Action Research

Volume 5(3): 319–331

Copyright© 2007 SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore
www.sagepublications.com
DOI: 10.1177/1476750307081021

ARTICLE Teaching and learning in a

model-based action research
course
John M. Peters
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA
Annie Gray
Pellissippi State Technical Community College, USA

ABSTRACT

We describe an action research course from the point of view of

our joint participation as instructor and student. The course is
structured and its process is driven by the instructor’s model of
action research. We discuss the demands that the model places
on participants as they develop individual plans for action
research. The article concludes with our reflection on partici-
pants’ experiences and a discussion of assumptions that inform
course design and process.

KEY WORDS

• collaboration
• learning
• reflection
• teaching

319
320 • Action Research 5(3)

We are members of a doctoral program in Collaborative Learning that empha-

sizes action research as the principal mode of inquiry used in doctoral dissertation
research. As professor, John is the instructor of a course on action research, and
Annie has taken the course as a graduate student. Annie is also an English pro-
fessor at a community college where she engages in action research on various
aspects of her practice. Our article describes the action research course, some of
its basic design features, supporting assumptions about teaching and learning,
and the course structure and process. We also describe a model of action research
that John uses to structure the course. The model provides participants with a
step-wise process to follow in planning and conducting action research. We
conclude with reflections on these topics.

Participants

Students from a variety of graduate programs and majors take the course although
participants in the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) Doctoral Program in
Collaborative Learning (a specialty area within Educational Psychology) are
required to take the course. This specialization forms the most consistent student
population. All students are expected to employ some form of action research in
their dissertations. Students in Collaborative Learning are full-time professionals
in fields such as business, higher education, military education, government
organizations, medical institutions, community education agencies, and various
consulting organizations. Other students study in such areas as adult education,
science education, applied educational psychology, and nursing. Students from
these programs typically engage in graduate education part time and have careers
that are similar to the Collaborative Learning students. All doctoral students and
some master’s students take other courses in research design and statistics, but for
some in the latter group, action research is their sole research course.

Course design and process

The action research course was offered for the first time at UT in 1996. It has
since been offered in one of two time frames: a semester-length term that lasts 14
weeks with one three-hour meeting per week, or an intensive five-week summer
term with two 4-hour meetings per week. The process is primarily discussion and
dialogue based, with occasional short lectures on topics about action research
and its various methodologies. The process involves student preparation and
presentation of an action research proposal that is structured according to a
research model described later in this article. Prior to settling on design aspects of
their research plan, students seriously examine their assumptions, ideas, perspec-
tives, and their role in their own research.
 Peters & Gray Model-based action research course • 321

Students learn about action research as a way of inquiry and knowing, and
how to engage in action research, with no particular sequence of the two. Learning
about action research is aided by study of related literature through face-to-face
and online dialogue. However, the majority of time is spent on planning research
projects. Students’ plans are grounded in their own practices or on some aspect of
their personal lives. They follow a step-wise procedure based in Peters’s ‘DATA-
DATA’ model of action research (Peters, 1999, 2002). This is a model that
describes a cyclical process of reflection and action culminating in systematic
inquiry into one’s practice and practical theories. Participants learn about each
step and what is required from them as they take the step. They prepare a written
description of each step, one at a time, and they submit their written work to all
other participants for critique and feedback. Participants give their oral feedback
in class and written responses online in the form of posts on Blackboard™, the
web-based course management system. Each participant also posts his or her
reflections on the week’s class-based experience. These reflections serve as the
basis for further discussion and dialogue about the teaching and learning process,
readings, the research process, and other aspects of the course experience.
The instructor initially serves as the principal source of critique and feed-
back on students’ work. As the course progresses, students assume increasing
responsibility for providing critiques and feedback on each other’s work, espe-
cially as they revise their work and cycle back on earlier steps of the DATA-
DATA model. Their participation at this level of critique benefits from their own
prior experience with the steps involved, so students are capable of providing
constructive help to one another. It is noteworthy that most students find it
easier to constructively critique other students’ work than to produce their own.

