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Action Research: What it is, Stages & Examples

Action research is a method often used to make the situation better. It combines activity and investigation to make change happen.

The best way to get things accomplished is to do it yourself. This statement is utilized in corporations, community projects, and national governments. These organizations are relying on action research to cope with their continuously changing and unstable environments as they function in a more interdependent world.

In practical educational contexts, this involves using systematic inquiry and reflective practice to address real-world challenges, improve teaching and learning, enhance student engagement, and drive positive changes within the educational system.

This post outlines the definition of action research, its stages, and some examples.

Content Index

What is action research?

Stages of action research, the steps to conducting action research, examples of action research, advantages and disadvantages of action research.

Action research is a strategy that tries to find realistic solutions to organizations’ difficulties and issues. It is similar to applied research.

Action research refers basically learning by doing. First, a problem is identified, then some actions are taken to address it, then how well the efforts worked are measured, and if the results are not satisfactory, the steps are applied again.

It can be put into three different groups:

Positivist: This type of research is also called “classical action research.” It considers research a social experiment. This research is used to test theories in the actual world.
Interpretive: This kind of research is called “contemporary action research.” It thinks that business reality is socially made, and when doing this research, it focuses on the details of local and organizational factors.
Critical: This action research cycle takes a critical reflection approach to corporate systems and tries to enhance them.

All research is about learning new things. Collaborative action research contributes knowledge based on investigations in particular and frequently useful circumstances. It starts with identifying a problem. After that, the research process is followed by the below stages:

Stage 1: Plan

For an action research project to go well, the researcher needs to plan it well. After coming up with an educational research topic or question after a research study, the first step is to develop an action plan to guide the research process. The research design aims to address the study’s question. The research strategy outlines what to undertake, when, and how.

Stage 2: Act

The next step is implementing the plan and gathering data. At this point, the researcher must select how to collect and organize research data . The researcher also needs to examine all tools and equipment before collecting data to ensure they are relevant, valid, and comprehensive.

Stage 3: Observe

Data observation is vital to any investigation. The action researcher needs to review the project’s goals and expectations before data observation. This is the final step before drawing conclusions and taking action.

Different kinds of graphs, charts, and networks can be used to represent the data. It assists in making judgments or progressing to the next stage of observing.

Stage 4: Reflect

This step involves applying a prospective solution and observing the results. It’s essential to see if the possible solution found through research can really solve the problem being studied.

The researcher must explore alternative ideas when the action research project’s solutions fail to solve the problem.

Action research is a systematic approach researchers, educators, and practitioners use to identify and address problems or challenges within a specific context. It involves a cyclical process of planning, implementing, reflecting, and adjusting actions based on the data collected. Here are the general steps involved in conducting an action research process:

Identify the action research question or problem

Clearly define the issue or problem you want to address through your research. It should be specific, actionable, and relevant to your working context.

Review existing knowledge

Conduct a literature review to understand what research has already been done on the topic. This will help you gain insights, identify gaps, and inform your research design.

Plan the research

Develop a research plan outlining your study’s objectives, methods, data collection tools, and timeline. Determine the scope of your research and the participants or stakeholders involved.

Collect data

Implement your research plan by collecting relevant data. This can involve various methods such as surveys, interviews, observations, document analysis, or focus groups. Ensure that your data collection methods align with your research objectives and allow you to gather the necessary information.

Analyze the data

Once you have collected the data, analyze it using appropriate qualitative or quantitative techniques. Look for patterns, themes, or trends in the data that can help you understand the problem better.

Reflect on the findings

Reflect on the analyzed data and interpret the results in the context of your research question. Consider the implications and possible solutions that emerge from the data analysis. This reflection phase is crucial for generating insights and understanding the underlying factors contributing to the problem.

Develop an action plan

Based on your analysis and reflection, develop an action plan that outlines the steps you will take to address the identified problem. The plan should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART goals). Consider involving relevant stakeholders in planning to ensure their buy-in and support.

Implement the action plan

Put your action plan into practice by implementing the identified strategies or interventions. This may involve making changes to existing practices, introducing new approaches, or testing alternative solutions. Document the implementation process and any modifications made along the way.

Evaluate and monitor progress

Continuously monitor and evaluate the impact of your actions. Collect additional data, assess the effectiveness of the interventions, and measure progress towards your goals. This evaluation will help you determine if your actions have the desired effects and inform any necessary adjustments.

Reflect and iterate

Reflect on the outcomes of your actions and the evaluation results. Consider what worked well, what did not, and why. Use this information to refine your approach, make necessary adjustments, and plan for the next cycle of action research if needed.

Remember that participatory action research is an iterative process, and multiple cycles may be required to achieve significant improvements or solutions to the identified problem. Each cycle builds on the insights gained from the previous one, fostering continuous learning and improvement.

Explore Insightfully Contextual Inquiry in Qualitative Research

Here are two real-life examples of action research.

Action research initiatives are frequently situation-specific. Still, other researchers can adapt the techniques. The example is from a researcher’s (Franklin, 1994) report about a project encouraging nature tourism in the Caribbean.

In 1991, this was launched to study how nature tourism may be implemented on the four Windward Islands in the Caribbean: St. Lucia, Grenada, Dominica, and St. Vincent.

For environmental protection, a government-led action study determined that the consultation process needs to involve numerous stakeholders, including commercial enterprises.

First, two researchers undertook the study and held search conferences on each island. The search conferences resulted in suggestions and action plans for local community nature tourism sub-projects.

Several islands formed advisory groups and launched national awareness and community projects. Regional project meetings were held to discuss experiences, self-evaluations, and strategies. Creating a documentary about a local initiative helped build community. And the study was a success, leading to a number of changes in the area.

Lau and Hayward (1997) employed action research to analyze Internet-based collaborative work groups.

Over two years, the researchers facilitated three action research problem -solving cycles with 15 teachers, project personnel, and 25 health practitioners from diverse areas. The goal was to see how Internet-based communications might affect their virtual workgroup.

First, expectations were defined, technology was provided, and a bespoke workgroup system was developed. Participants suggested shorter, more dispersed training sessions with project-specific instructions.

The second phase saw the system’s complete deployment. The final cycle witnessed system stability and virtual group formation. The key lesson was that the learning curve was poorly misjudged, with frustrations only marginally met by phone-based technical help. According to the researchers, the absence of high-quality online material about community healthcare was harmful.

Role clarity, connection building, knowledge sharing, resource assistance, and experiential learning are vital for virtual group growth. More study is required on how group support systems might assist groups in engaging with their external environment and boost group members’ learning.

Action research has both good and bad points.

It is very flexible, so researchers can change their analyses to fit their needs and make individual changes.
It offers a quick and easy way to solve problems that have been going on for a long time instead of complicated, long-term solutions based on complex facts.
If It is done right, it can be very powerful because it can lead to social change and give people the tools to make that change in ways that are important to their communities.

Disadvantages

These studies have a hard time being generalized and are hard to repeat because they are so flexible. Because the researcher has the power to draw conclusions, they are often not thought to be theoretically sound.
Setting up an action study in an ethical way can be hard. People may feel like they have to take part or take part in a certain way.
It is prone to research errors like selection bias , social desirability bias, and other cognitive biases.

LEARN ABOUT: Self-Selection Bias

This post discusses how action research generates knowledge, its steps, and real-life examples. It is very applicable to the field of research and has a high level of relevance. We can only state that the purpose of this research is to comprehend an issue and find a solution to it.

