You and your action research project

This book gives practical guidance on doing an action research project. Written for practitioners across professions who are studying on work-based learning programmes and award-bearing courses, this book is packed full of useful advice and takes the reader through the various stages of a project, including: starting your action research project monitoring and documenting the action techniques for dealing with the data making claims to knowledge and validating them legitimating your research making your research public creating your living educational theory. The book's practical approach will appeal to practitioners and will encourage them to try out new strategies for improving their work. It will also be essential reading for those resource managers in schools, colleges and higher education institutions who are responsible for providing courses and support. This third edition of the best-selling book has been thoroughly updated and improved by a number of features, with new case studies from a wide range of disciplines, extracts from validated dissertations and theses (with information on how to access more examples via the Internet), points for reflection, checklists of reflective questions, and up-to the-minute information on current debates and ideas.

Introduction -- Action research: what it is and what it is not -- Why should you do action research? -- The main features of action research processes -- Working with others in organisational and institutional settings -- Influence and ethics -- Designing your project: action planning -- Designing your project: checklists for action -- Monitoring the action, looking for data, and documenting the processes involved -- Collecting and managing the data -- Analysing and interpreting the data and generating evidence -- Validation process: making claims to knowledge and validating them -- Legitimation processes: presenting reports and legitimating them -- Writing your report -- Disseminating your research and getting published.