DATA-DATA

The action research model students use consists of eight cyclic steps of action and
reflection leading to a plan for designing and conducting an action research event.
Each step of the model corresponds to a letter in the acronym: In the first part, or
DATA1, D = Describe, A = Analyze, T = Theorize, A = Act. In the second part, or
DATA2, D = Design, A = Analyze, T = Theorize, and A = Act. DATA1 essential-
ly represents reflective practice, and DATA2 represents the more formal
methodological aspects of research. DATA2 also involves the process of re-exam-
ining and possibly revising one’s practical theory in light of findings. Taken
together, DATA1 and DATA2 constitute a systematic approach to planning and
conducting action research projects. Because the steps are cyclic, they can be
repeated as many times as needed.
The DATA-DATA model is meant to serve as a guide for doing action
research.1 It includes features of reflective practice, and it provides for the exten-
322 • Action Research 5(3)

sion of this informal process into the practitioners’ choice of more formal and
systematic modes of inquiry. The model gives practitioners a structure for plan-
ning and conducting their research. It also engages them in discursive knowing in
their practice (Harré & Stearns, 1995) whether they are engaged in first-person,
second-person, or third-person inquiry (Marshall, 2004). This method forces
practitioners to include themselves in their research, especially as they find it
difficult to escape the strongly reflective pull of the first stages of DATA1.
Engagement in the earliest phases of DATA1 leads to clarification and improved
understanding of one’s practice, particularly the aspects of practice most closely
associated with the practitioner’s motivation for acting in the first place. A rich
description and analysis of the situation (in context of particular aspects of
practice) lead to the specification of one or more practical questions. In turn,
these questions prompt the formulation of an approach that the practitioner
thinks will address her questions. The approach takes the form of a practical
theory that describes what might work in the situation at hand and the reasoning
associated with each aspect of the practitioner’s theory. Finally, and based on the
practical theory, the practitioner develops a detailed action plan. At this point,
the practitioner may put the plan into play, postpone action on the plan, or
abandon the idea entirely. If she decides to carry out her plan, it can be said that
she has now engaged in a form of reflective practice (Schon, 1983). However, she
may also choose to devise ways to systematically study what happens when the
plan of action is put into play. If she chooses the latter option, she moves to the
formal research phases of DATA2. This is the point at which the process moves
beyond reflective practice and becomes action research.
In DATA2, the practitioner-researcher identifies and provides the details of
a formal inquiry into the practice, especially the practical theory that guides it.
This feature of action research demands a clear statement of research questions,
procedures for collecting data, data analysis techniques, and plans for reporting
findings. Once the research portion of the plan is carried out, the practitioner can
use the results to re-examine her practical theory as she laid it out in DATA1.
This test of the practitioner’s practical theory ultimately intends to improve the
basis for her practical actions. Based on re-examination of the practical theory in
light of new findings, the practitioner can construct new and more informed
actions. This is the point at which a new cycle of action and reflection begins.
The DATA-DATA model provides a structure for participants to follow as
they wrestle with each step of action research and the new ways of thinking it
evinces. During each class meeting, about half of the class members post their
material on a particular step and present it to their peers. The other half presents
during the next class session. Each student is allotted about 45 minutes to engage
in a conversation with other class members and the professor, all of whom are
expected to offer their critiques and suggestions for improvements in the student’s
material. The revised material is then posted on Blackboard™ for everyone to read
 Peters & Gray Model-based action research course • 323

and perhaps offer additional commentary. This procedure continues through the
Design phase of the research plan. Students then post their final research pro-
posals. The last class session is for reflections on the proposals and the process of
getting to this stage of planning.

Reflections on the course experience

We examined students’ reflections, course evaluations, and notes taken by the

instructor over the past decade of course offerings. We also engaged in dialogues
about what stood out in these documents and about our own experiences in the
action research course. This process yielded several themes in the ways we and
other participants experienced the course. The following is a brief account of
what we learned.