At QuestionPro, we give researchers tools for collecting data, like our survey software, and a library of insights for any long-term study. Go to the Insight Hub if you want to see a demo or learn more about it.

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Frequently Asked Questions(FAQ’s)

Action research is a systematic approach to inquiry that involves identifying a problem or challenge in a practical context, implementing interventions or changes, collecting and analyzing data, and using the findings to inform decision-making and drive positive change.

Action research can be conducted by various individuals or groups, including teachers, administrators, researchers, and educational practitioners. It is often carried out by those directly involved in the educational setting where the research takes place.

The steps of action research typically include identifying a problem, reviewing relevant literature, designing interventions or changes, collecting and analyzing data, reflecting on findings, and implementing improvements based on the results.

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21 Action Research Examples (In Education)

Dave Cornell (PhD)

Dr. Cornell has worked in education for more than 20 years. His work has involved designing teacher certification for Trinity College in London and in-service training for state governments in the United States. He has trained kindergarten teachers in 8 countries and helped businessmen and women open baby centers and kindergartens in 3 countries.

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Chris Drew (PhD)

This article was peer-reviewed and edited by Chris Drew (PhD). The review process on Helpful Professor involves having a PhD level expert fact check, edit, and contribute to articles. Reviewers ensure all content reflects expert academic consensus and is backed up with reference to academic studies. Dr. Drew has published over 20 academic articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education and holds a PhD in Education from ACU.

Action research is an example of qualitative research . It refers to a wide range of evaluative or investigative methods designed to analyze professional practices and take action for improvement.

Commonly used in education, those practices could be related to instructional methods, classroom practices, or school organizational matters.

The creation of action research is attributed to Kurt Lewin , a German-American psychologist also considered to be the father of social psychology.

Gillis and Jackson (2002) offer a very concise definition of action research: “systematic collection and analysis of data for the purpose of taking action and making change” (p.264).

The methods of action research in education include:

conducting in-class observations
taking field notes
surveying or interviewing teachers, administrators, or parents
using audio and video recordings.

The goal is to identify problematic issues, test possible solutions, or simply carry-out continuous improvement.

There are several steps in action research : identify a problem, design a plan to resolve, implement the plan, evaluate effectiveness, reflect on results, make necessary adjustment and repeat the process.

Action Research Examples

Digital literacy assessment and training: The school’s IT department conducts a survey on students’ digital literacy skills. Based on the results, a tailored training program is designed for different age groups.
Library resources utilization study: The school librarian tracks the frequency and type of books checked out by students. The data is then used to curate a more relevant collection and organize reading programs.
Extracurricular activities and student well-being: A team of teachers and counselors assess the impact of extracurricular activities on student mental health through surveys and interviews. Adjustments are made based on findings.
Parent-teacher communication channels: The school evaluates the effectiveness of current communication tools (e.g., newsletters, apps) between teachers and parents. Feedback is used to implement a more streamlined system.
Homework load evaluation: Teachers across grade levels assess the amount and effectiveness of homework given. Adjustments are made to ensure a balance between academic rigor and student well-being.
Classroom environment and learning: A group of teachers collaborates to study the impact of classroom layouts and decorations on student engagement and comprehension. Changes are made based on the findings.
Student feedback on curriculum content: High school students are surveyed about the relevance and applicability of their current curriculum. The feedback is then used to make necessary curriculum adjustments.
Teacher mentoring and support: New teachers are paired with experienced mentors. Both parties provide feedback on the effectiveness of the mentoring program, leading to continuous improvements.
Assessment of school transportation: The school board evaluates the efficiency and safety of school buses through surveys with students and parents. Necessary changes are implemented based on the results.
Cultural sensitivity training: After conducting a survey on students’ cultural backgrounds and experiences, the school organizes workshops for teachers to promote a more inclusive classroom environment.
Environmental initiatives and student involvement: The school’s eco-club assesses the school’s carbon footprint and waste management. They then collaborate with the administration to implement greener practices and raise environmental awareness.
Working with parents through research: A school’s admin staff conduct focus group sessions with parents to identify top concerns.Those concerns will then be addressed and another session conducted at the end of the school year.
Peer teaching observations and improvements: Kindergarten teachers observe other teachers handling class transition techniques to share best practices.
PTA surveys and resultant action: The PTA of a district conducts a survey of members regarding their satisfaction with remote learning classes.The results will be presented to the school board for further action.
Recording and reflecting: A school administrator takes video recordings of playground behavior and then plays them for the teachers. The teachers work together to formulate a list of 10 playground safety guidelines.
Pre/post testing of interventions: A school board conducts a district wide evaluation of a STEM program by conducting a pre/post-test of students’ skills in computer programming.
Focus groups of practitioners : The professional development needs of teachers are determined from structured focus group sessions with teachers and admin.
School lunch research and intervention: A nutrition expert is hired to evaluate and improve the quality of school lunches.
School nurse systematic checklist and improvements: The school nurse implements a bathroom cleaning checklist to monitor cleanliness after the results of a recent teacher survey revealed several issues.
Wearable technologies for pedagogical improvements; Students wear accelerometers attached to their hips to gain a baseline measure of physical activity.The results will identify if any issues exist.
School counselor reflective practice : The school counselor conducts a student survey on antisocial behavior and then plans a series of workshops for both teachers and parents.

Detailed Examples

1. cooperation and leadership.

A science teacher has noticed that her 9 th grade students do not cooperate with each other when doing group projects. There is a lot of arguing and battles over whose ideas will be followed.

So, she decides to implement a simple action research project on the matter. First, she conducts a structured observation of the students’ behavior during meetings. She also has the students respond to a short questionnaire regarding their notions of leadership.

She then designs a two-week course on group dynamics and leadership styles. The course involves learning about leadership concepts and practices . In another element of the short course, students randomly select a leadership style and then engage in a role-play with other students.

At the end of the two weeks, she has the students work on a group project and conducts the same structured observation as before. She also gives the students a slightly different questionnaire on leadership as it relates to the group.

She plans to analyze the results and present the findings at a teachers’ meeting at the end of the term.

2. Professional Development Needs

Two high-school teachers have been selected to participate in a 1-year project in a third-world country. The project goal is to improve the classroom effectiveness of local teachers.

The two teachers arrive in the country and begin to plan their action research. First, they decide to conduct a survey of teachers in the nearby communities of the school they are assigned to.

The survey will assess their professional development needs by directly asking the teachers and administrators. After collecting the surveys, they analyze the results by grouping the teachers based on subject matter.

They discover that history and social science teachers would like professional development on integrating smartboards into classroom instruction. Math teachers would like to attend workshops on project-based learning, while chemistry teachers feel that they need equipment more than training.

The two teachers then get started on finding the necessary training experts for the workshops and applying for equipment grants for the science teachers.

3. Playground Accidents

The school nurse has noticed a lot of students coming in after having mild accidents on the playground. She’s not sure if this is just her perception or if there really is an unusual increase this year. So, she starts pulling data from the records over the last two years. She chooses the months carefully and only selects data from the first three months of each school year.

She creates a chart to make the data more easily understood. Sure enough, there seems to have been a dramatic increase in accidents this year compared to the same period of time from the previous two years.

She shows the data to the principal and teachers at the next meeting. They all agree that a field observation of the playground is needed.

Those observations reveal that the kids are not having accidents on the playground equipment as originally suspected. It turns out that the kids are tripping on the new sod that was installed over the summer.

