Suppose the researcher is worried about designing the learning context to meet the needs of students who are not currently doing well in the classroom. The general question might be:How can I personalize instruction to match the diverse needs of my students?
This forms a good overall goal which can then lead to a number of possible cycles of action research, each with a separate question.
Consider this question:
If I listen to students, will I have better understanding of them?
This question suggests an action and possible outcome but is vague in both in the description of the action and in the possible outcome.
Now consider:
If I set up community circle time to listen to students describe their learning experiences in my classroom, in what ways, if any, will the information about their learning processes help me redesign the way I teach?
Now it is clear what the researcher intends to do and what a possible outcome might be. In listening to students, the researcher might discover information that will lead directly to an experiment in instructional design or might refocus the overall goal to one that was not apparent when the researcher started the quest.
Development of Action Research Questions in an Corporate Context
Another example, this time from a business setting where people in diverse offices are working in ways that need more coordination.
The action researcher might identify the problem as "with current poor communication options, decisions are made without attending to the issues of how this decision affects other parts of the system." The researcher might see a role for technology in forging a solution to this problem. For example, creating a database for storing and sharing documents. The overall research question might be:
How can the development of a common location for shared knowledge and the use of interactive communication tools increase the collaborative effectiveness of team-based decision-making in our different regions?
The next step is to define what kind of communication tool will be used and how the researcher plans to measure collaborative effectiveness of the distant teams.
Cycle questions that might evolve should be specific with respect to the actions taken and the outcomes that will be monitored:
If I create a wiki to share documents and increase coordination, to what extent will the teams use this means of storing information to coordinate their decision-making?
A second cycle question that might follow when it is clear that other teams failed to use the wiki as effectively as the researcher had hoped:
How will making all day support available on instant messenger for questions about the use of the wiki affect the use of the wiki to organize group work?
Recognizing Weak Action Research Questions
Questions with known answers where the goal is to "prove" it to others. For example, a person has been holding family math night for years and sees an effect on parent participation. A weak question for action research would be: Will holding a family math night increase parent participation? This might be a great evaluative research question where a controlled study could be set up to explore the connection. But evaluative research is different than action research. Action research is an experiment in design, it is trying an action to learn more about the consequences.
Questions that can be answered yes or no. Generally these are questions that will not direct you to pay attention to the many nuances of the setting and the interactions. Although, like any guide, while some yes/no questions can provide direction, it is often helpful to think about how to transform the question into a different format. For example: Will the introduction of project-based learning lead to more student engagement? might be reworked to How will the introduction of project-based learning affect student engagement in my classroom? The first one, the researcher can answer the question with yes (an outcome that they might have expected). The second question guides them to look for the possible mechanism of project-based learning (maybe ownership, collaboration, or self-assessment) that seems to be related to increased engagement.
Questions that can be answered by reading the literature. What does community of practice mean? might be a question that the researcher needs to answer, but the answer can be found by reading more readily than by engaging in action research. A better formulation for action research might be: How will increasing the time for teacher collaboration in grade level teams affect the development of a community of practice at our school?"
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