To be honest, when I read that the next course in my master’s degree program was research I was grieved in my spirit. I started my master's degree over ten years ago before I decided it would be better to get some experience teaching first. The first course back then was a research course. Only one word could describe my view of research after that course: boring. Try and imagine Ben Stein saying that last word and you'll have the intended inflection. With all due respect to my professor and to researchers in general, I found research to be frustrating and not much help. It seemed to me that traditional research was always about someone else' school and some else' problems and if it offered any solutions at all they were solutions best suited to those schools and those problems. The one reviewing the research was still left with the daunting task of making application to his/her own situation. I was relieved to find that action research works differently by involving the practitioner as the researcher. Action research does not seek to do away with traditional research, but rather to provide principals, teachers, or any other practitioner who with a issue to resolve with a new way of seeking solutions to the problems that plague them.
I hope you find your adventures in action research fulfilling. As a teacher myself, I see the various problems that plague our profession and for some reason I am still shocked that my administrators continue to bring in outsourced inservice providers and then pat themselves on the back and consider the issues resolved. I love the idea of learning what we need to do to solve our own problems by looking at what we are/not doing that works for us and working with the people that will ultimately be found as a cause and a solution!
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