They examine the sod and observe small gaps between the slabs. Each gap is approximately 1.5 inches wide and nearly two inches deep. The kids are tripping on this gap as they run.

They then discuss possible solutions.

4. Differentiated Learning

Trying to use the same content, methods, and processes for all students is a recipe for failure. This is why modifying each lesson to be flexible is highly recommended. Differentiated learning allows the teacher to adjust their teaching strategy based on all the different personalities and learning styles they see in their classroom.

Of course, differentiated learning should undergo the same rigorous assessment that all teaching techniques go through. So, a third-grade social science teacher asks his students to take a simple quiz on the industrial revolution. Then, he applies differentiated learning to the lesson.

By creating several different learning stations in his classroom, he gives his students a chance to learn about the industrial revolution in a way that captures their interests. The different stations contain: short videos, fact cards, PowerPoints, mini-chapters, and role-plays.

At the end of the lesson, students get to choose how they demonstrate their knowledge. They can take a test, construct a PPT, give an oral presentation, or conduct a simulated TV interview with different characters.

During this last phase of the lesson, the teacher is able to assess if they demonstrate the necessary knowledge and have achieved the defined learning outcomes. This analysis will allow him to make further adjustments to future lessons.

5. Healthy Habits Program

While looking at obesity rates of students, the school board of a large city is shocked by the dramatic increase in the weight of their students over the last five years. After consulting with three companies that specialize in student physical health, they offer the companies an opportunity to prove their value.

So, the board randomly assigns each company to a group of schools. Starting in the next academic year, each company will implement their healthy habits program in 5 middle schools.

Preliminary data is collected at each school at the beginning of the school year. Each and every student is weighed, their resting heart rate, blood pressure and cholesterol are also measured.

After analyzing the data, it is found that the schools assigned to each of the three companies are relatively similar on all of these measures.

At the end of the year, data for students at each school will be collected again. A simple comparison of pre- and post-program measurements will be conducted. The company with the best outcomes will be selected to implement their program city-wide.

Action research is a great way to collect data on a specific issue, implement a change, and then evaluate the effects of that change. It is perhaps the most practical of all types of primary research .

Most likely, the results will be mixed. Some aspects of the change were effective, while other elements were not. That’s okay. This just means that additional modifications to the change plan need to be made, which is usually quite easy to do.

There are many methods that can be utilized, such as surveys, field observations , and program evaluations.

The beauty of action research is based in its utility and flexibility. Just about anyone in a school setting is capable of conducting action research and the information can be incredibly useful.

Aronson, E., & Patnoe, S. (1997). The jigsaw classroom: Building cooperation in the classroom (2nd ed.). New York: Addison Wesley Longman.

Gillis, A., & Jackson, W. (2002). Research Methods for Nurses: Methods and Interpretation . Philadelphia: F.A. Davis Company.

Lewin, K. (1946). Action research and minority problems. Journal of SocialIssues, 2 (4), 34-46.

Macdonald, C. (2012). Understanding participatory action research: A qualitative research methodology option. Canadian Journal of Action Research, 13 , 34-50. https://doi.org/10.33524/cjar.v13i2.37 Mertler, C. A. (2008). Action Research: Teachers as Researchers in the Classroom . London: Sage.

Dave Cornell (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/dave-cornell-phd/ 23 Achieved Status Examples
Dave Cornell (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/dave-cornell-phd/ 25 Defense Mechanisms Examples
Dave Cornell (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/dave-cornell-phd/ 15 Theory of Planned Behavior Examples
Dave Cornell (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/dave-cornell-phd/ 18 Adaptive Behavior Examples

Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 23 Achieved Status Examples
Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 15 Ableism Examples
Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 25 Defense Mechanisms Examples
Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 15 Theory of Planned Behavior Examples

2 thoughts on “21 Action Research Examples (In Education)”

Where can I capture this article in a better user-friendly format, since I would like to provide it to my students in a Qualitative Methods course at the University of Prince Edward Island? It is a good article, however, it is visually disjointed in its current format. Thanks, Dr. Frank T. Lavandier

Hi Dr. Lavandier,

I’ve emailed you a word doc copy that you can use and edit with your class.

Best, Chris.

Action Research: Steps, Benefits, and Tips

Introduction

History of action research, what is the definition of action research, types of action research, conducting action research.

Action research stands as a unique approach in the realm of qualitative inquiry in social science research. Rooted in real-world problems, it seeks not just to understand but also to act, bringing about positive change in specific contexts. Often distinguished by its collaborative nature, the action research process goes beyond traditional research paradigms by emphasizing the involvement of those being studied in resolving social conflicts and effecting positive change.

The value of action research lies not just in its outcomes, but also in the process itself, where stakeholders become active participants rather than mere subjects. In this article, we'll examine action research in depth, shedding light on its history, principles, and types of action research.

Tracing its roots back to the mid-20th century, Kurt Lewin developed classical action research as a response to traditional research methods in the social sciences that often sidelined the very communities they studied. Proponents of action research championed the idea that research should not just be an observational exercise but an actionable one that involves devising practical solutions. Advocates believed in the idea of research leading to immediate social action, emphasizing the importance of involving the community in the process.

Applications for action research

Over the years, action research has evolved and diversified. From its early applications in social psychology and organizational development, it has branched out into various fields such as education, healthcare, and community development, informing questions around improving schools, minority problems, and more. This growth wasn't just in application, but also in its methodologies.

How is action research different?

Like all research methodologies, effective action research generates knowledge. However, action research stands apart in its commitment to instigate tangible change. Traditional research often places emphasis on passive observation , employing data collection methods primarily to contribute to broader theoretical frameworks . In contrast, action research is inherently proactive, intertwining the acts of observing and acting.

The primary goal isn't just to understand a problem but to solve or alleviate it. Action researchers partner closely with communities, ensuring that the research process directly benefits those involved. This collaboration often leads to immediate interventions, tweaks, or solutions applied in real-time, marking a departure from other forms of research that might wait until the end of a study to make recommendations.

This proactive, change-driven nature makes action research particularly impactful in settings where immediate change is not just beneficial but essential.

Action research is best understood as a systematic approach to cooperative inquiry. Unlike traditional research methodologies that might primarily focus on generating knowledge, action research emphasizes producing actionable solutions for pressing real-world challenges.

This form of research undertakes a cyclic and reflective journey, typically cycling through stages of planning , acting, observing, and reflecting. A defining characteristic of action research is the collaborative spirit it embodies, often dissolving the rigid distinction between the researcher and the researched, leading to mutual learning and shared outcomes.

Advantages of action research

One of the foremost benefits of action research is the immediacy of its application. Since the research is embedded within real-world issues, any findings or solutions derived can often be integrated straightaway, catalyzing prompt improvements within the concerned community or organization. This immediacy is coupled with the empowering nature of the methodology. Participants aren't mere subjects; they actively shape the research process, giving them a tangible sense of ownership over both the research journey and its eventual outcomes.

Moreover, the inherent adaptability of action research allows researchers to tweak their approaches responsively based on live feedback. This ensures the research remains rooted in the evolving context, capturing the nuances of the situation and making any necessary adjustments. Lastly, this form of research tends to offer a comprehensive understanding of the issue at hand, harmonizing socially constructed theoretical knowledge with hands-on insights, leading to a richer, more textured understanding.

