Fundamentals of Research in Education course content

1. Research Design:
Action Research
Lecturer: Yee Bee Choo
IPGKTHO
Topic 1g

2. What is Action Research
• Lewin (1946) described action research as “a
comparative research on the conditions and
effects of various forms of social action and
research leading to social action”.
• It is the idea that social practices could only be
understood and changed by involving the
practitioners themselves throughout an inquiry
(Lewin, 1946).

3. What is Action Research
“Action research is simply a form of self-reflective enquiry
undertaken by participants in social situations in order to
improve the rationality and justice of their own practices,
their understanding of these practices, and the situations
in which the practices are carried out.”
In summary, AR is…
- the improvement of practice;
- the improvement of the understanding of practice;
- the improvement of the situation in which the practice
takes place.
(Carr & Kemmis, 1986:162)

4. What is Action Research
AR is…
• A systematic procedures done by teachers (or
other individuals in an educational setting) to
gather information about, and subsequently
improve, the ways their particular educational
setting operates, their teaching, and their
student learning ( Mills, 2011 ).
• Educators aim to improve the practice of
education by studying issues or problems they
face (Creswell, 2012).

5. When do Use Action Research
• To solve a specific educational problem.
• To provide an opportunity for educators to reflect on
their own practices.
• To offer a means for staff development, for teachers’
development as professionals, and for addressing
schoolwide problems.
• To provide a means for teachers or educators in the
schools to improve their practices of taking action and to
do so by participating in research.

6. Types of Action Research
Action Research
Practical Participatory

7. Types of Action Research
Practical
• Teachers seek to research problems in their own
classrooms so that they can improve their students’
learning and their own professional performance.
• It involves a small-scale research project, narrowly
focuses on a specific problem or issue, and is undertaken
by individual teachers or teams within a school or school
district.
• A drawback of this approach is that although teachers
seek to improve their classroom practices, they have
little time to engage in their own research.

8. Types of Action Research
Participatory (PAR)
• Rather than focus on individual teachers solving
immediate classroom problems or schools addressing
internal issues, PAR has a social and community
orientation and an emphasis on research that
contributes to emancipation or change in our society.
• The purpose of PAR is to improve the quality of people’s
organisations, communities, and family lives ( Stringer,
2007 ).
• It incorporates an emancipatory aim of improving and
empowering individuals and organisations in education
(and other) settings.

9. Types of Action Research
Participatory (PAR)
• It studies issues that relate to a need to address social
problems that constrain and repress the lives of students
and educators.
• For example, the issues for study might be:
• Tests that label and stereotype students
• Texts that omit important historical persons or events of cultural
and ethnic groups
• Assessments that serve to confirm student failure rather than
learning
• K–12 classroom interactions that silence or quiet the voices of
minority students

10. Types of Action Research
(Creswell, 2012, p.579)

11. Characteristics of Action
Research
1. A practical focus
2. The educator-researcher’s own practices
3. Collaboration
4. A dynamic process
5. A plan of action
6. Sharing research
(Creswell, 2012)

12. Characteristics of Action
Research
1. A practical focus
• The aim of AR is to address an actual problem in
an educational setting.
• Action researchers study practical issues that
will have immediate benefits for education.
• They do not undertake this form of research to
advance knowledge for knowledge’s sake, but to
solve an immediate, applied problem.

13. Characteristics of Action
Research
2. The educator-researcher’s own practices
• When action researchers engage in a study, they are
interested in examining their own practices rather than
studying someone else’s practices.
• They engage in participatory or self-reflective research
in which they turn the lens on their own educational
classroom, school, or practices.
• As they study their own situation, they reflect on what
they have learned—a form of self-development—as well
as what they can do to improve their educational
practices.
• Action research has been called “a spiral of self
reflection” (Kemmis, 1994, p. 46).

14. Characteristics of Action
Research
3. Collaboration
• Action researchers collaborate with others, often
involving co-participants in the research (Schmuck,
2009 ).
• These co-participants may be individuals within a
school or outside personnel such as university
researchers or professional association groups.
• Individuals may review results of findings with the
researcher, help collect data, or assist in the
presentation of the final report.
• During this collaboration, roles may vary and may be
negotiated, but the concept of interacting is central
to understanding one’s practices.

