A fundamental methodological question guides this paper: How can operations managers and researchers learn from the applied activity that characterises the practice of OM? To address this question, defines and explores the legitimacy of an action‐oriented research approach in OM, and the particular logic and value of applying action research (AR) to the description and understanding of issues in OM. Begins with a review of the role of empirical research in OM and how AR features within the OM research literature. Introduces the theory and practice of AR and outlines the AR cycle and how AR is implemented. Finally, describes the skills required to engage in AR and explores issues in generating theory. Concludes with the assertion that AR is relevant and valid for the discipline of OM in its ability to address the operational realities experienced by practising managers while simultaneously contributing to knowledge.

Action research for operations management

Preface 1. The Best Possible Answer to the Best Possible Question 2. Experimental Comparison Designs 3. Single-Case Experimental Designs 4. Nonexperimental Quantitative Designs 5. Qualitative Research 6. Measures and Sampling 7. Internal and External Validity: Is This a Good Research Design? 8. Planning and Implementing the Study 9. A Practical Guide to Statistics 10. Statistics by Computer 11. Writing Up the Project: Dissertations and Articles Appendix 1:. Percentage of Area Lying between the Mean and Successive Standard Deviation Units under the Normal Curve Appendix 2:. Critical Values of the t Distribution Appendix 3:. Critical Values of the F Distribution Appendix 4:. Critical Values of the Chi Square (X2) Distribution Appendix 5:. Answers to Exercises for Chapters 9 and 10 Glossary References Index

Research methods in education

Thinking about research getting started thinking about methods reading for research managing your project collecting data analyzing data writing up finishing off.

How to Research

(1989). Creating a Living Educational Theory from Questions of the Kind, ‘How do I Improve my Practice?’. Cambridge Journal of Education: Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 41-52.

Creating a Living Educational Theory from Questions of the Kind, ‘How do I Improve my Practice?’

Authors' objectives 1. To provide a definition of action research. 2. To identify action research projects conducted in UK healthcare settings. 3. To analyse the identified action research in relation to: project aims reasons for choosing action research issues addressed by action research outcomes and impacts strengths and limitations. 4. To develop guidance for the assessment of action research proposals and reports.

Action research: a systematic review and guidance for assessment.

Introduction Part 1: First principles 1. The nature of action research 2. The main features of action research processes Part 2: Before you begin 3. Working with others in organisational and institutional settings 4. Influence and ethics 5. Action planning Part 3: Getting ready for action 6. Getting ready for action Part 4: Doing your project 7. Monitoring and documenting the action 8. Techniques for dealing with the data Part 5: Making claims to knowledge and validating them 9. Making claims to knowledge and validating them 10. Criteria, standards of judgement and legitimation processes Part 6: Going public 11. Sharing your research: creating your own living educational theory 12. Producing your report

You and your action research project

There has been an explosion of interest in educational action research. As with many new forms of discourse which challenge existing orthodoxies there is a danger that those dominating what counts as ‘rational’ and ‘educational’ knowledge within our institutions of higher education will attempt to colonise the movement by taking over its rhetoric and incorporating it within the propositional form of their discourse. What counts as valid practice in schools, an area of knowledge long despised by theoreticians as mundane and trivial, and therefore left to the control of practitioners, would be appropriated. We believe that the emancipatory potential of action research, a potential that could raise the intellectual status of competent professional practice and the theories‐in‐use underlying it depends on a logic of question and answer. We think that action research needs a rationale which allows practitioners, through negotiation and collaboration, to regain control of their definitions of good prac...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/1501014

Action Research and the Politics of Educational Knowledge

This paper stems from my practical involvement as Course Director for a Masters programme that supports teacher action research within the general area of school management. My starting point was the seeming contradiction between the need to apply criteria to make judgements about higher degree worthiness and my belief that the evaluative criteria and assessment procedures of academia should not take precedence over teachers' insights that were grounded in a rigorous examination of their own practice. This paper outlines my values as a facilitator of action research within the programme and explores possible criteria for judging success. Several possible standards of judgement are considered: to do with ethics, rigour, logic, the ‘practical’ and aesthetics. The paper also suggests criteria that might apply to different stages of the action research process and raises the question concerning ‘competence to judge’ action research.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09650799400200006

Standards, criteria and the problematic of action research within an award bearing course[1]

The paper explores the threat of Balkanisation. Whereas in the USA the debate has focused on competing research paradigms, in the UK it is seen to result from threats to the status quo posed by the media's portrayal of government hostility to education. This has led to the creation of folk devils whose ideas spread moral panic amongst the research community. The paper identifies three such folk devils and argues that the moral panic comes from a research community that has not learned to constrain its disagreements. The paper argues a case for an educative community based on constrained disagreement that is contained by its shared desire for ethical, creative and emancipatory solutions to educational problems. An example of a small, local research community is used to outline the ‘promises and perils’ of such a solution. *Presidential Address to the British Educational Research Association given at the Annual Conference, Queen's University, Belfast, August 1998.

Pamela Lomax

Papers

You and your action research project

You and your action research project

Action Research and the Politics of Educational Knowledge

Standards, criteria and the problematic of action research within an award bearing course[1]

Working Together for Educative Community through Research