Disadvantages of action research

Like any methodology, action research isn't devoid of challenges. Its iterative nature, while beneficial, can extend timelines. Researchers might find themselves engaged in multiple cycles of observation, reflection, and action before arriving at a satisfactory conclusion. The intimate involvement of the researcher with the research participants, although crucial for collaboration, opens doors to potential conflicts. Through collaborative problem solving, disagreements can lead to richer and more nuanced solutions, but it can take considerable time and effort.

Another limitation stems from its focus on a specific context: results derived from a particular action research project might not always resonate or be applicable in a different context or with a different group. Lastly, the depth of collaboration this methodology demands means all stakeholders need to be deeply invested, and such a level of commitment might not always be feasible.

Examples of action research

To illustrate, let's consider a few scenarios. Imagine a classroom where a teacher observes dwindling student participation. Instead of sticking to conventional methods, the teacher experiments with introducing group-based activities. As the outcomes unfold, the teacher continually refines the approach based on student feedback, eventually leading to a teaching strategy that rejuvenates student engagement.

In a healthcare context, hospital staff who recognize growing patient anxiety related to certain procedures might innovate by introducing a new patient-informing protocol. As they study the effects of this change, they could, through iterations, sculpt a procedure that diminishes patient anxiety.

Similarly, in the realm of community development, a community grappling with the absence of child-friendly public spaces might collaborate with local authorities to conceptualize a park. As they monitor its utilization and societal impact, continual feedback could refine the park's infrastructure and design.

Contemporary action research, while grounded in the core principles of collaboration, reflection, and change, has seen various adaptations tailored to the specific needs of different contexts and fields. These adaptations have led to the emergence of distinct types of action research, each with its unique emphasis and approach.

Collaborative action research

Collaborative action research emphasizes the joint efforts of professionals, often from the same field, working together to address common concerns or challenges. In this approach, there's a strong emphasis on shared responsibility, mutual respect, and co-learning. For example, a group of classroom teachers might collaboratively investigate methods to improve student literacy, pooling their expertise and resources to devise, implement, and refine strategies for improving teaching.

Participatory action research

Participatory action research (PAR) goes a step further in dissolving the barriers between the researcher and the researched. It actively involves community members or stakeholders not just as participants, but as equal partners in the entire research process. PAR is deeply democratic and seeks to empower participants, fostering a sense of agency and ownership. For instance, a participatory research project might involve local residents in studying and addressing community health concerns, ensuring that the research process and outcomes are both informed by and beneficial to the community itself.

Educational action research

Educational action research is tailored specifically to practical educational contexts. Here, educators take on the dual role of teacher and researcher, seeking to improve teaching practices, curricula, classroom dynamics, or educational evaluation. This type of research is cyclical, with educators implementing changes, observing outcomes, and reflecting on results to continually enhance the educational experience. An example might be a teacher studying the impact of technology integration in her classroom, adjusting strategies based on student feedback and learning outcomes.

Community-based action research

Another noteworthy type is community-based action research, which focuses primarily on community development and well-being. Rooted in the principles of social justice, this approach emphasizes the collective power of community members to identify, study, and address their challenges. It's particularly powerful in grassroots movements and local development projects where community insights and collaboration drive meaningful, sustainable change.

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Engaging in action research is both an enlightening and transformative journey, rooted in practicality yet deeply connected to theory. For those embarking on this path, understanding the essentials of an action research study and the significance of a research cycle is paramount.

Understanding the action research cycle

At the heart of action research is its cycle, a structured yet adaptable framework guiding the research. This cycle embodies the iterative nature of action research, emphasizing that learning and change evolve through repetition and reflection.

The typical stages include:

Identifying a problem : This is the starting point where the action researcher pinpoints a pressing issue or challenge that demands attention.
Planning : Here, the researcher devises an action research strategy aimed at addressing the identified problem. In action research, network resources, participant consultation, and the literature review are core components in planning.
Action : The planned strategies are then implemented in this stage. This 'action' phase is where theoretical knowledge meets practical application.
Observation : Post-implementation, the researcher observes the outcomes and effects of the action. This stage ensures that the research remains grounded in the real-world context.
Critical reflection : This part of the cycle involves analyzing the observed results to draw conclusions about their effectiveness and identify areas for improvement.
Revision : Based on the insights from reflection, the initial plan is revised, marking the beginning of another cycle.

Rigorous research and iteration

It's essential to understand that while action research is deeply practical, it doesn't sacrifice rigor . The cyclical process ensures that the research remains thorough and robust. Each iteration of the cycle in an action research project refines the approach, drawing it closer to an effective solution.

The role of the action researcher

The action researcher stands at the nexus of theory and practice. Not just an observer, the researcher actively engages with the study's participants, collaboratively navigating through the research cycle by conducting interviews, participant observations, and member checking . This close involvement ensures that the study remains relevant, timely, and responsive.

Drawing conclusions and informing theory

As the research progresses through multiple iterations of data collection and data analysis , drawing conclusions becomes an integral aspect. These conclusions, while immediately beneficial in addressing the practical issue at hand, also serve a broader purpose. They inform theory, enriching the academic discourse and providing valuable insights for future research.

Identifying actionable insights

Keep in mind that action research should facilitate implications for professional practice as well as space for systematic inquiry. As you draw conclusions about the knowledge generated from action research, consider how this knowledge can create new forms of solutions to the pressing concern you set out to address.

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Research Methods and Design

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Case Study Design
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Action research

A type of applied research designed to find the most effective way to bring about a desired social change or to solve a practical problem, usually in collaboration with those being researched.

SAGE Research Methods Videos

How do you define action research.

Professor David Coghlan explains action research as an approach that crosses many academic disciplines yet has a shared focus on taking action to address a problem. He describes the difference between this approach and empirical scientific approaches, particularly highlighting the challenge of getting action research to be taken seriously by academic journals

Dr. Nataliya Ivankova defines action research as using systematic research principles to address an issue in everyday life. She delineates the six steps of action research, and illustrates the concept using an anti-diabetes project in an urban area.

This is just one segment in a whole series about action research. You can find the rest of the series in our SAGE database, Research Methods:

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What is action research and how do we do it?

In this article, we explore the development of some different traditions of action research and provide an introductory guide to the literature., contents : what is action research · origins · the decline and rediscovery of action research · undertaking action research · conclusion · further reading · how to cite this article . see, also: research for practice ., what is action research.

In the literature, discussion of action research tends to fall into two distinctive camps. The British tradition – especially that linked to education – tends to view action research as research-oriented toward the enhancement of direct practice. For example, Carr and Kemmis provide a classic definition:

Action research is simply a form of self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order to improve the rationality and justice of their own practices, their understanding of these practices, and the situations in which the practices are carried out (Carr and Kemmis 1986: 162).

Many people are drawn to this understanding of action research because it is firmly located in the realm of the practitioner – it is tied to self-reflection. As a way of working it is very close to the notion of reflective practice coined by Donald Schön (1983).

The second tradition, perhaps more widely approached within the social welfare field – and most certainly the broader understanding in the USA is of action research as ‘the systematic collection of information that is designed to bring about social change’ (Bogdan and Biklen 1992: 223). Bogdan and Biklen continue by saying that its practitioners marshal evidence or data to expose unjust practices or environmental dangers and recommend actions for change. In many respects, for them, it is linked into traditions of citizen’s action and community organizing. The practitioner is actively involved in the cause for which the research is conducted. For others, it is such commitment is a necessary part of being a practitioner or member of a community of practice. Thus, various projects designed to enhance practice within youth work, for example, such as the detached work reported on by Goetschius and Tash (1967) could be talked of as action research.

