You and Your Action Research Project

This book gives practical guidance on doing an action research project. Written for practitioners across professions who are studying on work-based learning programmes and award-bearing courses, this book is packed full of useful advice and takes the reader through the various stages of a project, including: starting your action research project monitoring and documenting the action techniques for dealing with the data making claims to knowledge and validating them legitimating your research making your research public creating your living educational theory. The book's practical approach will appeal to practitioners and will encourage them to try out new strategies for improving their work. It will also be essential reading for those resource managers in schools, colleges and higher education institutions who are responsible for providing courses and support. This third edition of the best-selling book has been thoroughly updated and improved by a number of features, with new case studies from a wide range of disciplines, extracts from validated dissertations and theses (with information on how to access more examples via the Internet), points for reflection, checklists of reflective questions, and up-to the-minute information on current debates and ideas.

Table of Contents:
@contents: Selected Contents: Introduction Part 1: First principles 1. Action research: what it is and what it is not 2. Why should you do action research? 3. The main features of action research processes Part 2: Planning your project 4. Working with others in organisational and institutional settings 5. Influence and ethics Part 3: Designing your project 6. Designing your project: action planning 7. Designing your project: checklists for action Part 4: Doing your project 8. Monitoring the action, looking for data, and documenting the processes involved 9. Collecting and managing the data 10. Analysing and interpreting the data and generating evidence Part 5: Making claims to knowledge and validating them 11. Validation process: making claims to knowledge and validating them 12. Legitimation processes: presenting reports and legitimating them Part 6: Disseminating your knowledge 13. Writing your report 14. Disseminating your research and getting published References

About the Author :
Jean McNiff is an independent researcher and writer, Professor of Educational Research at York St John University, and Adjunct Professor at the University of Limerick. Jack Whitehead is Lecturer in Education at the University of Bath, and former President of the British Educational Research Association.