This blog post is an attempt to untangle my own understanding of research from what this unit is asking me to undertake. As a PhD student, my research training was grounded in practice-based research. However, in order to plan my current project, I need to shift my mindset and begin to think like an ‘action researcher’. Writing this post aims at helping me clarify what the differences and resemblances are between the two types of research in order to understand how to proceed in this unit.
Practice-based research, as I have understood and experienced it, uses practice as part of the methodology and is largely centred on the researcher. As Vear (2022) explains, drawing on Leavy, practice can be understood as a form of knowledge associated with phenomenology and embodiment. Practice-based research can employ a wide range of methods, from reflective techniques inspired by Schön to participatory and emancipatory forms of action research. Through practice, a researcher may produce qualitative and/or quantitative data that is evaluated to support claims to new knowledge, usually articulated through a thesis.
Crucially, the outcomes of practice-based research can function in different ways. As the author notes:
In some studies, the products of practice are more akin to research methods employed to generate ‘data’ that can be evaluated to support claims to knowledge. In other studies, the products of practice stand as expressions of new knowledge in and of themselves (Vear, 2022).
In my PhD, the practice fed into the writing, and the contribution to knowledge ultimately resided in the thesis as an argument, rather than in an ongoing transformation of practice itself.
Action research, while often described as practice-led or practice-based (McNiff, 2013, p.23), represents a different orientation. Action implies practice, and practice requires action, but action research places emphasis on improvement within real, situated contexts: social, political, and historical. As methodology, it shapes what can be asked and how knowledge claims are made.
What distinguishes action research for me is its explicit concern with change. McNiff explains that the ‘action’ refers to what you do, while the ‘research’ refers to how you find out about what you do. In my role supporting students with writing for publication, this raises important questions: how do I know that I, or others, are offering the best possible support? What do students say about their experiences? Here, research involves gathering data, generating evidence, and making claims based on that evidence (McNiff, 2013, p.26).
Unlike my previous experience of practice-based research, action research requires a continuous movement between action and reflection. It is about putting ideas into action, not only talking about them, adopting a “relational stance” that reveals how knowledge works in practice (McNiff, 2013, p.56). This cyclical process of acting, reflecting, and improving is where I see the main difference, and where my own research thinking needs to shift.
References:
McNiff, J. (2013) Action research: principles and practice. 3rd ed. London: Routledge.
Vear, C. (ed.) (2022) The Routledge international handbook of practice-based research. Abingdon, Oxon New York, NY: Routledge (Routledge international handbooks). Available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429324154.