Kemmis and McTaggart (1988, p. 5) provide the following definition of ‘action research’, which emphasises its participatory, collaborative and self-reflective nature and firmly locates it as a form of social action orientated towards improvement:
Action research is a form of collective self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own social or educational practices, as well as their understanding of these practices and the situations in which these practices are carried out.
The ‘action research’ model has been used for school improvement purposes. It is a form of professional self-study, where teachers intentionally consider their work to collect data, which they then use to make informed decisions about their practice and their learners’ learning (Campbell, 2013).
One of the principal intentions of action/practitioner research is that teachers raise the quality of their practice by engaging in basic classroom or school-set research, addressing curriculum or other broadly pedagogical issues (Institute of Public Administration/European Commission Structural Reform Support Service, 2017).