The Teaching of Design and Innovation by Gabriel J. Costello

The Teaching of Design and Innovation by Gabriel J. Costello

Author:Gabriel J. Costello
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030413804
Publisher: Springer International Publishing


5.2.2 Action Research

Action research (AR) originated from the work of Kurt Lewin during the 1940s and has been summarised as an approach that “combines theory and practice (and researchers and practitioners) through change and reflection in an immediate problematic situation within a mutually acceptable ethical framework” (Avison et al., 1999). The application of AR has not been without controversy particularly in debates with positivist science on the justification and generation of knowledge. These arguments were addressed by Susman and Evered (1978) in their influential description of AR as consisting of a cyclical process involving five phases: diagnosing, action planning, action taking, evaluating and specifying learning. The focus of AR is to address real-life problems through intervention together with the research objective of making a contribution to knowledge. In the realm of management information systems research, Avison et al. (1999) argued that it took until 1998 for the community to agree that qualitative approaches, such as action research (AR), were finally gaining acceptance and proposed that “to make academic research relevant, researchers should try out their theories with practitioners in real situations and real organizations”. Coghlan and Brannick (2005, p. 125) emphasise the importance of the social and academic context in which action research is carried out, and as a result, the contextual setting of a practitioner case study is presented later. This theme is echoed in the work of Bob Dick (2019b) which will have significant influence on the arguments of this chapter. Dick, an academic working in the field of psychology, proposes that the AR methodology has the twofold aim of action and research:Action designed to bring about change in some community, organisation or programme



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.