Found a great article, website, book on action research or your research topic? Then share it here! Click on the links to either go to the website or to read a review from Amazon.com.
Action research for professional development: Concise advice for new action researchers by Jean McNiff is a great starting point for your reading on action research. By answering questions such as What is it?, Why do it? and How do I do it? McNiff's downloadable article will give the new action researcher the justification for and confidence to, undertake an action research project. Of particular relevance for CAR-TL members is McNiff's advice for action researchers to employ the support of critical friends and a validation group. Click on the title to access article. (Di Laycock)
Teacher Research: Action Research is a resource from the Graduate School of Education at
Action Research in Action: Involving Students and Professionals is an article by Anne Curry that gives a good overview of action research and a few interesting examples from the library world. (Dianne Lane)
V-Resort (Virtual Resources for Online Research Training) - free to join. Educational researchers share their methodology and discuss findings of their recent studies, using Microsoft Producer to include video narratives and text as explanations. I share this for 2 reasons - firstly it is real researchers, just like us! but also I think the concept would work well for this group - we could put together something similar, even use ducks instead of dogs on the home page! (Margo Pickworth)
Action research by Richard Donato is a short, practical and very readable introduction to action research. The article provides a definition of AR; a framework for it; a description of its main features and a brief outline of an action research project. I really like Donato's description of the two approaches to action research - the deductive approach and the inductive approach. The deductive approach (after Kemmis and McTaggert) involves implementing a planned action, monitoring its implementation and evaluating the results. The inductive approach (after Burns) explores an area of concern, identifies an action to be implemented and plans for this implentation. Also appealing in this article is Donato's identification of the leadership role that action researchers play by acting as 'participants in a collaborative culture of change' (after Fullan). (Di Laycock)
Williamson, K (ed.) 2000, Research methods for students and professionals: Information management and systems. CIS,
Mertler, C 2006, Action research: Teachers as action researchers in the classroom, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.(Di Laycock)
Stringer, E 2004, Action research in education, Pearson, Upper Saddle River, NJ. This one's a favourite of mine. Ernie Stringer cut his "action research teeth" whilst studying Aboriginal communities in the Australian outback. His book clearly explains the action research process and is accompanied by useful examples, summaries and diagrams. (Di Laycock)