15. Characteristics of Action
Research
3. Collaboration

16. Characteristics of Action
Research
4. A dynamic process
• Action researchers
engage in a dynamic
process involving
iterations of activities,
such as a “spiral” of
activities.
• The key idea is that the
researcher “spirals” back
and forth between
reflection about a
problem, data collection,
and action. Action Research Model
(Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988)

17. Characteristics of Action
Research
5. A plan of action
• At some point in the process, the action researcher
formulates an action plan in response to the
problem.
• This plan may be simply presenting the data to
important stakeholders, establishing a pilot
programme, starting several competing
programmes, or implementing an ongoing research
agenda to explore new practices ( Stringer, 2007 ).
• It may be a formal written plan or an informal
discussion about how to proceed, and it may engage
a few individuals (e.g., students in a classroom) or
involve an entire community (e.g., in a participatory
research study).

18. Characteristics of Action
Research
6. Sharing research
• Action researchers often engage in sharing reports with
local school, community, and educational personnel.
• Although action researchers publish in scholarly journals,
they are typically more interested in sharing the
information locally with individuals who can promote
change or enact plans within their classroom or building.
• Action researchers share results with teachers, the
building principal, school district personnel, and parent
associations (e.g., Hughes, 1999).
• Online journals, Web sites, and discussion blogs provide
opportunities for action researchers to publicise their
studies (see Mills, 2011 ).

19. Advantages of Action Research
• It encourages reflection of one’s practice.
• It promotes change and development.
• Issue at heart
• Sharing practices

20. Disadvantages of Action
Research
• Degree of ownership.
• Can be viewed as a structured plan.
• Results can be focused on outcome.
• Lack of generalisability.
• Findings are typically only relevant to the specific
classroom being investigated, its students and its
own unique characteristics.
• It may yield different results in other classrooms,
contexts or languages.

21. Steps in Conducting Action
Research
1. Determine if action research is the best design
to use
2. Identify a problem to study
3. Locate resources to help address the problem
4. Identify information you will need
5. Implement the data collection
6. Analyse the data
7. Develop a plan for action
8. Implement the plan and reflect

22. Steps in Conducting Action
Research

23. Action Research Conventional Research
Aim Teachers’ professional
development to improve
pedagogical practices
Testing theory
Design Flexible Fixed
Subject Teacher as participant Teacher not subject.
Sampling methods used
Method In real-life situation,
qualitative, descriptive
and narrative
Sampling techniques
used, statistical analysis,
quantitative
Report Non-technical language Technical
Difference between Action Research and
Conventional Research

24. Let’s do an Action Research
Topic
• Using Multimedia Interactive Grammar to Enhance Possessive
Pronouns among Year 4 Pupils
1.0 Context
1.1 Background of Study
• Savage, Bitterlin & Price (2010) stated that mastering grammar
empowers a person to develop competence in the aspects of
listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Therefore, it is vital for
pupils to start improving and have a good knowledge of grammar
from young to help them communicate effectively when using
English language.
1.2 Context
• I am a teacher trainee when I teach Year 4 pupils at Sekolah
Kebangsaan Seri Padang Sari, Batu Pahat, Johor for three months
during the third phase of practicum.

25. Let’s do an Action Research
1.3 Reflection of Teaching and Learning
• Based on my past teaching experiences during practicum, the pupils
showed very little interest in learning grammar and they often made
mistakes in using pronouns too and this has caused a distortion of
meaning in the pupils’ sentences.
2.0 Research Focus
2.1 Description of Research Focus
• The use of technology can be incorporated during English lessons to
enhance pupils’ learning. Thus, I decided to use Multimedia
Interactive Grammar (MIG) as a technological tool for my
intervention because the integration of technology in language
learning in classrooms would be able to attract pupils and motivate
them to learn grammar.

