions or concepts into ones that can be substantiated or concrete.

The process is systematic hence making it easy to follow. In some cases, training is usually done for better results to be realized. The approach is organized and well structured. Through this, the attention of the teacher is usually focused on a particular issue or occurrence within the classroom hence a more specific solution is formulated. One is able to track whatever is going on rather than wish that things happened in a different way.

All the activities are therefore carried out in an organized manner. In action research, one is able to come up with a plan for specific activities to be undertaken and the procedures of how to achieve the same are clearly outlined. Having due dates is very important in ensuring that activities are done within the stipulated time. One is able to set goals to be attained and track the same.

The findings are recorded and this is vital for future references. One may go back to the records and refer as opposed to plain reflection where one thinks of an idea and the same remains within ones mind. It is a formal process that leaved nothing to chance. One records not only the findings but the impressions as well. Given that the process is structured, the teacher is forced to adapt structure as well and the work is there organized. Whenever a step is accomplished, one feels that some task has been accomplished.

Recommendations

For professional development particularly in the teaching profession, an action research is necessary:

The decisions made have to be based on the findings deduced from action research and not on abstract concepts.
One needs to keep a record of whatever findings he/she comes up with from the action research. One need to structure his/her lessons based on concrete information and data rather than relying on abstract ideas and guesses or personal judgments.
One needs to be formal and follow the whole procedure of action research in a systematic manner. Every finding must be substantiated and where possible, it should be accompanied by an experiment so as to verify the same. Findings need to be coupled with the appropriate evidences.
The process has to be objective and it should not be guided by biases, prejudgments or personal judgments. It has to be accompanied by data or statistical evidences.
Opinions about professionalism should be based on findings from action research. This is because research is involved in the process and the arguments are presented and backed by substantive evidence.
Generalities need to be avoided. The facts need to be specific and nothing should be left to chance.
Accountability must be enhanced in the process. The procedures need to be followed to the later and the appropriate findings put down and in the cases where they need to communicated to others, they need to be communicated accurately.
In the cases where the participant is not well versed with the process, it might be a good idea to undergo the appropriate training before undertaking the process.
Conclusions must be drawn from the data collected and not merely depended on speculations.
The participants need to keep strict timelines so as to ensure that the whole process is done within the set time.

Action research is the most appropriate method in ensuring professional development. It is differs from the regular practice of reflection as it is more concrete and it is accompanied by statistical evidence. It is vital in enhancing professionalism and sharing among the teachers. Action research is vital in enhancing the reflective teaching process as it enhances awareness. The process is more systematic than mere reflection and it enhances accountability.

It raises the consciousness of the participants to the reflection process. It is formal, scientific, timely and more specific as opposed to the abstract reflective process. By carrying out action research, one ensures that the needs of the students are met though the adoption of the most appropriate teaching practices. It helps to boost the confidence of teacher and hence enabling him/her to effectively carry out his/her duties.

The concrete evidence from the action research is important in avoiding the trial-and -error approach or overdependence on mere assumptions. The systematic approach adopted is usually necessary in enhancing professionalism. The process involves the outlining of a concrete plan which is followed in the process and the fact that findings are written down is vital for future references. Action research is therefore a worthwhile process.

Bibliography

Bernstein, Richard. Praxis and Action . London: Duckworth, 1971.

Black, Cheryl. “Issues regarding the facilitation of teacher research.” Reflective Practice 6, No. 1 (2005): pp. 107-122

Buber, Martin. Between Man and Man . London:Trubner Burke, Aaron. “Teaching: Retrospect and Prospect.” Oideas 39, no. 6 (1999): pp. 5-254. & Co. Ltd., 1947.

Caughlan, Saidomar. “Considering Pastoral Power: A commentary on Aaron Schutz’s Rethinking Domination and Resistance: Challenging Postmodernism” Educational Researcher 34, no. 2 (2005): pp. 14-16.

Habermas, Jurgen. The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Hill, Dave. Marxism against Postmodernism in Educational Theory . London: Lexington Books, 2002.

Holquist, Michael. Dialogism Bakhtin and his world . London: Routledge, 1990.

Ilyenkov, Evaild. The Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx’s Capital . Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982.

Ilyenkov, Evald. Dialectical Logic . Moscow: Progress Publishers,1977.

