article of action research

In this paper the authors argue that there are three modes of educational action research: emancipatory, practical, and knowledge generating. Furthermore, they suggest that much of action research, although predicated on notions of emancipatory research, is often not primarily emancipatory in nature. There are considerable risks involved when action research fails to adequately justify its truth claims because of a dependence on validities that primarily assess the emancipatory features of the research. Consequently, the authors propose that the various modes of action research require emphasis on different validities that are dependent on the purposes of the research. In doing this, they offer a reconceptualization of Anderson and Herr’s (1999) influential approach to validity in action research.

Before we go through…..

Let’s search about the origins and foundations of educational action research Educational action research owes much to Lewin (1946) and Collier (1945). Not only was the evocative prefix and prescription of “action” coupled with research by them in response to challenges they saw in improving group relations, but so, too, in the case of Lewin, was the form of research linked to schools, teachers, parents, and students. Out of Lewin’s advocacy of a hermeneutic process based on standards of practice and with his and Collier’s specific interests in the resolution of social, economic, and political injustices found in schools and other public institutions, a bridge between the worlds of research and philosophy was erected. Where Collier defined action research as participatory research in which the layperson defines a need and engages the structures that provide scaffolding, however, Lewin’s work arguably broke ground for critical approaches in research. As such, debates engaged by the body of critical theory have subsequently encompassed action research and its various progenies (see, for example, descriptions of debates over Habermasian and Gadamerian hermeneutics in the context of teacher research in Brown & Jones [2001] and more provocative social change advocated in the work of Freire [1970], Giroux [1998], and McLaren [1998] on critical pedagogy). Lewin’s (1946) work has emerged as the predominant representative of the concept, and his inclusion of schools as a key venue for action research means that school-based and teacher research that follows the structural requirements explored in Lewin’s writing, as well as the contributions of others to the development of the method, is its progeny.

Actually, there is a lot of action research that we found and we gonna choose one article that is Creative Expression as a Way of Knowing in Diabetes Adult Health Education. This is as an action research and we need to explore it……

This action research study explores the meaning-making process using forms of creative expression for eight women with insulin-dependent diabetes .The study is theoretically informed by arts-based ways of knowing and aspects of feminist poststructuralism, and explains the process of creativity used in the action research process. The fmdings center on the role of the created images and (a) the layered processes of meaning around those images as imaginai, individual, and social, (b) the images as embedded in other life contexts, and (c) how creative expression deconstructs and complements medical knowledge. Focusing on the construction of knowledge and the process of creative expression, the article highlights the importance of attending to creative expression as a way of knowing in adult and health education.