How is Action Research done in practice?

What can teachers research?

Teachers might study:

• how they and their students talk
• how their work pans out in practice
• the kinds of relationships they are forming so they can judge how to improve things

Teachers try things out, study what happens, share data with others, perhaps read some literature, and then try again with new ideas.

Revealing constraints and nurturing confidence

Seeing their work more objectively helps teachers to see constraints like lack of confidence among students frustrating their efforts to learn. Involving students in collecting information about their learning can nurture confidence and self-determination.

From recognising constraints to acting for change-an example

• Teachers discover constraints embedded in language. They realise that thinking of 'teaching', rather than students' interpretations of what is happening to them, can cut them off from understanding how both students' and teachers' work produces surface, rather than deep learning.
• Teachers see constraints in workplaces and workloads which do not allow time to study what is happening. Communication with colleagues and students about teaching can reveal other shared concerns. This helps them to understand about how time can be created to think more about teaching and to plan something that might improve the quality of students' experiences.
• They try that out, study what happens, help each other to plan again and so on. The data and the talk are reflexive: things begin to change just because there are new ways of talking about what is happening and how to act.
• There are no external 'observers' here, people share the information they collect and discipline their thinking and their planning for action, becoming increasingly informed groups of 'critical friends' improving both theory and practice of teaching and learning together.

This material on this page is adapted from Kemmis, S., and McTaggart, R. (2000). Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.) Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd Ed.)(pp. 567-605). Thousand Oaks CA: Sage, by kind permission of Professor Robin McTaggart.

Professor Robin McTaggart is Pro-Vice-Chancellor Staff Development and Student Affairs, James Cook University, Australia.