When can teachers conduct action research, how is it different from applied research and why is it needed?

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Action research is either research initiated to solve an immediate problem or a reflective process of progressive problem solving led by individuals working with others in teams or as part of a "community of practice" to improve the way they address issues and solve problems. There are two types of action research: participatory and practical. Denscombe (2010, p. 6) writes that an action research strategy's purpose is to solve a particular problem and to produce guidelines for best practice. Action research involves actively participating in a change situation, often via an existing organization, whilst simultaneously conducting research. Action research can also be undertaken by larger organizations or institutions, assisted or guided by professional researchers, with the aim of improving their strategies, practices and knowledge of the environments within which they practice. As designers and stakeholders, researchers work with others to propose a new course of action to help their community improve its work practices.

Kurt Lewin, then a professor at MIT, first coined the term "action research" in 1944. In his 1946 paper "Action Research and Minority Problems" he described action research as "a comparative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action and research leading to social action" that uses "a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action and fact-finding about the result of the action". Action research is an interactive inquiry process that balances problem solving actions implemented in a collaborative context with data-driven collaborative analysis or research to understand underlying causes enabling future predictions about personal and organizational change (Reason & Bradbury, 2001). After six decades of action research development, many methods have evolved that adjust the balance to focus more on the actions taken or more on the research that results from the reflective understanding of the actions. This tension exists between

1. those who are more driven either by the researcher's agenda or by participants;
2. those who are motivated primarily by instrumental goal attainment or by the aim of personal, organizational or societal transformation; and
3. 1st-, to 2nd-, to 3rd-person research, that is, my research on my own action, aimed primarily at personal change; our research on our group (family/team), aimed primarily at improving the group; and 'scholarly' research aimed primarily at theoretical generalization or large-scale change

Action research challenges traditional social science by moving beyond reflective knowledge created by outside experts sampling variables, to an active moment-to-moment theorizing, data collecting and inquiry occurring in the midst of emergent structure. "Knowledge is always gained through action and for action. From this starting point, to question the validity of social knowledge is to question, not how to develop a reflective science about action, but how to develop genuinely well-informed action – how to conduct an action science". In this sense, performing action research is the same as performing an experiment, thus it is an empirical process.

Different from applied research and why is it needed:

Currently there is considerable interest in action research (AR) in the language teaching field. The December 1999 issue of The Language Teacher, for example, was devoted entirely to this subject. Action research is now frequently promoted as a new way for teachers to develop professionally and to investigate their classroom practice. But, despite the growth of new publications now discussing action research, would-be teacher researchers are not always necessarily clear about what action research is, or how it relates to other kinds of applied research in the second language teaching field with which they may already be familiar.

Take, for example, the following comment from a teacher with whom I recently worked on an action research project (see Burns, 1999).

My experience of doing action research is that it is difficult to grasp or explain the concept until one is in the process of doing it. It is in the doing that it starts to make sense and become clear. (Jane Hamilton, personal communication)

On the JALT Teacher Education SIG action research listserv, Dale Griffee recently raised the issue of how AR relates to other kinds of research that aim to have applications to second language teaching and learning:

What is the difference between AR and applied research? The answer has to be a characteristic that is not the case for applied research. I don't think we can say that AR is done by teachers, and that is its defining characteristic, because applied research is also done by teachers all the time. What are the characteristics that set AR aside and mark it as different?

This question is useful and challenging. In my experience, it is one that is frequently asked by teachers new to action research: How is action research different from other research? Action research and applied research are in some ways similar and overlapping, but there are also important differences between them. In this article I will attempt to draw out some of these similarities and differences, and address, in particular, the question of what characterises action research. I'll focus this exploration by first considering two hypothetical examples of research that might be carried out on the topic of classroom strategies to enhance oral interaction.

Example 1

As part of the introduction of a new syllabus, a researcher wishes to know whether the use of group work will improve students' ability to speak English. The researcher first consults the literature on this area of research and decides on the approach and methods to be used. The researcher's hypothesis is "Group work will increase the development of both fluency and accuracy in oral tasks." The researcher assigns one group of students in a school to an experimental group, where all classroom tasks are conducted through group work for a period of two months. An equal number of students (the control group) are taught using the same tasks through a whole-class, teacher-fronted approach for the same period. In order to ensure that the students in the experimental group are not at higher levels of language learning to begin with, the researcher first administers a test. She then assigns students to the groups on the basis of the test results. At the end of the two months, each of the groups is given a further identical test in order to see whether the use of group work has resulted in higher results for the experimental group. The results show that the students assigned to group work have performed at a higher level in relation to fluency, but that their performance on some aspects of grammatical accuracy is lower than the control group. The researcher publishes the findings of the study in a journal.

Example 2

As part of the introduction of a new syllabus, a researcher decides to move away from the use of whole-class speaking activities in his classroom. He decides to introduce more group work for certain tasks and to observe how the students react. He assigns students to groups and keeps a journal noting down his observations over a period of two weeks. At the end of this period, he notes that some students are not participating in the group tasks and are increasingly reluctant to work in groups. He decides that students are unused to this approach and need more practice. He increases the use of group work and assigns students to the same groups. He also asks the students to complete a survey on their responses to group work. His own observation and journal entries, as well as the surveys indicate that students are becoming even more reluctant to do group work. The teacher discusses the problem with some colleagues who suggest he tries letting students choose their own groups. The teacher tries this strategy over a further period of one week and notes that students are less reluctant. He also observes that the groups do not remain static, but appear to change according to the task. He decides to try a further approach of giving students a choice of tasks. This approach works even better and interaction amongst the students increases noticeably.

You may have already decided (correctly) that the first is an example of applied research, while the second reflects an action research approach. Both of these examples are, of course, simplified and idealised, but they do perhaps serve to draw out some of the essential similarities and differences between action research and applied research.

The first thing to note is that both approaches adopt a scientific perspective (Cohen and Manion, 1994) on the issues they are investigating. In other words, they are both concerned to go beyond intuitions or assumptions, and to use a systematic approach to asking questions, collecting data, analysing the data, and drawing out conclusions and interpretations from the findings. However, there are differences in the approach. The first study adopts an objective stance in which the researcher attempts to control variables that may affect the findings and to identify possible relationships between the treatment (group work) and the outcomes (increases in fluency and accuracy). The action researcher is not interested in establishing relationships of this type, but instead wants to find the best possible ways of setting up new classroom activities. This is a more subjective perspective, concerned with exploring different ways of teaching and deliberately changing conditions in the classroom.

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