Action Research: The Challenges of Understanding and Changing Practice

How can practice be understood and developed? What part can action research play in that process? What principles lie at the heart of action research and how can they be adopted? How can action research bring about democratic and collaborative changes to practice? These and other questions are answered in this book which offers both a practical step-by-step guide to action research and an examination of the underlying principles and challenges. Action research as an approach aims to generate knowledge and achieve principled change. This book explores the overarching features and a variety of models of action research to provide advice, guidance, and support on its conduct and to identify challenges that may arise, with a focus on understanding and changing practice as a result. Throughout the book examples of action research illustrate each of the stages of action research so that you can see how action research has been conducted and applied in practice, and how this relates to the principles and practices of action research discussed in the book. Conducting action research can present a number of challenges. This book includes reflection points on the challenges posed, as well as advice on how these challenges may be addressed in order to achieve embedded and sustainable change.