Kurt Lewin is generally credited as the person who coined the term ‘action research’:

The research needed for social practice can best be characterized as research for social management or social engineering. It is a type of action-research, a comparative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action, and research leading to social action. Research that produces nothing but books will not suffice (Lewin 1946, reproduced in Lewin 1948: 202-3)

His approach involves a spiral of steps, ‘each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action and fact-finding about the result of the action’ ( ibid. : 206). The basic cycle involves the following:

This is how Lewin describes the initial cycle:

The first step then is to examine the idea carefully in the light of the means available. Frequently more fact-finding about the situation is required. If this first period of planning is successful, two items emerge: namely, “an overall plan” of how to reach the objective and secondly, a decision in regard to the first step of action. Usually this planning has also somewhat modified the original idea. ( ibid. : 205)

The next step is ‘composed of a circle of planning, executing, and reconnaissance or fact-finding for the purpose of evaluating the results of the second step, and preparing the rational basis for planning the third step, and for perhaps modifying again the overall plan’ ( ibid. : 206). What we can see here is an approach to research that is oriented to problem-solving in social and organizational settings, and that has a form that parallels Dewey’s conception of learning from experience.

The approach, as presented, does take a fairly sequential form – and it is open to a literal interpretation. Following it can lead to practice that is ‘correct’ rather than ‘good’ – as we will see. It can also be argued that the model itself places insufficient emphasis on analysis at key points. Elliott (1991: 70), for example, believed that the basic model allows those who use it to assume that the ‘general idea’ can be fixed in advance, ‘that “reconnaissance” is merely fact-finding, and that “implementation” is a fairly straightforward process’. As might be expected there was some questioning as to whether this was ‘real’ research. There were questions around action research’s partisan nature – the fact that it served particular causes.

The decline and rediscovery of action research

Action research did suffer a decline in favour during the 1960s because of its association with radical political activism (Stringer 2007: 9). There were, and are, questions concerning its rigour, and the training of those undertaking it. However, as Bogdan and Biklen (1992: 223) point out, research is a frame of mind – ‘a perspective that people take toward objects and activities’. Once we have satisfied ourselves that the collection of information is systematic and that any interpretations made have a proper regard for satisfying truth claims, then much of the critique aimed at action research disappears. In some of Lewin’s earlier work on action research (e.g. Lewin and Grabbe 1945), there was a tension between providing a rational basis for change through research, and the recognition that individuals are constrained in their ability to change by their cultural and social perceptions, and the systems of which they are a part. Having ‘correct knowledge’ does not of itself lead to change, attention also needs to be paid to the ‘matrix of cultural and psychic forces’ through which the subject is constituted (Winter 1987: 48).

Subsequently, action research has gained a significant foothold both within the realm of community-based, and participatory action research; and as a form of practice-oriented to the improvement of educative encounters (e.g. Carr and Kemmis 1986).

Exhibit 1: Stringer on community-based action research

A fundamental premise of community-based action research is that it commences with an interest in the problems of a group, a community, or an organization. Its purpose is to assist people in extending their understanding of their situation and thus resolving problems that confront them….

Community-based action research is always enacted through an explicit set of social values. In modern, democratic social contexts, it is seen as a process of inquiry that has the following characteristics:

• It is democratic , enabling the participation of all people.

• It is equitable , acknowledging people’s equality of worth.

• It is liberating , providing freedom from oppressive, debilitating conditions.

• It is life enhancing , enabling the expression of people’s full human potential.

(Stringer 1999: 9-10)

Undertaking action research

As Thomas (2017: 154) put it, the central aim is change, ‘and the emphasis is on problem-solving in whatever way is appropriate’. It can be seen as a conversation rather more than a technique (McNiff et. al. ). It is about people ‘thinking for themselves and making their own choices, asking themselves what they should do and accepting the consequences of their own actions’ (Thomas 2009: 113).

The action research process works through three basic phases:

Look -building a picture and gathering information. When evaluating we define and describe the problem to be investigated and the context in which it is set. We also describe what all the participants (educators, group members, managers etc.) have been doing.

Think – interpreting and explaining. When evaluating we analyse and interpret the situation. We reflect on what participants have been doing. We look at areas of success and any deficiencies, issues or problems.

Act – resolving issues and problems. In evaluation we judge the worth, effectiveness, appropriateness, and outcomes of those activities. We act to formulate solutions to any problems. (Stringer 1999: 18; 43-44;160)

The use of action research to deepen and develop classroom practice has grown into a strong tradition of practice (one of the first examples being the work of Stephen Corey in 1949). For some, there is an insistence that action research must be collaborative and entail groupwork.

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 those practices and the situations in which the practices are carried out… The approach is only action research when it is collaborative, though it is important to realise that action research of the group is achieved through the critically examined action of individual group members. (Kemmis and McTaggart 1988: 5-6)

Just why it must be collective is open to some question and debate (Webb 1996), but there is an important point here concerning the commitments and orientations of those involved in action research.

One of the legacies Kurt Lewin left us is the ‘action research spiral’ – and with it there is the danger that action research becomes little more than a procedure. It is a mistake, according to McTaggart (1996: 248) to think that following the action research spiral constitutes ‘doing action research’. He continues, ‘Action research is not a ‘method’ or a ‘procedure’ for research but a series of commitments to observe and problematize through practice a series of principles for conducting social enquiry’. It is his argument that Lewin has been misunderstood or, rather, misused. When set in historical context, while Lewin does talk about action research as a method, he is stressing a contrast between this form of interpretative practice and more traditional empirical-analytic research. The notion of a spiral may be a useful teaching device – but it is all too easy to slip into using it as the template for practice (McTaggart 1996: 249).

Explorations of action research

Atweh, B., Kemmis, S. and Weeks, P. (eds.) (1998) Action Research in Practice: Partnership for Social Justice in Education, London: Routledge. Presents a collection of stories from action research projects in schools and a university. The book begins with theme chapters discussing action research, social justice and partnerships in research. The case study chapters cover topics such as: school environment – how to make a school a healthier place to be; parents – how to involve them more in decision-making; students as action researchers; gender – how to promote gender equity in schools; writing up action research projects.

Carr, W. and Kemmis, S. (1986) Becoming Critical. Education, knowledge and action research , Lewes: Falmer. Influential book that provides a good account of ‘action research’ in education. Chapters on teachers, researchers and curriculum; the natural scientific view of educational theory and practice; the interpretative view of educational theory and practice; theory and practice – redefining the problem; a critical approach to theory and practice; towards a critical educational science; action research as critical education science; educational research, educational reform and the role of the profession.

Carson, T. R. and Sumara, D. J. (ed.) (1997) Action Research as a Living Practice , New York: Peter Lang. 140 pages. Book draws on a wide range of sources to develop an understanding of action research. Explores action research as a lived practice, ‘that asks the researcher to not only investigate the subject at hand but, as well, to provide some account of the way in which the investigation both shapes and is shaped by the investigator.

Dadds, M. (1995) Passionate Enquiry and School Development. A story about action research , London: Falmer. 192 + ix pages. Examines three action research studies undertaken by a teacher and how they related to work in school – how she did the research, the problems she experienced, her feelings, the impact on her feelings and ideas, and some of the outcomes. In his introduction, John Elliot comments that the book is ‘the most readable, thoughtful, and detailed study of the potential of action-research in professional education that I have read’.