Lyotard, Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A report on Knowledge . Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986.

Marshall, John. “Living Systemic Thinking. Exploring quality in first-person action research.” Action Research 2, no. 3(2004): pp. 309-329.

Marshall, John. “Living Life as Inquiry.” Systemic Practice and Action Research 12, no. 2 (1999): pp 155-171.

McNiff, Jean. You and Your Action Research Project . London: Routledge, 2003.

McNiff, Jean. & Whitehead, Jack. Action Research for Teachers , London: David Fulton. 2005.

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Insights into Action Research: What Change Matters Most?

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I have been investigating the action research process for years. My research breathes life into my work, improves my practice and keeps me in learner stance. My questions and insights energize me and create an excitement that translates to the educators with whom I work. With each group that I support through the action research cycle, my view of the process changes, precisely because I engage in the process along with them. For years, I studied my own practice, asking questions about how to best help teachers design questions, analyze data, collaborate and reflect. Over time I shifted to asking questions about the learner and have, more recently, been living with the following questions:

What is the nature of change that educators in my action research programs experience? Is change evident in the practical aspects of teaching (pedagogy), in content understanding (discipline), in approaches to being a teacher-researcher (process), and in underlying values or ethics?
What kind of change has the greatest potential to impact students in positive ways?
What change matters most?

Over the years, I’ve seen, firsthand, what much of the literature on action research describes – the action research process can transform teacher practices and teacher identity when there is a supportive, collaborative culture that values reflection and risk taking. In fact, the potential for action research to promote reflective thinking is a primary argument for embedding action research experiences into both professional development programs (NSDC 2008, Kemmis 2007, Bransford et al. 2000, Glanz 1998) and in teacher preparation programs (Cochran Smith & Demers 2008, Smith and Sela 2005, Ponte, Beijard & Ax 2004, Auger & Wideman 2000). While researchers agree that action research promotes reflective practice, they describe the nature of change resulting from reflection differently. Some studies describe changes in pedagogy, others in understanding of content and still others in values and beliefs about teaching.

In an effort to examine the nature of change resulting from my work with educators, I decided to study 50 educators from the Byram Hills School District who had engaged in the action research process for a full year. I designed the district program, titled “Investigators of Practice” (IOP), five years ago. It is shaped to allow teachers to engage in personally meaningful inquiry around their practice, while also learning about the key processes required by action researchers (questioning, data collection, data analysis, reflection). In the Fall of 2013, Assistant Superintendent, Dr. Tim Kaltenecker, and I collaborated to blend some of my questions with some of his.

The following questions guided the study:

What is the nature of change that teachers in the program experience?
After a formal experience with action research, to what extent do teachers continue to use a) new learning related to the focus of their study and b) action research skills, strategies and processes?
How has teacher learning from the program impacted student learning?
How has teacher learning from the program impacted teachers’ ability to address student needs?
What conditions do participants cite as supportive of the action research process?

In addition to designing a twenty-question survey with both closed and open-ended questions, I examined the written reports from the educators who engaged in action research over the previous 3 years. I analyzed the survey results and used the reports to further investigate the themes revealed in survey responses. The analysis revealed four strong themes and has left me with additional insights, as well as new questions.

Process Trumps Content

Educators who participated in the Investigators of Practice Program believe that the program positively impacted their knowledge, practices and beliefs. The specific responses reveal that the topic of study is far less important than the professional practices embedded in the experience. Educators reported:

being more reflective
questioning their practice and/or student learning
having a deep understanding of the action research process
using data more effectively to better understand their teaching and student learning
using outside research and best practices to inform their work, and
reaching out to colleagues to seek other perspectives and ideas.

While every teacher explored a specific topic, they consistently pointed to the processes embedded in their experience as being the most important. For example,

“I’m more reflective as a teacher. True, good teachers do this, however, I think the acts of logging and analyzing data in a formal way make the experience richer.” “The IOP program provided me with a framework that I use daily in my professional practice to move slowly, question thoughtfully, and think deeply about concerns to better understand to improve my skill set." “I now find myself asking more questions after a lesson, reflecting on certain aspects that I feel I’d like to improve upon.”

