Action Research

The concept of action research appeals to me as a future leader because it includes my philosophy of being the "head learner." I would never want to ask a faculty to do anything I was unwilling to do myself, therefore, the action research approach would give me as a principal the opportunity to pursue inquiry on important issues. As the faculty sees their servant leader pursuing this line of inquiry hopefully, with training and guidance, they too will become excited about the prospects and opportunities action research can bring to our students. Much as we strive for cooperative learning groups and our student population, so can we as educators use the idea of cooperative efforts to pursue action research to achieve our goals.
The idea of practitioner inquiry particularly appeals to me. As an educator, we know that hands-on learning is the preferred method of teaching- so is it the preferred method of inquiry. Rather than traditional educational research being passed on to us in a passive way, the practitioner is actively involved in the action research method.
Elliott's (1988) description of action research as a continual set of spirals made up of reflection and action depicts each spiral as involving (1) clarifying and diagnosing a practical situation to be improved or the practical problem that will need to be improved or resolved, (2) developing action strategies for improving the situation or resolving the problem, (3) implementing the action strategies and evaluating their general effectiveness, and (4) clarifying the situation, to resolve the new definitions problems or areas for improvement, and so on, and so on- spiral to spiral. Using this framework, practitioners have a flexible realm of inquiry within which to address problems.