26. Let’s do an Action Research
2.2 Initial Data Collection
The table showed the overall
diagnostic test results of the 10
participants.
2.3 Action
In this research, I had selected the
action research model proposed
by Kemmis & McTaggart (1988).
According to this model, there are
four basic steps in an action
research cycle which are plan, act,
observe, and reflect.
Pupils Total Score (%)
Pupil 1 17
Pupil 2 33
Pupil 3 25
Pupil 4 50
Pupil 5 58
Pupil 6 50
Pupil 7 67
Pupil 8 75
Pupil 9 67
Pupil10 83

27. Let’s do an Action Research
3.0 Research Objectives and Research Questions
3.1 Research Objective
• To examine the use of Multimedia Interactive Grammar (MIG) as a
teaching and learning strategy to improve the students’ grammar
specifically in possessive pronouns.
3.2 Research Question
• 1. How does the use of Multimedia Interactive Grammar (MIG)
increase pupils’ understanding of possessive pronouns?
• 2. How does Multimedia Interactive Grammar (MIG) motivate the
pupils in learning?
4.0 Research Participants
• Ten Year 4 pupils from a primary school.
Source:
Yee, B.C., & Kwon, V. (2017). Using Multimedia Interactive
Grammar to Enhance Possessive Pronouns among Year 4
Pupils. Journal of English Education, 2(1), 34-42.

28. Tutorial 1f (Pair Work)
• Read the article from
https://journals.melta.org.my/index.php/tet/article/viewFile/465/2
88
• Based on the article, identify the following:
• Title
• Author
• Problem/Issue
• Suggestion(s) to overcome the problem/issue
• Research objectives/questions
• Research hypotheses
• Participants
• Research methodology
• Research instruments
• Findings/ Discussion
• You can type or handwrite your answer.
• Write your answers in not more than two sentences.

29. Main Reference
• Creswell, J.W. (2012). Educational research:
planning, conducting and evaluating quantitative
and qualitative research. (4th Ed.). Boston, MA:
Pearson Education Inc.
• Kemmis, S. & McTaggart, R. (1988). The Action
research planner. Geelong: Deakin University
Press.
• Lewin, K. (1946). Action research & minority
problems. Journal of Social Issues, 2(4), 34-46.

30. REVISION
1. Experimental research – involves manipulating variables
and studying effects on random sampling.
2. Quasi-experimental research – involves non-random
sampling by manipulating variables.
3. Survey research – involves describing the characteristics of
a group by means of instruments such as interview,
questionnaires, and tests.
4. Ethnographic research - concentrates on documenting or
portraying the everyday experiences of people using
observation and interviews.
5. Case study – is a detailed analysis of one or a few
individuals.
6. Action research – is a type of research by practitioners
designed to help improve their practice in the classroom.

31. Research
Design
Major Strength Major Weakness
Experimental
Can draw conclusions about
causality.
Often does not represent true
learning environments in real
classrooms.
Quasi-
experimental
Can stimulate an experiment in a
true classroom setting.
More difficult to justify causal
conclusions than in true
experiments.
Survey Easy and fast. A large sample is needed.
Ethnography
Detailed and extensive data as the
researcher is directly involved.
Consume a lot of time.
Case study
Provides detailed data about
changes/behaviours in an
individual.
Difficult to generalise to larger
population.
Action
research
Involves classroom teachers
investigating questions that are
directly important to practicing
educators.
Results may not be acceptable
to the scientific community.
REVISION

32. QUIZ
What research design is appropriate for the research problems
below?
1. What are the parents’ feelings about the primary school
counseling program?
Survey
2. Does the use of Kahoot games improve the vocabulary
among Year Four pupils?
Action Research
3. How does John uses inferencing strategy in reading?
Case study
4. Does the TESL students in Semester 8 perform better than
the TESL students in Semester 6 in an oral storytelling test
after their exposure to digital storytelling?
Quasi-experimental

33. QUIZ
5. How do children of drug addicts excel despite early
childhoods in poor environments?
Ethnography
6. How do the experiences of an autistic student changes
after he has moved from a self-contained program to an
inclusion setting?
Case Study
7. What are the problems teachers encounter when they
begin to use a constructivist approach to instruction after
having taught using a very traditional approach for ten years?
Ethnography
8. What are the students’ perceptions of using mobile
phones in their learning experiences?
Survey