We can conclude that the design of the program had great influence – there is space for reflection, explicit teaching around crafting questions, teaching and modeling of data collection and analysis, and a requirement to use other research to ground investigations. These professional practices were valued in the program and ultimately valued by participants. However, I still wonder, Are these elements sufficient, in and of themselves, to foster deep learning, or are they dependent upon conditions and culture?

Questions Drive Results

While much of the survey data was encouraging, the survey findings related to student learning were perplexing for me. Even though teachers stated that the process definitely impacted student learning, when asked to give specific examples of impact on student learning, the teachers spoke more to their own learning and practice: only one third of the respondents specifically described student learning, while the other two-thirds described changes in their own practices that allowed them to better meet student needs or stay “close” to students. More specifically, teachers spoke to their ability to observe students, use data and reflect on their practice as allowing them to use more learner-centered approaches, such as differentiation of instruction/interventions, individual feedback and self-regulation strategies.

“I am a better observer of student behavior. I am better at assessing student comments and collecting data. This allows me to refine my lessons continuously and alter my approach for each group of students.”

What teachers said was not necessarily bad. However, I did expect (and hope) that more would emerge about specific student learning. And so, to better understand these findings, I examined the action research write-ups to look for further evidence of student learning. After examining and categorizing the questions that guided the educators, I found that two-thirds of the questions that drove the inquiry teachers engaged in were exploratory in nature, meaning that teachers were learning about and examining the research related to their topic. In other words, they weren’t yet taking action, and so it would be premature to look for student learning. The other one-third of the questions were action oriented, meaning that teachers were implementing and studying new practices. However, of these 12 action-oriented questions, 3 embedded impact on teacher practice in the questions and 8 embedded impact on student learning in the question.

While I’ve always known that the inquiry questions in action research are vitally important (they drive action, data collection and analysis), this analysis of questions revealed for me that there are three different types of questions (not two as I have been thinking). Only those that explicitly embed impact on student learning in the question will force researchers to examine student learning data. For me, this means that if there is an express interest in linking teacher inquiry to student learning, inquiry questions need to be crafted accordingly. During the planning phase of any inquiry project, educators need to think specifically about their goals and craft questions accordingly.

While we may want to connect professional development to student learning, we need to also keep in mind that changing teacher practice takes time. Moving from exploratory questions to questions focused on practice and then to questions focused on student learning, honors the time it takes to change teacher practice. In fact, my own journey has followed this path. Overtime, I’ve shifted from examining my practice to examining the learners, which of course, leads me back to my practice.

Action Research Question Categories:

Exploratory : “What methods of collaboration are most effective and engaging for students?”

Action-oriented (focused on improving teacher practice): “How will the use of student interviews as a diagnostic and formative assessment tool impact teacher selection of interventions?”

Action-oriented (focused on improving student learning) : “How can I use qualitative feedback to improve the writing of my AP History students?”

Identity Changes

The final theme from the study may reveal the deepest type of change. After formal participation in the action research program, educators report remaining in the stance of “investigator” and describe behavior that reveals them as researchers and learners. One teacher wrote, “I am a ‘teacher as learner’ vs. ‘teacher as teacher’. I can't help but think of myself as a student alongside my students. I also find myself "coding" data constantly, whereas I never did so in the past.” Another wrote, “I have developed a deep appreciation for the value of data. I use data, and develop data collection instruments, in my work with flexible support for students. I also use it on an individual basis with students when we collaborate to develop goals and strategies to improve academic engagement.” And another, “I never thought of myself as a researcher…now I’m able to collect data and analyze it and use it…”

This finding may be the most exciting, as it speaks to the potential for the action research process to be a catalyst for not only re-visioning practice, but re-visioning oneself. And, it is this theme that brings my back to my essential question, What change matters most?

What Change Matters Most?

A return to this question requires consideration of ultimate goals. If we seek to identify the most important changes needed - in ourselves, our students, our schools, or our learning organizations - we must to filter our thinking through our values, goals and missions. As a staff developer, fostering reflective practice emerges as my highest priority and impacting students is a goal for professional learning. I believe that a reflective educator, one who thoughtfully and systematically examines what is at hand, raising questions to pursue deeper understanding, is essential to fostering student learning. And so, the power of the inquiry process to transform identity, to move educators to seeing themselves as researchers, holds great promise for me. I will, no doubt, dig further. My biggest question now is this: If the process can change educator identity, what power might it have to change students’ views of themselves?

