The transformative power of action research

This issue of Educational Action Research includes nine articles that help to realize the real and transformative power of action research and demonstrate the interconnectedness of transformative processes in inquiry, teaching, and learning. As researchers and practitioners, we understand that through our action research practice, we can capture and share the power and potential of individuals, teams, and communities to make meaningful change (Brydon‐Miller and Maguire 2009). As an action researcher and an educator, these articles strike me as powerful in stressing the importance of participatory researchers working with participants and helping them recognize their roles as agents of change.

The impact of action research is a central theme throughout the issue, and the first article helps to establish a strong rationale for engaging in action research. In their article, ‘“It gives meaning and purpose to what you do”: mentors’ interpretations of practitioner action research in education’, Robert Henthorn, Kevin Lowden, and Karen McCardle explore their experience and findings from a critical reflection on how practitioner action research changes not only the processes or challenges in a given setting but also the individual researcher participants. Their work with action research mentors examines the results of action research that happens while we are busy using action research to make changes in our schools, communities, and other systems.

Action researchers from a classroom background may already embrace the idea that ‘good teaching is action research and good action research is teaching’ (Columbia Embury et al. 2020, 28). However, for those of us new to action research or working in settings outside of the classroom, we may want or need more explicit examples of how this might look. The following four articles address working with pre-service teachers to learn about and engage in educational research. Several related themes connect these articles to one another and to the larger action research community.

The first of these themes involves teachers and practitioners using action research to improve learning (Cunningham 2011) for participants, whether school-aged, university students, or adults in professional development settings. In their article entitled, ‘Action Research with projects to facilitate students to study research and prepare research proposals during the COVID-19 pandemic’, Hasianna Nopina Situmorang, Freddy Tua Musa Panggabean & Manihar Situmorang examine the problems arising with their chemistry education students regarding how to learn and use research methods. This challenge exists for many faculty in higher education; however, here it is combined with the challenges of engaging in problem-based learning during a worldwide pandemic, enabling the author to offer an insightful approach to teaching and adapting using action research which resonates beyond its Indonesian context. For example, key findings about the roles of guidance and mentorship for participants from this research are echoed in Yosief et al.‘s study in Eritrea, which is the next article in this issue.

As action researchers, one of our goals is to be reflexive about our work. What opportunities do we create, and with whom? Where can we share or relinquish power to our participant co-researchers? How honestly are we sharing our unpredictable and often imperfect journeys in our research? When we think carefully about these questions, address them in our practice, and share the messy experiences of practice, we open the door for developing new researchers who will continue to expand our work. Amanuel Yosief, Mohammed-Saleh Sulieman, and Tecle Biede use a descriptive collaborative action research (CAR) process to examine professional behavior involving and during collaboration in their higher education setting in their article, ‘Improving the practices of teacher educators through collaborative action research: challenges and hopes’. Their self-study tells their story of the plans, stages, challenges, and realities that arose in their quest to develop new ideas, new ways of doing things, and new kinds of relationships. It also demonstrates a level of self-reflection of feelings and processes that we should see more of when we share our experiences and findings as we use action research to engage with and change our world.

In the next article, ‘Principles for school student participation in pre-service teacher action research: a practice architecture’s perspective’, Ben Smit, Jacobiene Meirink, Dineke Tigelaar, Amanda Berry and Wilfried Admiraal describe the need to prepare teachers to understand and engage in action research as teachers. They share their findings from working with pre-service teachers to design and engage in classroom research that integrates student participation in school and teacher education contexts, drawing on the theory of practice architectures (Kemmis et al. 2014) to analyze eight cases of participatory action research projects. This article offers a model for investigating and describing how to reflect on the cultural-discursive arrangements, material-economic arrangements, and social-political arrangements that enable and constrain how we express ourselves, how we ‘do things in the medium of work and activity,’ and how we connect and contest with one another.

