Action Research Model

Jack Whitehead
Living Educational Theory

Action Research
A particular way of researching your own learning . It
is a practical way of looking at your practice in order to check
whether it is as you feel it should be.
If you feel that your practice is satisfactory you will be able to
explain how and why you believe this is the case; you will be able
to produce evidence to support your claims. If you feel that
your practice needs attention in some way you will be able to
take action to improve it, and then produce evidence to show
in what way the practice has improved.
(Jean McNiff & Jack Whitehead (2002),
Action Research: Principles and Practices)

How does action research work?

AR involves the careful monitoring of planned change in
practice. A decision is taken that a particular action may either yield
improvements or provide information as to the nature of the teaching
situation. The action is thus used as a research tool. Both
elements of action and research are of equal prominence in the
approach. It can be thought of as:

research on
action
by using
action as a tool
for research

With the process

being driven by a
dialogue between the
elements of:

action and the

intentions
behind action
or
practice and the
values behind
practice

Jack Whitehead:
Living Educational Theory
Emphasising the individual nature of action research, Jack Whitehead (1985)
puts forward a simple representation of how the process feels:
1. I experience a problem when some of my educational values are
negated in my practice;
2. I imagine a solution to my problem;
3. I act in the direction of the solution;
4. I evaluate the outcomes of my actions;
5. I modify my problems, ideas and actions in the light of my evaluations.

That one should include I as a living

contradiction in educational enquiries of the
kind, How do I improve my practice?
That one should seek to create and test living
educational theories as explanations for learning
in educational enquiries of the kind, How do I
improve my practice?
That one should devise a process for clarifying
the meanings of embodied values in the course of
their emergence in practice and for transforming
embodied values into living and communicable
standards of educational judgement.

What is a living theory?

A living theory is an explanation produced by an individual

for their educational influence in their own learning, in the
learning of others and in the learning of the social formation in
which they live and work.
Emerge in the course of researching questions like:

How am I improving what I am

doing?

Education research vs. Educational

research
Education research
Research carried out from the perspectives of disciplines and
fields of education such as the philosophy, sociology, history,
psychology, management, economics, policy and leadership of
education

Educational research
The creation and legitimation of valid forms of educational
theory and knowledge that can explain the educational
influences of individuals in their own learning, in the learning of
others and in the learning of the social formations in which we
live and work

Living Theory Methodology

Using action reflection cycles as a method
Through asking, researching and answering,
action research questions of the kind, How
do we~i improve what we~i are doing?

How am I improving
what I am doing?

Action reflection cycle:

I experience a concern or problem when some of
my values are not being lived as fully as I think
they could be.
I imagine possible ways of improving my practice
and choose one to act on in an action plan.
I act and gather data to enable me to make a
judgment on the effectiveness of my actions in
relation to living my values as fully as I can.
I evaluate my actions in terms of their
effectiveness and my present understandings of my
context with its opportunities and constraints.
I modify my concerns, plans and actions in the
lightof my evaluation.
(Jack Whitehead (2011), How do I improve what Im
doing? Living Educational Theory for the African
Context)

You could use such an action reflection cycle in your enquiry into
improving your
practice
What is
my
concern?
with
the
questions:

Why am I concerned?
What am I going to do about it?
What data will I gather to help me tojudge my
effectiveness?
How does the data help me to clarify the meanings of
my embodied values as these emerge in practice?
What values based explanatory principles do I use to
explain my educational influence?
How do I use my values based standards of judgment
in evaluating the validity of my claims to be improving
my practice?
How will I strengthen the validity of myvalues
basedexplanation of my educational influences in
learning?