Resource links

Planning to begin an action research project? Access our Quality Inquiry Planning Checklist here .

Explore Diane’s detailed, authentic Action Research tool, published by ASCD.

LCI’s new trifold publication, A Practical Guide to Inquiry, will be available Summer 2015. Contact us for more information.

About the Author

Diane Cunningham designs and facilitates long-term staff development programs related to standards-based curriculum, instruction, assessment, and facilitating adult learning. Her works also includes building organizational capacity in school and districts, and coaching educators who work in leadership roles. For the past 3 years, Diane has also supported the design of blended curriculum for a virtual high school in New York. She is excited by the authentic possibilities that teaching in a blended environment provides.

A strong advocate of collegial inquiry and action research, Diane has developed expertise in guiding educators through the process of planning and carrying out collaborative and individual inquiry that is rigorous and grounded in classroom practices. She can be reached at [email protected] .

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Conducting research within the classroom is very valuable to the development of teaching and learning. Anything from effective assessment to managing behaviour can be the focus of thorough research without disrupting class time. Action research enables teachers to reflect on what they would like to change, explore what others are doing in that field and experiment with practice in a controlled fashion. This practical training support participants to improving teaching and learning through classroom-based research. The five units guide participants through two action research cycles to improve outcomes. Each unit lasts about 1 hour 30 minutes, with a recommended gap of 3 weeks between each to give participants time to carry out the research. Participants are expected to conduct action research cycles within their own classroom time and to share their findings at each stage.

Aims and outcomes

Offer a step-by-step guide for staff on how to successfully facilitate an effective action research project.
Guide staff through two action research cycles.
Encourage engagement in CPD: embed a culture of improvement underpinned by teacher-led evidence.
Share results: successfully share outcomes of action research projects with your whole school community.
Unit 1: Benefits of action research Continue
Unit 2: Suitable topics of research Continue
Unit 3: Planning and running your project Continue
Unit 4: Evaluating your research Continue
Unit 5: What's next? Continue

David Leat is the Executive Director of the Research Centre for Learning and Teaching (CfLaT) at Newcastle University and Professor of Curriculum Innovation. His 13 year geography school teaching career took him round the country, before...

Dr Anna Reid is a visiting lecturer at Newcastle University, where she currently leads three core postgraduate modules in Education; Research in Practice, Critical Thinking about Research Methodology, and Practices of Enquiry. Anna’s doctorate,...

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5 Science-Backed Ways to Write Clearly

If you want to become a better writer, ignore the lore and follow the science..

Posted June 24, 2024 | Reviewed by Devon Frye

We read sentences written with active voice faster and comprehend content better than passive sentences.
Studies document that we read and recall sentences with less effort when they turn content into micro-stories.
Pronouns as subjects send readers backward, but readers comprehend sentences through prediction.
Action verbs activate the brain's motor systems, creating semantic richness and enabling rapid comprehension.

Most writers assume they write well. Yet most writers grapple with the reality of writing as a black box.

That is, we know that writing works, but we’re a bit fuzzy on what makes readers grasp the meaning of some sentences instantly and without noticeable effort, while we find others difficult to understand after repeat re-readings. And contrary to popular belief, clear writing has virtually nothing to do with content, sentence length, or writing style.

Instead, we perceive sentences as clear when they map onto the methods our reading brains use to make sense of writing. Knowing the most important ones, including the below, could help make you a better writer.

1. Active voice makes sentences easier to read.

In dozens of studies, researchers have found that readers comprehend sentences more rapidly when sentences reflect the causal order of events. Two factors determine these outcomes.

First, human brains naturally perceive cause and effect, a likely survival mechanism. In fact, infants as young as six months can identify cause and effect, registered as spikes in heart rate and blood pressure.

Second, English sentence structure reflects causes and effects in its ordering of words: subject-verb-object order. In key studies, participants read sentences with active voice at speeds one-third faster than they read sentences in passive voice. More significantly, these same participants misunderstood even simple sentences in passive voice about 25 percent of the time.

As readers, we also perceive active sentences as both shorter and easier to read because active voice typically makes sentences more efficient. Consider the difference between the first sentence below, which relies on passive voice, and the second, which uses active voice.