Ghaye, T. and Wakefield, P. (eds.) CARN Critical Conversations. Book one: the role of the self in action , Bournemouth: Hyde Publications. 146 + xiii pages. Collection of five pieces from the Classroom Action Research Network. Chapters on: dialectical forms; graduate medical education – research’s outer limits; democratic education; managing action research; writing up.

McNiff, J. (1993) Teaching as Learning: An Action Research Approach , London: Routledge. Argues that educational knowledge is created by individual teachers as they attempt to express their own values in their professional lives. Sets out familiar action research model: identifying a problem, devising, implementing and evaluating a solution and modifying practice. Includes advice on how working in this way can aid the professional development of action researcher and practitioner.

Quigley, B. A. and Kuhne, G. W. (eds.) (1997) Creating Practical Knowledge Through Action Research, San Fransisco: Jossey Bass. Guide to action research that outlines the action research process, provides a project planner, and presents examples to show how action research can yield improvements in six different settings, including a hospital, a university and a literacy education program.

Plummer, G. and Edwards, G. (eds.) CARN Critical Conversations. Book two: dimensions of action research – people, practice and power , Bournemouth: Hyde Publications. 142 + xvii pages. Collection of five pieces from the Classroom Action Research Network. Chapters on: exchanging letters and collaborative research; diary writing; personal and professional learning – on teaching and self-knowledge; anti-racist approaches; psychodynamic group theory in action research.

Whyte, W. F. (ed.) (1991) Participatory Action Research , Newbury Park: Sage. 247 pages. Chapters explore the development of participatory action research and its relation with action science and examine its usages in various agricultural and industrial settings

Zuber-Skerritt, O. (ed.) (1996) New Directions in Action Research , London; Falmer Press. 266 + xii pages. A useful collection that explores principles and procedures for critical action research; problems and suggested solutions; and postmodernism and critical action research.

Action research guides

Coghlan, D. and Brannick, D. (2000) Doing Action Research in your own Organization, London: Sage. 128 pages. Popular introduction. Part one covers the basics of action research including the action research cycle, the role of the ‘insider’ action researcher and the complexities of undertaking action research within your own organisation. Part two looks at the implementation of the action research project (including managing internal politics and the ethics and politics of action research). New edition due late 2004.

Elliot, J. (1991) Action Research for Educational Change , Buckingham: Open University Press. 163 + x pages Collection of various articles written by Elliot in which he develops his own particular interpretation of action research as a form of teacher professional development. In some ways close to a form of ‘reflective practice’. Chapter 6, ‘A practical guide to action research’ – builds a staged model on Lewin’s work and on developments by writers such as Kemmis.

Johnson, A. P. (2007) A short guide to action research 3e. Allyn and Bacon. Popular step by step guide for master’s work.

Macintyre, C. (2002) The Art of the Action Research in the Classroom , London: David Fulton. 138 pages. Includes sections on action research, the role of literature, formulating a research question, gathering data, analysing data and writing a dissertation. Useful and readable guide for students.

McNiff, J., Whitehead, J., Lomax, P. (2003) You and Your Action Research Project , London: Routledge. Practical guidance on doing an action research project.Takes the practitioner-researcher through the various stages of a project. Each section of the book is supported by case studies

Stringer, E. T. (2007) Action Research: A handbook for practitioners 3e , Newbury Park, ca.: Sage. 304 pages. Sets community-based action research in context and develops a model. Chapters on information gathering, interpretation, resolving issues; legitimacy etc. See, also Stringer’s (2003) Action Research in Education , Prentice-Hall.

Winter, R. (1989) Learning From Experience. Principles and practice in action research , Lewes: Falmer Press. 200 + 10 pages. Introduces the idea of action research; the basic process; theoretical issues; and provides six principles for the conduct of action research. Includes examples of action research. Further chapters on from principles to practice; the learner’s experience; and research topics and personal interests.

Action research in informal education

Usher, R., Bryant, I. and Johnston, R. (1997) Adult Education and the Postmodern Challenge. Learning beyond the limits , London: Routledge. 248 + xvi pages. Has some interesting chapters that relate to action research: on reflective practice; changing paradigms and traditions of research; new approaches to research; writing and learning about research.

Other references

Bogdan, R. and Biklen, S. K. (1992) Qualitative Research For Education , Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Goetschius, G. and Tash, J. (1967) Working with the Unattached , London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

McTaggart, R. (1996) ‘Issues for participatory action researchers’ in O. Zuber-Skerritt (ed.) New Directions in Action Research , London: Falmer Press.

McNiff, J., Lomax, P. and Whitehead, J. (2003) You and Your Action Research Project 2e. London: Routledge.

Thomas, G. (2017). How to do your Research Project. A guide for students in education and applied social sciences . 3e. London: Sage.

Acknowledgements : spiral by Michèle C. | flickr ccbyncnd2 licence

How to cite this article : Smith, M. K. (1996; 2001, 2007, 2017) What is action research and how do we do it?’, The encyclopedia of pedagogy and informal education. [ https://infed.org/mobi/action-research/ . Retrieved: insert date] .

Action Research: What it is, Stages & Examples

Introduction

Action research is an evidence-based approach that has been used for years in the field of education and social sciences. It is used to learn about both good practices and problems with existing practices, as well as being able to develop new strategies by investigating and analyzing data.

In this post, we will explore action research, its purpose, and its stages. Read on!

What Action Research Is

Action research is a methodology of inquiry in which the researcher takes a proactive role in generating knowledge. Action research focuses on learning and can be applied to any field of interest; it is also self-directed, meaning that it is not based on a model or definition but more on an action evaluation framework (Marten, 2000).

An action research project is a cooperative effort between two or more people who are interested in trying new ways of doing things. The common factor between all of these activities is the intention to search for practical solutions for some problem that affects each individual.

Typically, the problem stems from an aspect of society that is amenable to change, although no particular area or business is excluded from this concept. Action research consists of five key components: decision-making, data collection , and analysis, multiple works of literature view, results interpretation , and action development (Marten, 2003).

The goal of action research is to build a better product, service, or process by using the power of people working together. Although the goal is to learn things through this approach, it can be used by anyone from students who want to solve their own problems with technology, to employers teaching their employees new skills.

The Purposes of Conducting Action Research

The purpose of action research is that it can help academics and learners to find solutions to their problems. To do this, they will know whether their solutions are effective through the scientific method which means that it is more reliable than common sense. It will also make them think harder about what they’re doing.
Action research can help improve the quality of life by making people aware of what they can do in everyday life.
Action research is also used for commercial enterprises as it is an effective way to collect information that can help develop new products or services.

The Development of Action Research

Action research is an approach to problem-solving that involves the researcher and others in a process of planning, performing, and evaluating research . It incorporates the evaluation of products or services so that they can be optimized and further developed if necessary. There are four main stages involved in action research: identifying and gathering information, developing a research plan, implementing the plan, and collecting data . Once collected and analyzed, recommendations can be made for improvement within an organization or system.

What is Involved in Action Research

Action research is a research activity that is deliberately designed to achieve some specific practical results in relation to human action problems. Action research activities are characterized by their exploration of possible solutions, with a view toward actualizing these solutions.

Action research involves systematic engagement with the world to comprehend, understand and modify. It helps in learning about the system and the way it works so that you can use this information to help solve problems in your workplace or community.

The stages involved in action research are hypothesis formation, design, implementation, and assessment. A hypothesis is the statement that you are testing.

