Action Research Steps

The Basic Steps

Step 1: Identify

This is the starting point. Review the situation and identify a problem that concerns you.

  • What do I want to improve

  • Why?

  • How is it linked to my mission and goal

  • What is the current way this process is carried out

  • What are the key measures

  • What data can be collected

Example

You are a teacher and you have identified a problem in your classroom. The problem is that your students do not have much experience working in task groups, and you believe that they need to have more opportunities to do so. You want to assess the skill set of your students and observe their overall approach to group work. By doing this, you feel that next time you offer group work, you will have some new insight into what works well and what needs improvement regarding conducting group work in your class.

Step 2: Plan

Devise a Plan that will potentially solve your problem. The proposed solution may be a new instructional technique or strategy that you feel can potentially correct the problem. Define your experimental design (e.g. Post-treatment, Before-After, or Before-After--Control-Treatment) and how you will apply the technique and the method you will use to collect your data. Also consider how you will analyse the data.

Assess Current State

  • How big is the problem?

  • Is there a "Current State" performance data?

Cause

  • What are the root causes?

  • Is there literature on how this can be improved?

Example

Your plan includes having your students work together in groups for their upcoming science project. By doing this, you hope to explore a variety of information, such as how the students brainstorm together, how they interact with each other and how they distribute work among the task groups. You provide them an instruction sheet and a time frame to work to.

Step 3: Do

Conduct or implement your proposed solution. Enable the activities you in your Plan stage.

  • Based on root cause, what can be done?

  • What is my improvement idea

Example

You act by assigning your students into groups and having them work through their group work. This step can also be thought of as initiating and carrying out the plan.

Step 4: Study

During the Study stage, you observe the effect of your Do stage. The observation may be behavioral, qualitative or quantitative data. The data may be recorded as audio-video, interview dialogues or measurements respectively. Each data type must be analysed appropriately. The outcome of this stage must determine how the proposed solution had an impact on the problem. This may be negative, zero or positive.

  • Did my improvement work?

  • Do I have "New State" performance data?

  • How does this compare to "Current State" performance?

Example

This is the observation and data collection phase. During this step, you observe the groups of students working together. You take note on how they are progressing and what issues they have. You watch them brainstorm and form interesting ideas. You observe any disruptive students who do not get along, argue or not participate altogether. This is a behavioral data. If you conducted an interview, you may collect qualitative data. If you conducted a countable or measurable inquiry, you may collect quantitative data. You must analyse the different types of data appropriately.

Step 5: Act

If your study proved successful, you can implement your proposed solution to take advantage of the successful new technique. If your study proved partially successful or failed, you decide if you want to continue a second cycle by returning to the Plan stage to attempt a different proposed solution. Or, given the resources and timelines, you may wish to end the research.

  • How can I incorporate new method?

  • Make it into new regular method.

Example

This is the stage where you realize the benefits of your study. If your study shows an improvement - great, proceed to implement full scale. Else, you may repeat your study with further attempts. Success is seldom a one-time effort. Lastly, just conclude the study with a strong Reflection.

Step 6: Reflect

This is the step where you reflect on the whole (each cycle and overall) research you conducted. What are the things gone right and the things gone wrong? On hindsight how could you have done better?

  • Think it over

  • On hindsight

Example

Finally, this is the stage where you reflect on everything you have done. This is an important step to "tell yourself" how well you did what you did.