Passive: Among board members, there was an instant agreement to call for a pause in negotiations.
Active: Board members instantly agreed to call for a pause in negotiations.

2. Actors or concrete objects turn sentences into micro-stories.

We read sentences with less effort—or cognitive load—when we can clearly see cause and effect, or, “who did what to whom,” as Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky puts it.

Bornkessel-Schlesewsky, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of South Australia, used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), to spot brains reacting to meaning and word order in sentences. Unsurprisingly, when the subjects of sentences are nouns clearly capable of performing actions, readers process sentences with greater speed and less effort. For actors, writers can choose people, organizations, publications—any individual, group, or item, intentionally created, that generates impact.

In addition to our unconsciously perceiving these sentences as easy to read and recall, we can also more readily identify actors in sentences. Furthermore, these nouns enhance the efficiency of any sentence by paring down its words. Take the examples below:

Abstract noun as subject: Virginia Woolf’s examination of the social and economic obstacles female writers faced due to the presumption that women had no place in literary professions and so were instead relegated to the household, particularly resonated with her audience of young women who had struggled to fight for their right to study at their colleges, even after the political successes of the suffragettes.
Actor as subject: In A Room of One’s Own , Virginia Woolf examined social and economic obstacles female writers faced. Despite the political success of the suffragettes, writers like Woolf battled the perception that women had no place in the literary professions. Thus Woolf’s book resonated with her audience, young women who had to fight for the right to study at their colleges.

3. Pronouns send readers backward, but readers make sense of sentences by anticipating what comes next.

Writers typically love to use pronouns as the subjects of sentences, especially the demonstrative pronouns this, that, these, those, and it , believing that these pronouns help link their sentences. Instead, pronouns save writers time and effort—but significantly cost readers for two likely reasons.

First, readers assume that pronouns refer to a singular noun, rather than a cluster of nouns, a phrase, or even an entire sentence. Second and more importantly, when writers use these pronouns without anchoring nouns, readers slow down and frequently misidentify the pronoun referents. In fact, readers rated writing samples with high numbers of sentences using demonstrative pronouns as being less well-written than sentences that used actors as subjects or pronouns anchored by nouns.

Pronoun as subjects: [Katie Ledecky] estimated that she swims more than 65,000 yards—or about 37 miles—a week. That adds up to 1,900 miles a year, and it means eons of staring at the black line that runs along the bottom of a pool. Actor as subject: [Katie] Ledecky swims up to 1,900 miles a year, mileage that entails seeming aeons of staring at the black line that runs along the bottom of a pool.

4. Action verbs make sentences more concrete, memorable, and efficient.

For years, old-school newspaper and magazine editors urged writers to use action verbs to enliven sentences.

However, action verbs also offer readers and writers significant benefits in terms of their memorability, as revealed in one study of readers’ recall of verbs. Of the 200 verbs in the study, readers recalled concrete verbs and nouns more accurately than non-action verbs.

In fact, when we read concrete verbs, our brains recruit the sensory-motor system, generating faster reaction times than abstract or non-action verbs, processed outside that system . Even in patients with dementia , action verbs remain among the words patients can identify with advanced disease, due to the richness of semantic associations that action verbs recruit in the brain.

Non-action verbs: That the electric trolleys being abandoned in Philadelphia were greener and more efficient was not an insight available at that time.
Action Verbs: Philadelphia scrapped its electric trolleys, decades before urban planners turned to greener, more efficient forms of transport.

5. Place subjects and verbs close together.

Over the past 20 years, researchers have focused on models of reading that rely on our understanding of sentence structure, a focus validated by recent studies.

As we read, we predict how sentence structure or syntax unfolds, based on our encounters with thousands of sentences. We also use the specific words we encounter in sentences to verify our predictions, beginning with grammatical subjects, followed by verbs.

As a result, readers struggle to identify subjects and verbs when writers separate them—the more distance between subjects and verbs, the slower the process of identifying them correctly. Moreover, readers make more errors in identifying correct subjects and verbs—crucial to understanding sentences—with increases in the number of words between subjects and verbs, even with relatively simple sentence structure.