The Models and Definitions of Action Research

Practical Action Research : Practical Action Research involves a practitioner working with the researcher to identify a research problem, propose an intervention, and design methods. It is important that the practitioner as well as the researcher clarify differently with each audience, which issues or problems they want to address and with what approach.
Emancipatory Action Research : It involves working with people in order to solve a problem or meet a goal. Practitioners work together as a group and collectively identify problems and possible solutions. Solutions are as much political and consciousness-raising as practical.
Technical Action Research: This involves the main researcher in the study identifying the action research problem and proposing an intervention. However, the practitioner will be involved in the implementation of any solutions or interventions.

The Key Characteristics of Action Research

Here are some of the key characteristics of action research.

Action Research has a form of metacognition that involves the collection of data, through observation and analysis to identify phenomena, exchange ideas while forming hypotheses, and then using feedback to test those hypotheses.
It is a participative approach to learning based on experimental design.
Action research focuses on immediate action aiming at change in the organization, community, or individuals.
The focus of action research is on personal/community development/characteristics so that one’s life can be enriching.
Action Research leads to interventions that lead to change.
It is also highly situation based and context-specific.

The Philosophical Worldview of The Action Researcher

Kurt Lewin’s 1946 Rigor of Science Study on Social Issues , is often described as a major landmark in the development of action research as a methodology. Action Research is nothing other than a modern 20th-century manifestation of the pre-modern tradition of practical philosophy.

The book goes on to examine how action research is nothing other than a modern 20th-century manifestation of the pre-modern tradition of practical philosophy. It then draws on Gadamer’s powerful vindication of the contemporary relevance of practical philosophy in order to show how.

This it does, by embracing the idea of ‘methodology’, action research functions to sustain a distorted understanding of what practice is. In fact, it is worth noting that action research has always been connected with practical philosophy hence its importance in research works.

Examples of Action Research Projects.

Here are some examples of how action research is used in projects.

Observing Individuals or Groups: Action research draws upon the prior knowledge of researchers, specialists, and communities gathered through individual experiences or through cooperative learning partnerships between experts and community members.
Using Audio and Video Tape Recording: Action research allows the use of audio and video tape recordings which are more accurate and easier to capture every information from the practitioner or user.
Using structured or semi-structured interviews . Action research can be carried out by conducting interviews in any form.
Using or Taking Photography: Another example of action research is taking photographs to back up or serve as pictorial evidence for your research project.
Distributing Surveys or Questionnaires: Another way to carry out action research is by distributing surveys and questionnaires to better understand your users and their behavior toward your focus topic or product.

The development of action research is a process that takes place over several stages, each of which builds on the preceding ones. In order to ensure that your action research project has a chance at success, you will need to plan ahead and take whatever steps possible to ensure that the project is completed on time and within budget.

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What Is Action Research? | Definition & Examples

What Is Action Research? | Definition & Examples

Published on 27 January 2023 by Tegan George . Revised on 21 April 2023.

Types of action research, action research models, examples of action research, action research vs. traditional research, advantages and disadvantages of action research, frequently asked questions about action research.

There are 2 common types of action research: participatory action research and practical action research.

Participatory action research emphasises that participants should be members of the community being studied, empowering those directly affected by outcomes of said research. In this method, participants are effectively co-researchers, with their lived experiences considered formative to the research process.
Practical action research focuses more on how research is conducted and is designed to address and solve specific issues.

Both types of action research are more focused on increasing the capacity and ability of future practitioners than contributing to a theoretical body of knowledge.

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Action research is often reflected in 3 action research models: operational (sometimes called technical), collaboration, and critical reflection.

Operational (or technical) action research is usually visualised like a spiral following a series of steps, such as “planning → acting → observing → reflecting.”
Collaboration action research is more community-based, focused on building a network of similar individuals (e.g., college professors in a given geographic area) and compiling learnings from iterated feedback cycles.
Critical reflection action research serves to contextualise systemic processes that are already ongoing (e.g., working retroactively to analyse existing school systems by questioning why certain practices were put into place and developed the way they did).

Action research is often used in fields like education because of its iterative and flexible style.

After the information was collected, the students were asked where they thought ramps or other accessibility measures would be best utilised, and the suggestions were sent to school administrators. Example: Practical action research Science teachers at your city’s high school have been witnessing a year-over-year decline in standardised test scores in chemistry. In seeking the source of this issue, they studied how concepts are taught in depth, focusing on the methods, tools, and approaches used by each teacher.

Action research differs sharply from other types of research in that it seeks to produce actionable processes over the course of the research rather than contributing to existing knowledge or drawing conclusions from datasets. In this way, action research is formative , not summative , and is conducted in an ongoing, iterative way.

	Action research	Traditional research
		and findings
		and seeking between variables

As such, action research is different in purpose, context, and significance and is a good fit for those seeking to implement systemic change.

Action research comes with advantages and disadvantages.

Action research is highly adaptable , allowing researchers to mould their analysis to their individual needs and implement practical individual-level changes.
Action research provides an immediate and actionable path forward for solving entrenched issues, rather than suggesting complicated, longer-term solutions rooted in complex data.
Done correctly, action research can be very empowering , informing social change and allowing participants to effect that change in ways meaningful to their communities.

Disadvantages

Due to their flexibility, action research studies are plagued by very limited generalisability and are very difficult to replicate . They are often not considered theoretically rigorous due to the power the researcher holds in drawing conclusions.
Action research can be complicated to structure in an ethical manner . Participants may feel pressured to participate or to participate in a certain way.
Action research is at high risk for research biases such as selection bias , social desirability bias , or other types of cognitive biases .

Action research is conducted in order to solve a particular issue immediately, while case studies are often conducted over a longer period of time and focus more on observing and analyzing a particular ongoing phenomenon.

Action research is focused on solving a problem or informing individual and community-based knowledge in a way that impacts teaching, learning, and other related processes. It is less focused on contributing theoretical input, instead producing actionable input.

Action research is particularly popular with educators as a form of systematic inquiry because it prioritizes reflection and bridges the gap between theory and practice. Educators are able to simultaneously investigate an issue as they solve it, and the method is very iterative and flexible.

A cycle of inquiry is another name for action research . It is usually visualized in a spiral shape following a series of steps, such as “planning → acting → observing → reflecting.”

Sources for this article

We strongly encourage students to use sources in their work. You can cite our article (APA Style) or take a deep dive into the articles below.

George, T. (2023, April 21). What Is Action Research? | Definition & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 24 June 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/research-methods/action-research-cycle/

Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2017). Research methods in education (8th edition). Routledge.

Naughton, G. M. (2001). Action research (1st edition). Routledge.

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4 Preparing for Action Research in the Classroom: Practical Issues

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

What sort of considerations are necessary to take action in your educational context?
How do you facilitate an action plan without disrupting your teaching?
How do you respond when the unplanned happens during data collection?

An action research project is a practical endeavor that will ultimately be shaped by your educational context and practice. Now that you have developed a literature review, you are ready to revise your initial plans and begin to plan your project. This chapter will provide some advice about your considerations when undertaking an action research project in your classroom.

Maintain Focus

Hopefully, you found a lot a research on your topic. If so, you will now have a better understanding of how it fits into your area and field of educational research. Even though the topic and area you are researching may not be small, your study itself should clearly focus on one aspect of the topic in your classroom. It is important to maintain clarity about what you are investigating because a lot will be going on simultaneously during the research process and you do not want to spend precious time on erroneous aspects that are irrelevant to your research.

