An Introduction to Action Research

Action research is a qualitative research methodology - an approach as well as specific practices - that supports practitioner-researchers to notice and make sense of their experiences - and the experiences of their colleagues, clients and fellow citizens - through practices of living inquiry and a living theory of practice development that emerges from learning from lived experiences and the social formations of the organisations and communities in which they live and work.  Action research is informed by itself through being and doing.

Wholly suitable for everyone, this introduction to action research will explore what it is, how it works, how organisation designers, developers, consultants and change agents might use it, and how it might begin.

Alastair Wyllie

"After a first career as a professional actor, and a second career as a European metropolitan city planning network and project manager, I now facilitate leadership and organisational development through action inquiry, executive coaching, and whole systems collaborative learning.  I have a practice in coaching and organisational supervision, with a particular interest in working with internal coaches, business partners, organisation designers, developers and change agents.  I also teach and supervise on Roffey Park Institute’s Masters in People & Organisational Development.   Much of my work is within international and multicultural contexts.

I completed a first-person doctoral inquiry into professional practice and being and doing as a practitioner.  It is an inductive inquiry, from which I drew universal conclusions from my unique reflections on my sense-of-self and my experiences of deliberate experiments in my own practice.  By developing myself as a practitioner, and my capacity to intervene in my own systems and in those of my clients, I, thereby, continue to further develop my practice."