Ironically, as writers tackle increasingly complex topics, they typically modify their subjects with phrases and adjective clauses that can place subjects at one end of the sentence and verbs at the opposite end. This separation strains working memory , as readers rely on subject-verb-object order in English to understand the sentence’s meaning. Consider, for example, this sentence from an online news organization:

In Florida, for instance, a bill to eliminate a requirement that students pass an Algebra I end-of-course and 10th-grade English/language arts exams in order to graduate recently cleared the Senate’s education committee.

On the other hand, when we place the subject and verb close together and use modifiers after the verb, we ease readers’ predictions and demands on working memory:

In Florida, the Senate’s education committee recently cleared a bill to eliminate two graduation requirements: an Algebra I end-of-course and 10th-grade English language arts.

Jane Yellowlees Douglas, Ph.D. , is a consultant on writing and organizations. She is also the author, with Maria B. Grant, MD, of The Biomedical Writer: What You Need to Succeed in Academic Medicine .

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A car speeds past a woman holding two children's hands, standing at a crosswalk

Traffic engineers build roads that invite crashes because they rely on outdated research and faulty data

Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Colorado Denver

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Wes Marshall receives funding from the US Department of Transportation's University Transportation Centers program and various state transportation departments.

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“Can you name the truck with four-wheel drive, smells like a steak, and seats 35?”

Back in 1998, “The Simpsons” joked about the Canyonero, an SUV so big that they were obviously kidding. At that time, it was preposterous to think anyone would drive something that was “12 yards long, two lanes wide, 65 tons of American Pride.”

In 2024, that joke isn’t far from reality.

And our reality is one where more pedestrians and bicyclists are getting killed on U.S. streets than at any time in the past 45 years – over 1,000 bicyclists and 7,500 pedestrians in 2022 alone.

Vehicle size is a big part of this problem. A recent paper by urban economist Justin Tyndall found that increasing the front-end height of a vehicle by roughly 4 inches (10 centimeters) increases the chance of a pedestrian fatality by 22% . The risk increases by 31% for female pedestrians or those over 65 years, and by 81% for children.

It’s hard to argue with physics, so there is a certain logic in blaming cars for rising traffic deaths. In fact, if a bicyclist is hit by a pickup truck instead of a car, Tyndall suggests that they are 291% more likely to die.

Yet automakers have long asserted that if everyone simply followed the rules of the road, nobody would die. Vehicle size is irrelevant to that assertion.

My discipline, traffic engineering , acts similarly. We underestimate our role in perpetuating bad outcomes, as well as the role that better engineering can play in designing safer communities and streets.

A bicycle, painted white and decorated with flowers, attached to a street pole at an urban intersection.

Millions of road deaths

How bad are the bad outcomes? The U.S. has been tracking car-related road deaths since 1899. As a country, we hit the threshold of 1 million cumulative deaths in 1953, 2 million in 1975 and 3 million in 1998. While the past several years of data have not yet been released, I estimate that the U.S. topped 4 million total road deaths sometime in the spring of 2024.

How many of those are pedestrians and bicyclists? Analysts didn’t do a great job of separating out the pedestrian and cyclist deaths in the early years , but based on later trends, my estimate is that some 930,000 pedestrians and bicyclists have been killed by automobiles in the U.S.

How many of those deaths do we blame on big cars or bad streets? The answer is, very few.

As I show in my new book, “ Killed by a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion that Science Underlies our Transportation System ,” the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration calls road user error the “ critical reason” behind 94% of crashes, injuries and deaths .

Crash data backs that up.

Police investigate crashes and inevitably look to see which road users, including drivers, pedestrians and cyclists, are most at fault. It’s easy to do because in almost any crash, road user error appears to be the obvious problem.

This approach helps insurance companies figure out who needs to pay. It also helps automakers and traffic engineers rationalize away all these deaths. Everyone – except the families and friends of these 4 million victims – goes to sleep at night feeling good that bad-behaving road users just need more education or better enforcement.

But road user error only scratches the surface of the problem.

Who creates dangerous streets?

When traffic engineers build an overly wide street that looks more like a freeway , and a speeding driver in a Canyonero crashes, subsequent crash data blames the driver for speeding.

When traffic engineers provide lousy crosswalks separated by long distances , and someone jaywalks and gets hit by that speeding Canyonero driver, one or both of these road users will be blamed in the official crash report.

