I work with early childhood students who work full-time and study part-time. They are often drawn to action research as the methodology for their dissertation but many go on to encounter difficulties in its implementation. I want to build a repository that might help the students when they meet problems.
The idea of a repository of experiences is excellent. I think that little access to experiences is the main limiting factor to implement AR, because of the reflexive nature of the approach.
As an agronomist , I adopted action research for my MSc thesis, thanks to an international program. It was about sustainable management of trees in a western Africa. The partnership and participatory research with farmers, whom I lived with for 3 months, was excellent, and the results - in terms of data and of collective decisions - looked like impressive. Sharing experiences with other students of the program was essential while preparing the research, and we were a very multi-disciplinary group.
Unfortunately, problems raise after, when you want to extend this approach to other cases, and you are alone, encharged of building up partnerships. Hope you can find it interesting, let me know if you want to know more.
Those difficulties are part of the engagement, so therefore it would suggest to me that they sit down and work out what they are (reflect), plan and do. Best experiences = it works, there is some sort of consensus, outcomes have lead somewhere. Worst = other people in the project not really understanding what is and has occurred, suggesting stuff then disappearing again :) .
Hi Jane, from my experience, it is very important to deal with subjectivity and contingency issues. The best is to perform interventions in several instances of your subject, completing several iterations of action research cycle and use a rigourous coding method for analysis of your observations. Best regards.
Thank you to contributing colleagues for some valuable suggestions.
Jane
Hello Jane, I work in early childhood education also and facilitate action research projects for educators in long day care, family day care, kindergarten, outside school hours care and primary school settings. In my experience, educators need to be able to relate research processes to their everyday practices. Early childhood practitioners don't tend to view themselves as researchers, but they collect data (information) on children daily, use a range of analytical tools to assess that data (e.g., developmental profiles, theory etc.) and are required to engage in critical reflection as part of professional practice. Developing a shared language around the action research process is key, and I often refer to the cycles of questioning, gathering data, reflecting and deciding on a course of action as similar to an early childhood planning cycle - it is just occurring for adults rather than children. AR requires a leap of faith of sorts as there is no direct route from point A to point B. When I relate this to an emergent curriculum model for children, educators begin to see the value of having an initial direction (e.g., a research question or focus) and then being responsive to what occurs along the way. I have written some professional magazine articles for early childhood educators on the topic of action research which you can access from here: http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Miller,_Melinda.html
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