Free Research Methods Tutorial – Action Research: The study of transformative change
Discover the transformative power of action research in the social sciences. This course is ideal for HR departments, managers, and entrepreneurs.
According to Wikipedia, action research is a philosophy and methodology of research generally applied in the social sciences. It seeks transformative change through the simultaneous process of taking action and doing research, which is linked together by critical reflection. Kurt Lewin, then a professor at MIT, first coined the term “action research” in 1944. In his 1946 paper “Action Research and Minority Problems” he described action research as “a comparative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action and research leading to social action” that uses “a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action, and fact-finding about the result of the action”. Action research is an interactive inquiry process that balances problem solving actions implemented in a collaborative context with data-driven collaborative analysis or research to understand underlying causes enabling future predictions about personal and organizational change.
After six decades of action research development, many methods have evolved that adjust the balance to focus more on the actions taken or more on the research that results from the reflective understanding of the actions. This tension exists between
those who are more driven either by the researcher’s agenda or by participants;
those who are motivated primarily by instrumental goal attainment or by the aim of personal, organizational, or societal transformation; and
1st-, to 2nd-, to 3rd-person research, that is, my research aimed primarily at personal change; our research on our group (family/team), aimed primarily at improving the group; and ‘scholarly’ research aimed primarily at theoretical generalization or large-scale change.
Who this course is for:
- This course is designed to benefit Human Resource departments, organizational managements and administrations, and for entrepreneurs and nascent entrepreneurs looking to build on their business plan.
User Reviews
Be the first to review “Free Research Methods Tutorial – Action Research: The study of transformative change”
You must be logged in to post a review.
There are no reviews yet.