And when automakers build gargantuan vehicles that can easily go double the speed limit and fill them with distracting touchscreens , crash data will still blame the road users for almost anything bad that happens.

These are the sorts of systemic conditions that lead to many so-called road user errors. Look just below the surface, though, and it becomes clear that many human errors represent the typical, rational behaviors of typical, rational road users given the transportation system and vehicle options we put in front of them.

Look more deeply, and you can start to see how our underlying crash data gives everyone a pass but the road users themselves. Everyone wants a data-driven approach to road safety, but today’s standard view of crash data lets automakers, insurance companies and policymakers who shape vehicle safety standards off the hook for embiggening these ever-larger cars and light-duty trucks.

It also absolves traffic engineers, planners and policymakers of blame for creating a transportation system where for most Americans, the only rational choice for getting around is a car .

Understanding road behavior

Automakers want to sell cars and make money. And if bigger SUVs seem safer to potential customers, while also being much more profitable , it’s easy to see how interactions between road users and car companies – making seemingly rational decisions – have devolved into an SUV arms race.

Even though these same vehicles are less safe for pedestrians, bicyclists and those in opposing vehicles , the current data-driven approach to road safety misses that part of the story.

This can’t all be fixed at once. But by pursuing business as usual, automakers and traffic engineers will continue wasting money on victim-blaming campaigns or billboards placed high over a road telling drivers to pay attention to the road .

A better starting point would be remaking the U.S.’s allegedly data-driven approach to road safety by reinventing our understanding of the crash data that informs it all.

The key is starting to ask why. Why did these road users act as they did? Why didn’t they follow the rules that were laid out for them? Bad road user behavior shouldn’t be excused, but a bit of digging below the surface of crash data unearths a completely different story.

Figuring out which road user is most at fault may be useful for law enforcement and insurance companies, but it doesn’t give transportation engineers, planners, policymakers or automakers much insight into what they can do better. Even worse, it has kept them from realizing that they might be doing anything wrong.

Urban policy
Civil engineering
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Sustainable cities
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COMMENTS

