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This text provides a primer on action research, and how to use it to understand organizations. The author's unique resource addresses the potential pitfalls, the politics and ethics of researching your own organization.
Doing Action Research in Your Own Organization is the essential resource for anyone embarking on a research project in their own organization or as part of a work placement programme whether in business, healthcare, government, education, social work or third sector organizations. The authors provide an easy-to-follow, hands-on guide to every aspect of conducting an action research project and have added in the Third Edition: - more on politics and ethics to help researchers negotiate gaining access and permission, and building and maintaining support from peers and relevant subsystems within an organization - more on writing an action research dissertation, and treatment of sensitive issues such as: giving feedback to one’s superiors and peers, disseminating the research to the wider community, and handling interpretations or outcomes which may be perceived negatively by the organization involved. - more case examples and reflective exercises taken from a wide variety of organizational settings to aid students and researchers whatever their background discipline.
Think of yourself as an educational architect By tapping into the power of action research, you can improve overall student performance, eliminate achievement gaps, and enhance your own efficacy and morale. In the third edition of this bestselling guidebook, you’ll find: New insights on how to use reflective practice, qualitative and quantitative methods, and culturally responsive teaching to improve the success of all students A field-tested, four-stage action research process to lead you from brainstorming to breakthrough Illustrative examples, charts, handouts, worksheets, and sample action research reports to demystify and simplify the action research process
Action Research: An Educational Leader’s Guide to School Improvement, Third Edition, is a clear and practical guide to conducting action research in schools. Although it offers neither a cookbook nor a quick-fix approach, this book does outline the process of designing and reporting an action research project. Useful as a classroom text as well as a self-teaching tool, Action Research: An Educational Leader’s Guide to School Improvement is a comprehensive training manual. It can be used by practitioners in the field, by graduate students enrolled in leadership and/or master’s thesis courses, or by anyone interested in learning how to conduct action research projects, including classroom teachers ,who are leaders too in their own right. The strategies and techniques of action research described are no different for teachers than they are for administrators. The underlying assumption of this work is that research is not a domain only for academics, it is also a powerful approach that can be used by practitioners to contribute to school renewal and instructional improvement. Rather than being merely a philosophical treatise or theoretical analysis, Action Research provides concrete strategies and techniques for conducting action research in schools.
Doing Practitioner Research focuses on helping practitioners conduct research in their own organisations, and attention is given to the best methods for doing this effectively and sensitively. The authors also attend to the theoretical, political and organisational context of doing research, as well as addressing the ethical and practical issues of undertaking research. The authors cover in detail the range of skills and techniques necessary to make a successful start to the process of becoming an effective practitioner researcher. This is an ideal text for growing number of practitioners working in health, education and social care who are undertaking research. Fox et al have provided the perfect introduction to why practitioners are in the unique position to conduct research that actually improves professional practice. This book will be essential reading for those professionals/practitioners engaged in research in their own organisation or undertaking a post-graduate qualification in Health, Social Care, or Education.
Improvement is fundamental to the competitiveness of networks and requires the participating firms to collaborate in identifying and introducing changes. This book presents collaborative strategic improvement as a cycle of activities in which firms in a network can engage together. Drawing on actual cases, authors link this cycle with disciplined action learning as a means of building upon experience generated through collaborative action. They describe how a network can learn from experience and deploy that learning in the marketplace.
Electronic Inspection Copy available for instructors here With the growth of work based learning and practitioner research this book leads the way by addressing key issues faced by 'insider-researchers' - learners, practitioners and managers doing research projects in the organizations and communities in which they themselves work, or where they are already familiar with the setting. The authors explore the implications of these research contexts, and discuss approaches and methodologies that work based researchers might adopt, with a particular focus on ethics - one of the key concerns for those undertaking a research project of this type. This book is an authoritative and readable guide to the theory and practice of work based research. It is for anyone undertaking a research project based on work practice, including learners on postgraduate, undergraduate and doctoral programmes. Practitioners, managers and participants in work based courses or modules in education, healthcare and business management, will find it particularly useful.
SAGE FUNDAMENTALS OF APPLIED RESEARCH The SAGE Fundamentals of Applied Research (FAR) series brings together the essential and forward thinking articles on doing research in applied contexts with or for specific groups from the foremost publications and edited by established names in the field. Volumes showcase methodological innovations, key debates, and maintain a focus on the professional/applied context of the research and on the methodological and practical implications of doing research within institutional and socio-cultural contexts of such research. The series includes historically seminal pieces alongside the very best pieces from the last few years that express the ‘cutting edge’ in the field.
Since the first edition of this established text was published in 1988, action research has gained ground as a popular method amongst educational researchers, and in particular for practising teachers doing higher-level courses. In this new edition Jean McNiff provides updates on methodological discussions and includes new sections of case study material and information on supporting action research. The book raises issues about how action research is theorised, whether it is seen as a spectator discipline or as a real life practice, and how practitioners position themselves within the debate. It discusses the importance for educators of understanding their own work and showing how their educative influence can lead to the development of good orders in formal and informal learning settings and in the wider community. This second edition comes at a time when, after years of debate over what counts as action research, it is now considered an acceptable and useful part of mainstream research practice.
With the Handbook of Action Research hailed as a turning point in how action research is framed and understood by scholars, this student edition has been structured to provide an easy inroad into the field for researchers and students. It includes concise chapter summaries and an informative introduction that draws together the different strands of action research and reveals their diverse applications as well as their interrelations. Divided into four parts, there are important themes of thinking and practice running throughout.
