What is action research?
How can action research be used to help individuals, organisations and communities resolve issues and take action for change?
Judi Marshall, Programme Director of the MA in Leadership for Sustainability, explains more about this style of research and what it can offer.
Action research is a term applied to a rich array of ideas and approaches. This potential ‘family’ has common themes of: combining thinking and action, engaging in cycles of action and reflection, seeking to contribute to change for worthwhile purposes, often working participatively with other people, and tailoring approaches to context and purposes.
It is a method of inquiry that entails systematic engagement with a problem or issue in order to find – through experimentation with different approaches – the most suitable way to proceed. It is often described as involving a series, or cycle, of activities:
- people, individually or collectively, identify issues they want to explore or take action on, and consider possible approaches
- they take action
- reflecting on their assumptions and behaviours as they go along
- observing reactions and responses
- inviting feedback and collaboration from others
- they then reflect on what has been learnt and
- plan new phases of action and inquiry
Several cycles can be undertaken, with people learning as they go along and adjusting actions, and quite often their purposes, in the process.
Often ‘problems’ are resolved through such processes. Sometimes, inquiring action means that new insight is gained into what was initially identified as a ‘problem’, and situations are re-framed to offer different sorts of opportunities for mutual learning and action.
Action research can be described as contributing to three different territories of action and awareness – spanning individual, group and wider dimensions. These are typically used in combination during the course of a project, although often there will be a focus on one territory for a time.
Firstly, and as a foundation to the other two approaches, a person can take an inquiring approach to their own assumptions, perspectives and action, seeking to behave awarely and choicefully in a given context, and to develop their practice in some way. For example, someone in a corporate responsibility role might want to become more skilled in how they work with senior colleagues to bring about more awareness, commitment and action for change for sustainability.
Secondly, people can come together to inquire into issues and actions of mutual interest, all participating in decisions about the process as well as the content of what is undertaken. For example, a group of people might coordinate their activities in an organisation or profession to put challenges of sustainability on the agenda and help colleagues engage with them inquiringly.
Thirdly, action research can be adopted when seeking to stimulate engaged, sustained inquiry in a wider community such as an organisation or a geographic region over time. For example, one or more people can seek to help an organisation or a local area take action on climate change, doing this reflectively and seeking to promote dialogue and discussion alongside action, enhancing people’s capacities to learn in and from their experiences.
On all three dimensions, action research would pay attention to issues of power and be informed by systemic thinking, appreciating that any action taken is in a context of multiple influences.
One of the significant benefits of this style of inquiry is that it is typically undertaken with supportive and challenging input from a small group of practitioner colleagues, often known as a learning set. Although the issue or problem addressed may be specific to the individual and his/her organisation, the insights and experiences of others, who may themselves have experienced similar situations or dilemmas, can be very valuable in generating new perspectives and exploring potential new approaches. Learning sets typically operate through open questioning and dialogue.
How action research is used on the programme
Want to know more?
If you would like some recommended reading on action research to learn more about how it influences the MA, please get in touch.
On the programme you will be offered a diverse range of approaches to action research, reflecting the many different ideas that inform its development. These include organisational approaches to intervention and change, community development, varied approaches to self-reflective practice, action learning, participatory action research and the Scandinavian workplace democracy tradition. Appropriate quality processes will be discussed. You will also be encouraged to explore for yourself, developing action research thinking and styles of practice which are appropriate for you, the situations you are operating in and the developmental learning you are seeking to do through the programme.