What Is Action Research?
Action research is a research method that aims to simultaneously investigate and solve an issue. In other words, as its name suggests, action research conducts research and takes action at the same time. It was first coined as a term in 1944 by MIT professor Kurt Lewin.A highly interactive method, action research is often used in the social ...
PDF How to Do Actionresearch
Action research is a way for you to continue to grow and learn by making use of your own experiences. The only theories involved are the ideas that you already use to make sense of your experience. Action research literally starts where you are and will take you as far as you want to go. DESIGNING A STUDY.
1 What is Action Research for Classroom Teachers?
Learn what action research is, how it develops, and why it is important for educators. Explore the purpose, process, and paradigm of action research as a method to improve teaching and learning.
Q: What is an action research report and how is it written?
Thus, action research is often a cyclical process. The action research report that you write is based on this process. Typically, an action research report is written in the same way as you would write an original research article. However, you need to ensure that your report has the following components: The context or background.
What Is Action Research?
Action research is a research method that combines investigation and intervention to solve a problem. Because of its interactive nature, action research is commonly used in the social sciences, particularly in educational contexts. Educators frequently use this method as a means of structured inquiry, emphasizing reflective practice and ...
Embrace Action Research
Action research is a cycle of inquiry and reflection. During the process, you will determine 1) where you are, 2) where you want to be, and 3) how you are going to get there. In general terms, the cycle follows these steps: Identify the problem and envision success. Develop a plan of action. Collect data.
PDF What Is Action Research?
This chapter is organized into four sections that deal with these issues. 1 What action research is and is not. 2 Different approaches to action research. 3 Purposes of action research. 4 When and when not to use action research. 1 What action research is and is not. Action research is a form of enquiry that enables practitioners in every job ...
PDF Conducting Teacher Action Research
Passion is integral to doing action research and can be a resource for identifying a research question, as indicated by Dana and Yendol-Hoppey (2008, pp. 15-48). After analyzing more than 100 teacher class-room research studies, they identified eight passions as possibilities for finding a research question: 1.
Linking Research to Action: A Simple Guide to Writing an Action
This brings us back to the essential steps of action research: identifying the problem, devising an action plan, implementing the plan, and finally, observing and reflecting upon the process. Your action research report should comprise all of these essential steps. Feldman and Weiss (n.d.) summarized them as five structural elements, which do ...
Action Research
Maragaret Riel at the Center for Collaborative Action Research defines Action Research as "a systematic, reflective study of one's actions, and the effects of these actions, in a workplace or organizational context. As such, it involves a deep inquiry into one's professional practice. However, it is also a collaborative process as it is done WITH people in a social context, and understanding ...
Preparing for Action Research in the Classroom: Practical Issues
An action research project is a practical endeavor that will ultimately be shaped by your educational context and practice. Now that you have developed a literature review, you are ready to revise your initial plans and begin to plan your project. This chapter will provide some advice about your considerations when undertaking an action ...
Action Research in Education: What You Need to Know
There are several benefits of using action research in education, including the following: It helps teachers to become more reflective practitioners. Through reflection, teachers can learn new strategies for improving student outcomes. It helps teachers to develop a shared understanding of teaching and learning.
How Action Research Can Improve Your Teaching
Action research can be as informal or formal as you need it to be. Data is collected through observation, questioning, and discussion with students. Student artwork, photographs of your classroom at work, video interviews, and surveys are all valid forms of data. Students can be involved throughout the whole process, helping to solve the ...
Writing Up Your Action Research Project
Writing up Your Action Research Project is an essential text for practitioners on professional education and undergraduate courses across disciplines who want their writing to reflect the excellence of their research. It is the ideal companion to the author's You and Your Action Research Project, now in its fourth edition.
5 Easy Steps to Conduct an Effective Action Research
In conducting action research, we structure routines for the continuous confrontation of problems regarding the health of school communities using data. These routines represent the five essential stages of the action research cycle. They include the following. 1. Identifying a problem area. The first step is to identify a unique problem.
Why do action research? : Innovative Education in VT
In the rapidly shifting world of education, action research helps prioritize which changes are worthy of extra attention. Action researchers pick a slice of their practice and dive into the research literature, then they use data to evaluate success and draw conclusions. 3. Action research promotes collaboration.
What is the main purpose of action research?
The research methods you use depend on the type of data you need to answer your research question. If you want to measure something or test a hypothesis, use quantitative methods. If you want to explore ideas, thoughts and meanings, use qualitative methods. If you want to analyze a large amount of readily-available data, use secondary data.
Macalintall Profed 100 Learning TASK 11
I need to write action research because it is essential not just in the part of the teacher but for the lives of students also. It provides practitioners with new knowledge and understanding about how to improve educational practices or resolve significant problems in classrooms and schools. Within education, the main goal of action research is ...
The Importance of Action Research
Action research helps the teacher to reflect on his/her teaching process and enable the person to avoid prejudgments or depending on making guesses. It helps in avoiding wrong and misguided judgments. This is vital for every teacher. It helps one to be more serous, reflective and attentive.
How do I write the background of the study for the action research I am
To write the background, you often need to do a thorough literature review. This will help you become familiar with the existing understanding, discussions, and insights in your research area. As you are conducting action research, you will need to look at similar studies in your field, although action research is typical in education.
Insights into Action Research: What Change Matters Most?
Educators reported: being more reflective. questioning their practice and/or student learning. having a deep understanding of the action research process. using data more effectively to better understand their teaching and student learning. using outside research and best practices to inform their work, and. reaching out to colleagues to seek ...
Action Research for Improved Classroom Teaching
This practical training support participants to improving teaching and learning through classroom-based research. The five units guide participants through two action research cycles to improve outcomes. Each unit lasts about 1 hour 30 minutes, with a recommended gap of 3 weeks between each to give participants time to carry out the research.
LEARNING TASK 11
Research Cycle The Action Research Cycle VI. Cost Estimates VII. Plans for Dissemination and Utilization VIII. References Performance Task 2 Listing references used in the CBARs following TEI prescribed referencing or citation styles After you have chosen your topic, you are now ready to list down the references that you may need in your action ...
5 Science-Backed Ways to Write Clearly
2. Actors or concrete objects turn sentences into micro-stories. We read sentences with less effort—or cognitive load—when we can clearly see cause and effect, or, "who did what to whom ...
Traffic engineers build roads that invite crashes because they rely on
A traffic engineer argues that, contrary to his profession's view, 'human error' is not the main cause of deaths in car crashes in the US.