Section 2 – Theoretical  background 

Action Research

  “Action research is a form of self-reflective inquiry undertaken by participants (teachers, students and principals, for example) in social (including educational) situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of (a) their own social and educational practices, (b) their understanding of these practices, and (c) the situations (and institutions) in which these practices are carried out.” (McNiff 1988, p. 2)

According to this and other definitions[1], with Action Research teachers may bridge the divide between theory and practice or better put theory into practice and be immediately aware of the objective reasons of both successful and failing choices, be able to make corrections or implement complete changes both in their work and in the environment in which they work, as a consequence of systematic and reliable observation and analysis.

Action Research is a type of scientific inquiry that, while affecting the inquiry field, implies also a change in the person who is carrying the investigation out, as it “…is geared toward improving the researcher, as well as the research situation and the research participants” (Arhar and Buck 2000)

Action Research represents for teachers like me the chance to stop and rethink old and new experiences and experiments in a more systematic way, which means a greater awareness of  the processes that develop inside the classes and a bigger respect for our own work and the importance it has for learners.

The typical Action Research process has been verbally summarized and graphically represented in many ways and I think these schematic pictures, both verbal and graphic, can only partly give the idea of movement, progression and development implied in it. McKernan’s action research model[2], for example,  is a graphic representation of the operative steps involved in an Action Research study:

This scheme gives the idea of the iteration implied in the cyclic development of the learning-teaching process. If we observe it horizontally we see a reiteration of cycles; if we imagine to see it from above (vertically) we can immediately consider it as a spiral where the interconnected cycles go over the same things again and again, each time bringing some new elements aiming at correcting and improving the previous ones. However, we have to imagine another spiral developing together with the one which contains the different steps of the process and continuously interacting with it: the spiral of observation and reflection which are present at every step and deeply affect each of them.

This is another model to represent Action Research[3]:  

A - Finding a starting point  

B - Clarifying the situation  

C - Developing action strategies and putting them into practice  

D - Making teacher's knowledge public 

It is more synthetic but conveys the idea of a cyclical reproduction of the central steps as well; in addition it remarks, in the final step, the importance of the public communication of the action’s results, which in the end makes the work of the teacher a real piece of research, useful for other teachers/researchers. 

I will use both of them to define the steps I’ll follow for my case study.