A shift in thinking
Students experience the most difficulty in attempting to shift their thinking from
a conventional research approach to an action research approach. Although most
students have taken fewer than two other research courses in their studies by
the time they enroll in this course, all are profoundly influenced by a taken-for-
granted, positivist viewpoint of inquiry, problem-solving, and decision-making.
In conventional research largely framed by a positivistic worldview, we have
learned to distance ourselves from the reality that we seek to understand, to
objectivize it, and to seek a way of generalizing findings to other situations simi-
lar to the one with which we are familiar (Gergen, 1999; Horton & Freire, 1990;
Shotter, 1993; Susman & Evered, 1978). Such a stance suggests that researchers
are not involved with the subjects of their inquiries. Even in some so-called
qualitative inquiry, researchers often seek the participation of other researchers in
the analysis of their data, so that their own views are buffered by outside
observers’ views (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). This viewpoint assumes that the
reality of people’s lives is already there, fixed, determined, patterned, awaiting the
discovery of the researcher. It is also as if the researcher is not a part of this
reality. This dominant way of knowing frequently carries over into action
research. The result is a conflict between the researcher’s worldview and his or
her everyday reality. Shotter (2005) writes,
But in making this move, we ignore what can be directly observed as occurring out
in the world between us and the others and othernesses around us, and we seek
instead, the events influencing the shape of our actions within a decontextualized
logical schematism of some kind or other. (p. 2)

It is ironic that those who wish to understand better what they do in their
practice would attempt to take themselves out of that practice and its context.
324 • Action Research 5(3)

Clearly, this is impossible, but the influence of the positivistic way of thinking
should not be underestimated. Most of us came to embrace this viewpoint after
years of formal education, and some of us have reinforced our view by engaging
in conventional research. It is extremely difficult to let go of an objectivistic view
and to conduct research as an involved subject of one’s own inquiry. As Bakhtin
(1986) indicates, ‘There can be no such thing as a neutral utterance’ (p. 84). This
claim can be easily extended to one’s engagement in any socially constructed
endeavor (Peters & Bell, 2001). The obvious question is how we can remain
‘objective’ and be personally involved? The answer is that we cannot, so it is
required of us to identify and account for how our framework and involvements
influence how we understand our practice. Merleau-Ponty (2000) notes that ‘my
human gaze never posits more than one facet of the object, even though by means
of horizons it is directed toward all the others’ (p. 80). Indeed, our point of view
is just that – a viewpoint – and it largely frames our understanding of our prac-
tice (Peters & Ragland, 2005; Ragland, 2006). As Mantzoukas (2005) points out,
‘for non-positivist studies, which utilize reflection to reveal the researcher’s bias,
the paradigmatic rules require that these biases should be included rather than
excluded from the study’ (p. 279). Just as there is no ‘frame neutral’ point of view
(Peters & Bell, 2001; Schon & Rein, 1994), we need to subject the point of view
to further examination (Peters & Ragland, 2005; Ragland, 2006), particularly
with the help of others who have their own points of view.
Here we are reminded of Reason and Torbert’s (2001) work in collabora-
tive inquiry, especially from the standpoint that what students do together is an
example of what practitioner’s might do in non-academic settings to engage in
joint inquiry with their colleagues and client organizations. The DATA-DATA
model is designed to guide a practitioner’s examination of her place in her own
practice, how she frames her work, and the basis of her practical theories about
what works and what doesn’t. Here is where practitioner-students encounter the
most difficulty in using DATA-DATA to plan their research project.

Discomfort with examining one’s framework

A practitioner’s difficulty putting herself in her research relates to another
feature of the struggle most students have with action research. The course – and
particularly the DATA-DATA model – is designed to push students back into
their own framework and assumptions that help guide their practice. Most find
this process to be initially challenging, and oftentimes uncomfortable. Their
tendency is to jump to conclusions about the definition of a problem and even to
one or more solutions to an assumed and sometimes vague problem or issue they
face in their practice. Repeated push-backs by the professor and other students
generally succeed in helping individuals clarify their thinking about the focus of
their practical concerns and why their concerns exist at all.
 Peters & Gray Model-based action research course • 325

