Handbook of action research

This book represents the concise paperback edition of a seminal work on action research. The hardback version has for the past few years been an excellent source of knowledge on the many different approaches to action research in a wide range of contexts and settings. The original book is by no means a beginners’ compendium; action research is a broad church, but without an understanding of how it compares with other research strategies, the niceties of some of the variants can be elusive. For example, some would argue that action research is necessarily underpinned by critical theory and that it is always conducted in the participatory, transformative mode. Looking down the list of chapters, one would be forgiven for thinking this to be so, but a much closer scrutiny demonstrates that action research has a long history, along a continuum of ‘highly theoretical’ to ‘very pragmatic’ and in many fields including education, health care, social situations and organisations.