The second theme focuses on the sharing of power. While participatory action research (PAR) is a tool for learning and creating change, it also provides a framework to facilitate practitioner inquiry to adopt a more participatory, collaborative, and democratizing approach. This entails the effective involvement of students, families, and other educators throughout the entire action research cycle, from identifying problems to sharing project outcomes and implications publicly (Brydon‐Miller and Maguire 2009). Educational action researchers can alter power dynamics by recognizing and confronting inequitable power structures to advocate for change and foster mutual roles (Call-Cummings et al. 2020), and Robby Lee Robinette addresses the importance of this when selecting research methods for collaborative work. In ‘Investigating a method as part of the action research process: education journey maps’, he describes working to understand how to use education journey maps and determine whether to use them as a research method and posits that the key to determining a method is respecting and understanding participants’ engagement in the process. This self-study offers insight into Robinette’s experiences engaging in PAR and his co-participants’ experiences. The ideas, experiences, and perspectives affect the research, and Robinette’s self-study explores his process and the value and realizations that can arise from participants’ self-study.

The next three articles in this issue illustrate PAR in action in both traditional and non-traditional settings, in this case in schools and out-of-school care settings. All three emphasize collaboration as a critical component to explore to create transformation collaboratively. In their article, ‘Critical aspects to consider when establishing collaboration between school leaders and researchers: two cases from Sweden’, Anette Forssten Seiser and Ingela Portfelt use Kemmis et al.’s (2014) theory of practice architectures to frame their work with two schools in Sweden with teachers and principals engaging in action research. They share their in-depth discussion of their experiences working toward developing equal collaboration between the practitioners in the schools and the researchers in the form of two cases with detailed comparisons. Their article shows that collaboration and communication between researchers and school leaders only happen when researchers and participants carefully select and use methods that enable equivalent collaboration and that a lack of equal collaboration and co-ownership may lead to research projects not being embedded.

Shree Krishna Wagle, Bal Chandra Luitel, and Erling Krogh use PAR with a Nepali school to address the issues that arise from a curriculum with pedagogical practices which are unrelated and unresponsive to the local cultural context. In their article, ‘Exploring possibilities for participatory approaches to contextualized teaching and learning: a case from a public school in Nepal’, they describe the process, challenges, and learnings from their PAR study working with research-degree students and school stakeholders involved in participatory needs assessment. They highlight the care that must be taken to build relations, strengthen engagement, and learn to understand the culture and needs of the local community. Wagle et al. share honest descriptions of what they called ‘the mess’ and other less-than-ideal challenges that arose throughout the project and offer reflections on their experiences and the learning that PAR offers.

In ‘Allegories on creating opportunities for dialogue between childcare practitioners and parents during an action research in two out-of-school care centres’, Leen Dom and Dietlinde Willockx discuss working with practitioners in two out-of-school care centers in Flanders, Belgium, their action research’s design, implementation, and the results it generated. Readers will appreciate their discussion of the challenges of being a researcher doing research with participants as co-researchers and not just doing research on participants. Working to understand what variables affect change and when and how to make changes, Dom and Willockx analyze the data and tell their story through five allegories, which show how the practitioners moved ‘from distrust or fear of parents’, and how a story of ‘we’ and ‘them’ became one of togetherness.

The final article in this issue, ‘Working together as scientific and experiential experts: how do current ethical PAR-principles work in a research team with young adults with Developmental Language Disorder?’, Karijn Aussems, Jet Isarin, Alistair Niemeijer, and Christine Dedding discuss PAR, its ethical challenges, and the ethical principles intended to address them. They use these principles to evaluate their collaboration with co-researchers with developmental language disorders (DLD), with the aim of filling the gap in research about using ethical principles when they need to be adapted for use with participants with disabilities. The authors offer a description of the process and findings that demonstrates the value of engaging in a truly accessible and participatory process and their commitment to it.

This issue of Educational Action Research presents articles representing multiple strategies, perspectives, and contexts. The level of transparency about what decisions are made and how, doubts and questions that arise, and the messiness of conducting research for and with people trying to create change are necessary to provide an accurate picture of the work action researchers do. These authors present an authentic snapshot of what it looks like in their schools, universities, and communities when they work together to transform something. There is something beautiful in the vulnerability it takes to share the not-so-great along with the successes.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).