Examining everyday practice: problems describing

Still another related difficulty concerns the students’ ability to provide a
phenomenological description of their practice – with them in it – without judg-
ing what is going on in that description, the focus of the D = Describe step of the
model. Students find it difficult to suspend their judgment until they provide a
rich description. Only after comprehensive description can students, through the
A = Analysis phase, examine the factors that contribute to what they describe as
their practice. Providing thoroughly honest description takes considerable disci-
pline on their part; it is one area in which the collaboration of fellow students is
especially beneficial. Textbook approaches to problem-solving, decision-making,
and research methodology – all related to the processes involved in the system-
atic, stepwise and cyclic process of DATA-DATA – generally begin with a
problem and then identification of one or more possible solutions to the problem.
What is usually lacking in such approaches is an account of the circumstances or
background that helps shape the problem or need, including the role of people
who have the power to define the problem or need in the first place. The day-to-
day lives of practitioners and researchers are not nearly as simple as textbook
models would have them to be (Winograd, 1980). Our lives are messy and some-
times chaotic; we make decisions, react to situations, and take actions without the
benefit of a well-defined problem statement or an uncontested understanding of
needs, wants, and desires. Furthermore, we react to situations that we sometimes
help create, and our practice situations are usually fluid, changing even as we
react to them.

Putting into words what moves us: the stimulus

All of these reasons underscore why we begin with an identification of the ‘stimu-
lus’ as we anticipate the several steps of action research. The stimulus for reflec-
tion is what moves the practitioner to take an initiative aimed at changing his or
her practice in the first place. We assume that practitioners have a reason for
acting or are moved to act by something in their practice situation; even their
reasons or the situational factors are not entirely clear or easily identifiable.
Practitioners may have a vague sense of something that needs their attention (e.g.
a teacher has a feeling that her classes are not going well); there is outright failure
in an attempt to try a new approach to doing their work (e.g. employees’ revolt
against a manager’s handling of a reorganization plan); a practitioner may receive
a mandate to make a change in his practice but is uncertain about how to carry
out the mandate (e.g. a counselor may be stymied by new ethical guidelines
mandated by her organization); or the practitioner may simply want to do some-
thing different to make her job more interesting and effective – no requirements,
no identifiable problems or issues, just an interest in trying something new in
326 • Action Research 5(3)

hopes that her job is ‘better’ in the long run (e.g. a teacher thinks offering a
traditionally face-to-face course in an online format might enable her to reach a
different audience of students). These are examples of what might be many
factors associated with a practitioner’s motivation to start a cycle of action and
reflection and sometimes an action research project. Whatever the motive, reflec-
tion usually begins as a reaction to some aspect of practice or its context, includ-
ing the practitioner’s own dispositions and ideas. This reaction is a stimulus for
further action that can set in motion a cycle of actions and reflections.

The practitioner as theorist

Students wrestle with the idea that they are theorists, or that they can be. We
think the difficulty they experience may be in part a function of the graduate
studies context. Most students who take the course identify with others rather
than themselves as theorists – mainly their own professors and the writers of the
literature they read. Yet, practitioners are also theorists, if not developers of
‘formal’ theories. They are, indeed, people who hold to many practical theories
(Horton & Freire, 1990). Getting past this hurdle is one of the most important
moves in the course; much about the overall process hinges on the student’s
ability to clearly articulate his or her practical theory. For example, not only is the
theory based on a careful D = Description and A = Analyze, but it is the student’s
own T = Theory that she will subject to some form of test later in the research
process.

Textbook research
Students associate doing research with a set of steps that begin with formal theory
and a problem framed by the theory. They rarely see these steps as critically
grounded in the context of their own practice, even though they may anticipate
that there will be some form of application to their practice in the end. Thus, as
mentioned above, students have a tendency to jump to the classic components of
research plans such as problem statement, identification of one or more hypothe-
ses or research questions, and design and procedure – in short, the aspects of
research methods associated with DATA2. Few students have had the experience
of stepping back and doing the careful, methodical tasks associated with under-
standing their own practice before launching into this sequence of research steps.
It is for this reason that the DATA-DATA model is one-half reflective practice
and one-half research methodology, with DATA1 serving as the guide for this
part of action research. This model’s rigor, especially in the early stages, is one
reason that the majority of the semester period is needed to help students work
through its reflective practice half.
 Peters & Gray Model-based action research course • 327

