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CHAPTER FOUR: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Within the reflective practice paradigm, I will conduct an action research
project. I continue by looking at what the framework offered by an action
research entails.
ACTION RESEARCH
An action research approach suits my endeavour because it “refers to
the process of people conducting their real-life enquiries, as they ask,
individually and collectively, How do I improve what I’m doing for our mutual
benefit?’””.°*° The aim of developing my own practice, benefitting the field of
drama education as well, and also the exploratory nature of my research fit
well with this approach.
As I am researching artistic and educational processes together my aim
cannot be to find a solution to the problem of combining LTD and a Bondian
approach, because a recipe-like outcome would contradict the artistic nature
of each educational encounter. Exploring different possibilities in differing
contexts and recording the journey to be able to analyse the connections
and re-examine them in other situations is a more useful way of locating
those methodological advances that can lead to creating DEs in LTD. I am
undertaking a “research that impacts on, and focuses on, practice”,**”
as action research does, and the cyclical nature of this approach described
by Kurt Lewin way back in 1946 as a “cycle of steps of planning a change,
putting the plan into action, observing what happened, and re-formulating
the plan in the light of what had happened”*“ offers an appropriate structure
for my study.
Kathrine Wimpenny clarifies that the “self-reflective spiral” described
above is “not a straightforward set of neat self-contained spirals of planning,
acting and observing. Stages overlap; initial plans require review in the light
of experience and learning”.’” She explains that action research studies
“provide a space within which critical dialectic discourse can be developed
and meaningful change considered”.°°°
546 Jean McNiff — Pamela Lomax — Jack Whitehead: You and Your Action Research Project, 2%
edn., London, RoutledgeFalmer, 2003, 7.
Louis Cohen — Lawrence Manion — Keith Morrison: Research Methods in Education, 6"
edn., London, Routledge, 2007, 29.
Stephen Kemmis — Robin McTaggart — Rhonda Nixon: The Action Research Planner: Doing
Critical Participatory Action Research, London, Springer Science & Business Media, 2013,
18.
Katherine Wimpenny: Participatory action research: An integrated approach towards
practice development, in Savin-Baden, Maggi — Major, Claire Howell (eds.): New Approaches
to Qualitative Research: Wisdom and Uncertainty, London, Routledge, 2010, 92.
550 Ibid.
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