Action Research : A Handbook for Practitioners

Community-based action research - a type of research undertaken by workers in a wide variety of community, organizational and institutional settings - is the subject of this book. The author provides a series of tools to help the researcher, whether novice or experienced in other types of research, comfortably through this research process.
After defining and placing community-based action research in the context of qualitative research methodology, Ernest T Stringer describes a simple and effective model for approaching action research: Look - building a picture and gathering information; Think - interpreting and explaining; Act - resolving issues and problems. In conclusion he considers issues of legitimacy surroundi

After an early career as primary teacher and school principal, Ernest T. Stringer was lecturer in education at Curtin University of Technology in Western Australia. From the mid-eighties, based at Curtin’s Centre for Aboriginal Studies, he worked collaboratively with Aboriginal staff and community people to develop a wide variety of innovative and highly successful education and community development programs and services. His work with government departments, community-based agencies, business corporations and local governments assisted them to work more effectively with Aboriginal people. In recent years, as visiting professor at the University of New Mexico and Texas A&M University, he taught research methods courses and engaged in projects with African American and Hispanic community and neighborhood groups. As a UNICEF consultant he recently engaged in a major project to increase parent participation in the schools in East Timor. He is author of the texts “Action Research (Sage 2007),” “Action Research in Education (Pearson 2008),” “Action Research in Health” (with Bill Genat, Pearson 2004), and “Action Research in Human Services” (with Rosalie Dwyer, Pearson 2005). He is a member of the editorial board of the Action Research Journal and Past President of the Action Learning and Action Research Association (ALARA).