Collaboration
Finally, and in terms of process, students consistently report that their course
experience was enhanced by their interactions with peers. They are just as quick
to say that the process is tedious, detailed, and demanding of their full attention.
However, in most semesters, students praise the collaborative work done and
attribute much of their success to this feature of the course. It is clear that the
professor’s work alone would not be sufficient to help students sort through all
the obstacles and produce a workable action research proposal.
To use Shotter’s words, collaborative inquiry boils down to a kind of ‘with-
ness’ knowing and not simply a matter of ‘aboutness’ knowing (Shotter, 1999,
2005). Shotter (2005) adds:
. . . writers are mostly oriented toward helping us think about process ‘from the
outside,’ about processes that we merely observe as happening ‘over there’. But if we
are to rethink appropriate styles of empirical research, then we need a different form
of engaged, responsive thinking, acting, and talking, that allows us to affect the flow
of processes from within our living involvement with them. Crucially, this kind of
responsive understanding only becomes available to us in our relations with living
forms when we enter into dialogically structured relations with them. It remains
utterly unavailable to us as an external observer. I will call this kind of thinking,
thinking-from-within or withness-thinking, to contrast it with the aboutness-
thinking that is more familiar to us. (p. 1)

Conclusions

During our preparation of a manuscript about the action research course, we

realized that John, the course designer and instructor, had made several important
assumptions about what such a course should entail. His assumptions extend to
beliefs about teaching and learning, knowing, and the nature of inquiry. We decid-
ed to surface as many of these assumptions as possible, and to comment on the
ones that address the course as we described it. Five assumptions stood out for us:

1 Participants learn best if they actually experience the process of inquiry;

2 They will benefit most if their learning experience is grounded in their own
practices or other aspects of their lives;
3 The teacher is also a learner and should position himself or herself as a co-
learner with students as well as serve as facilitator, sometimes lecturer, and
coach;
4 An individual’s learning experiences are potentially enriched when he or she
collaborates with other participants;
5 Action research is a way of knowing, and learning to do action research is
systematic practice in this way of knowing.
328 • Action Research 5(3)

The first assumption goes quickly to the matter of learning from one’s
experience. Much has been written about that topic (Boud & Feletti, 1997; Boud
& Miller, 1996), and there is also much to commend the benefits of learning in
situated, real-time, and applied contexts. In this course, practitioner-students
have two experiential contexts in which to make sense of a particular way of
thinking about both practice and inquiry. One context is their practice. As
pointed out earlier in the article, nearly all course participants are also practi-
tioners representing diverse organizations and careers. Obviously, they bring
their work lives and other lives with them when they enter a classroom or go
online, and they continue in their practical contexts as they exit. By choosing to
focus their learning experience on actual research projects they can do in their
own practices or ‘real’ lives, participants are afforded a chance to try out the
mode of inquiry in the classroom and in their everyday practice. This approach
links their daily concerns to the classroom experience. The second context is
formed by the students’ programs of study that require them to develop know-
ledge and skills in research methods. Some participants have taken other, more
conventional research courses and other participants anticipate doing so. These
courses, or at least the curriculum-based requirement themselves, allow the
instructor to develop a context for inquiry that benefits from comparisons made
between action research and other forms of inquiry. Students who are already
accustomed to at least knowing in ways that are expressed in conventional
research courses can better see ways of knowing involved in action research.
Those who will take additional courses in conventional research will be able to
see it anew in later course contexts. This said, it strikes us as important that the
conventional approach not be pitted against action research; instead, we stress
the value of inquiry found in both.
On the second assumption, it seems to us that students who are also practi-
tioners require the kind of grounded, practice-oriented subject matter that trans-
lates as easily as possible into their day-to-day concerns. This is not to say that
such a course as we describe ought to be entirely a matter of mechanical training
in how to do research. In this course, there is surely an emphasis on steps and
procedures involved in doing action research; however, there is also a strong
theoretical emphasis and process of critical reflection involved – what Chiu
(2006) refers to as ‘more than nuts and bolts’ (p. 183). The point is, this
theoretical emphasis begins and ends with the student-practitioners’ own theo-
ries. When an individual student’s theories are put out for all to see and critique,
a space opens for dialogue about competing theories and ideas, including both
published formal theories and other practitioner-students’ own practical theories.
As far as the action research course is concerned, this approach to theorizing
seems to work for practitioners who are not accustomed to viewing themselves as
theorists and for students who must study the theories of others who practice in
their chosen discipline or field of study. In this course, these are the same persons.
 Peters & Gray Model-based action research course • 329

