Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

Action Research and Educational Psychology 487
certainly complemented both the political nature of the teacher empowerment movement as well
as the emerging interdisciplinary focus of qualitative research as represented by such new fields
as educational anthropology.
Another relatively new approach to educational problems—offered by Dr. Mel Levine—also
represented the merging of another discipline with that of educational psychology. Levine’s
phenomenological approach advocated that educators develop neurodevelopmental profiles of
students instead of using labels. The profiles would in essence consist of a balance sheet of
individual strengths and weaknesses along with a description of the “goodness of fit” between
these and the tasks a child is asked to do. Levine believed teachers are in the best position to
observe, describe, and respond to differences in learning; he viewed teachers’ engagement in
action research as a prerequisite task to effective teaching and learning.
The merging of these paradigm shifts in educational psychology along with the rising popularity
of action research has resulted in some interesting new directions in the 1980s, 1990s, and beyond.
Lee Shulman and others called for practical craft knowledge (or the knowledge of teaching
acquired as a result of examining one’s own practice) to be considered along with traditional
research on teaching as comprising the knowledge base of educational psychology. Shulman and
others have argued that both teachers and university researchers have a legitimate place. The
university researcher can help to fit action research findings into a larger theoretical framework
whereas the classroom-teacher-as-action-researcher tests if findings from the larger research
literature are effective in practice. Much of the next section will contain illustrations of this latter
point.
DEFINING THE NATURE AND TYPES OF ACTION RESEARCH
It is most important to remember that action research represents a systematic tradition through
which teachers are able to communicate to their colleagues insights about some aspect of the
teaching–learning process. One form of action research is conceptual in nature and consists of the
analysis of ideas and generation of theories; teacher essays on classroom life, on the philosophy
of schooling, or on the nature of research itself may fit this category. A second form of action
research is empirical in nature and focused on implementing and studying an innovation. The
first step in this type of action research is that teachers identify the problem to be studied. This
conceptualization stage entails delineating the specific research question(s) to be answered. Next,
the teacher-researcher selects research methods to be employed in the data collection process.
In the implementation phase the teacher carries out a change in their own teaching behavior
and measures the results. Often teachers study changes in student achievement, attitude, and/or
behavior. Finally, in the interpretation phase, teachers analyze the results of the action research;
it is at this point that they judge the effectiveness of the teaching–learning process under study
and determine actions to be taken as a result.
There are several different approaches to doing action research that focus on the study of an
innovation. Action research may involve an individual teacher or a small collaborative group of
teachers, or it may be schoolwide in nature and involve a host of school professionals. Action
research exists on a continuum with regard to the extent to which its goal is to achieve equity
for students, revitalize the school organization as a collective problem-solving unit, and improve
collegiality among teachers and school staff members. One common element across the different
types of action research is the notion of disciplined inquiry designed to answer a practical question.
In terms of action research conducted by individual teachers, several illustrations follow. For
example, one teacher may be interested in documenting her students’ perceptions of a cooperative
learning model she is piloting. A second teacher may want to discern the effectiveness of teaching
language skills by using daily reading and writing workshops instead of using a basal reader. A