The theorizing component of the course demands a blend of these two perspec-
tives of course participants.
The third assumption has particular relevance for the instructor. In the
course we describe, the instructor is what Peters and Armstrong (1998) call a
‘Type One’ instructor. That is, he positions himself as expert in action research
methodologies, and he teaches students in the usual sense of transmitting
information about appropriate topics. This Type One role is also evident as he
coaches students who deal with the specifics of particular phases of action
research and application of the DATA-DATA model. However, he also switches
to being a ‘Type Three’ teacher and facilitator when he opens himself to new
ideas and challenges his old ones. As an action researcher, he frequently puts his
own plans up for critique and his ideas about DATA-DATA out for participants’
scrutiny. This co-learner approach appears to enhance the course experience
for students, as it shows yet another example of action research. The teacher’s
shifted role also serves as a confidence builder when students see the teacher deal
with some of the same issues and tasks that they are ask to do.
The fourth assumption relates to the value of peer learning (Peters &
Armstrong, 1998; Ragland, 2006). This provision opens each student to the ideas
and viewpoints of others who are dealing with variations on a similar research
theme. Just as importantly, it gives each student an ‘other’ who can help the
students see themselves in their own practice. Here we are reminded of Reason
and Torbert’s (2001) work in the area of cooperative inquiry, especially as what
students do together is seen as an example of what practitioners might do in non-
academic settings to engage in joint inquiry with their colleagues and client
organizations. In referencing second-person action research, Reason and Torbert
point out how much a practitioner-researcher can learn about their own situation
by examining the experiences or writings of others.
While we can privately reflect on our own individual experiences, there is
special value to be gained from the perspective of others who do not purport to
be like us (Bakhtin, 1981, 1986). Their perspective on our role in our practice is
a potentially new experience from which we can learn.
The fifth assumption addresses the way in which practitioner-students
come to know themselves in their practice, and the way they know as they sys-
tematically inquire into the practice. The cyclic, action–reflection–action process
of recursive thinking is, however, not altogether familiar to students in the course.
Their way of seeing has been mainly one of seeing themselves as set apart from
the worlds that they would seek to understand. Schon’s (1983, 1987) notion
of ‘technical rationality’ clearly fits the students’ world view and that of the
dominant mode of knowing manifest in the university’s curricula. It is clear that
the instructor in the present course considers practitioners to be the architects of
their own knowledge – especially as knowledge is constructed in communities of
like interests. It remains a challenge to find ways to help students step back far
330 • Action Research 5(3)

enough from routine to see themselves as members of one or more knowledge-

constructing communities. The DATA-DATA approach, which provides the
skeletal structure and principal procedural aspect of the course, is designed to
challenge students in this respect.
As authors of this article, we also sat in different seats when engaged in the
course we describe. Our different perspectives, one a student’s and the other the
instructor’s, afforded us opportunity to challenge our own assumptions about
our respective course experiences. We are also instructors in other institutional
contexts, and we have found additional ways of seeing what we experienced
during the course. As a result of thinking about our practices from these different
perspectives, we realized that we were actually re-living the course process. We
are left with the promise that our practices will be changed as we were as a result
of our dialogue.

Note

1 Over 100 practitioners, representing a variety of practical settings, have used this
model as a guide in planning and/or conducting action research projects.

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John M. Peters is Professor of Educational Psychology and Coordinator of the

Doctoral Program in Collaborative Learning at the University of Tennessee,
USA. Address: A519 Claxton Addition, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996-
3400, USA. [Email: jpeters@utk.edu]

Annie Gray is Associate Professor of English at Pellissippi State Technical

Community College and doctoral candidate in Collaborative Learning at the
University of Tennessee, USA.