Even though you may view your practice as research, and vice versa, you might want to consider your research project as a projection or megaphone for your work that will bring attention to the small decisions that make a difference in your educational context. From experience, our concern is that you will find that researching one aspect of your practice will reveal other interconnected aspects that you may find interesting, and you will disorient yourself researching in a confluence of interests, commitments, and purposes. We simply want to emphasize – don’t try to research everything at once. Stay focused on your topic, and focus on exploring it in depth, instead of its many related aspects. Once you feel you have made progress in one aspect, you can then progress to other related areas, as new research projects that continue the research cycle.

Identify a Clear Research Question

Your literature review should have exposed you to an array of research questions related to your topic. More importantly, your review should have helped identify which research questions we have addressed as a field, and which ones still need to be addressed . More than likely your research questions will resemble ones from your literature review, while also being distinguishable based upon your own educational context and the unexplored areas of research on your topic.

Regardless of how your research question took shape, it is important to be clear about what you are researching in your educational context. Action research questions typically begin in ways related to “How does … ?” or “How do I/we … ?”, for example:

Research Question Examples

How does a semi-structured morning meeting improve my classroom community?
How does historical fiction help students think about people’s agency in the past?
How do I improve student punctuation use through acting out sentences?
How do we increase student responsibility for their own learning as a team of teachers?

I particularly favor questions with I or we, because they emphasize that you, the actor and researcher, will be clearly taking action to improve your practice. While this may seem rather easy, you need to be aware of asking the right kind of question. One issue is asking a too pointed and closed question that limits the possibility for analysis. These questions tend to rely on quantitative answers, or yes/no answers. For example, “How many students got a 90% or higher on the exam, after reviewing the material three times?

Another issue is asking a question that is too broad, or that considers too many variables. For example, “How does room temperature affect students’ time-on-task?” These are obviously researchable questions, but the aim is a cause-and-effect relationship between variables that has little or no value to your daily practice.

I also want to point out that your research question will potentially change as the research develops. If you consider the question:

As you do an activity, you may find that students are more comfortable and engaged by acting sentences out in small groups, instead of the whole class. Therefore, your question may shift to:

How do I improve student punctuation use through acting out sentences, in small groups ?

By simply engaging in the research process and asking questions, you will open your thinking to new possibilities and you will develop new understandings about yourself and the problematic aspects of your educational context.

Understand Your Capabilities and Know that Change Happens Slowly

Similar to your research question, it is important to have a clear and realistic understanding of what is possible to research in your specific educational context. For example, would you be able to address unsatisfactory structures (policies and systems) within your educational context? Probably not immediately, but over time you potentially could. It is much more feasible to think of change happening in smaller increments, from within your own classroom or context, with you as one change agent. For example, you might find it particularly problematic that your school or district places a heavy emphasis on traditional grades, believing that these grades are often not reflective of the skills students have or have not mastered. Instead of attempting to research grading practices across your school or district, your research might instead focus on determining how to provide more meaningful feedback to students and parents about progress in your course. While this project identifies and addresses a structural issue that is part of your school and district context, to keep things manageable, your research project would focus the outcomes on your classroom. The more research you do related to the structure of your educational context the more likely modifications will emerge. The more you understand these modifications in relation to the structural issues you identify within your own context, the more you can influence others by sharing your work and enabling others to understand the modification and address structural issues within their contexts. Throughout your project, you might determine that modifying your grades to be standards-based is more effective than traditional grades, and in turn, that sharing your research outcomes with colleagues at an in-service presentation prompts many to adopt a similar model in their own classrooms. It can be defeating to expect the world to change immediately, but you can provide the spark that ignites coordinated changes. In this way, action research is a powerful methodology for enacting social change. Action research enables individuals to change their own lives, while linking communities of like-minded practitioners who work towards action.

Plan Thoughtfully

Planning thoughtfully involves having a path in mind, but not necessarily having specific objectives. Due to your experience with students and your educational context, the research process will often develop in ways as you expected, but at times it may develop a little differently, which may require you to shift the research focus and change your research question. I will suggest a couple methods to help facilitate this potential shift. First, you may want to develop criteria for gauging the effectiveness of your research process. You may need to refine and modify your criteria and your thinking as you go. For example, we often ask ourselves if action research is encouraging depth of analysis beyond my typical daily pedagogical reflection. You can think about this as you are developing data collection methods and even when you are collecting data. The key distinction is whether the data you will be collecting allows for nuance among the participants or variables. This does not mean that you will have nuance, but it should allow for the possibility. Second, criteria are shaped by our values and develop into standards of judgement. If we identify criteria such as teacher empowerment, then we will use that standard to think about the action contained in our research process. Our values inform our work; therefore, our work should be judged in relation to the relevance of our values in our pedagogy and practice.

Does Your Timeline Work?

While action research is situated in the temporal span that is your life, your research project is short-term, bounded, and related to the socially mediated practices within your educational context. The timeline is important for bounding, or setting limits to your research project, while also making sure you provide the right amount of time for the data to emerge from the process.

For example, if you are thinking about examining the use of math diaries in your classroom, you probably do not want to look at a whole semester of entries because that would be a lot of data, with entries related to a wide range of topics. This would create a huge data analysis endeavor. Therefore, you may want to look at entries from one chapter or unit of study. Also, in terms of timelines, you want to make sure participants have enough time to develop the data you collect. Using the same math example, you would probably want students to have plenty of time to write in the journals, and also space out the entries over the span of the chapter or unit.

In relation to the examples, we think it is an important mind shift to not think of research timelines in terms of deadlines. It is vitally important to provide time and space for the data to emerge from the participants. Therefore, it would be potentially counterproductive to rush a 50-minute data collection into 20 minutes – like all good educators, be flexible in the research process.

Involve Others

It is important to not isolate yourself when doing research. Many educators are already isolated when it comes to practice in their classroom. The research process should be an opportunity to engage with colleagues and open up your classroom to discuss issues that are potentially impacting your entire educational context. Think about the following relationships:

Research participants

You may invite a variety of individuals in your educational context, many with whom you are in a shared situation (e.g. colleagues, administrators). These participants may be part of a collaborative study, they may simply help you develop data collection instruments or intervention items, or they may help to analyze and make sense of the data. While the primary research focus will be you and your learning, you will also appreciate how your learning is potentially influencing the quality of others’ learning.

We always tell educators to be public about your research, or anything exciting that is happening in your educational context, for that matter. In terms of research, you do not want it to seem mysterious to any stakeholder in the educational context. Invite others to visit your setting and observe your research process, and then ask for their formal feedback. Inviting others to your classroom will engage and connect you with other stakeholders, while also showing that your research was established in an ethic of respect for multiple perspectives.

Critical friends or validators

Using critical friends is one way to involve colleagues and also validate your findings and conclusions. While your positionality will shape the research process and subsequently your interpretations of the data, it is important to make sure that others see similar logic in your process and conclusions. Critical friends or validators provide some level of certification that the frameworks you use to develop your research project and make sense of your data are appropriate for your educational context. Your critical friends and validators’ suggestions will be useful if you develop a report or share your findings, but most importantly will provide you confidence moving forward.

Potential researchers

As an educational researcher, you are involved in ongoing improvement plans and district or systemic change. The flexibility of action research allows it to be used in a variety of ways, and your initial research can spark others in your context to engage in research either individually for their own purposes, or collaboratively as a grade level, team, or school. Collaborative inquiry with other educators is an emerging form of professional learning and development for schools with school improvement plans. While they call it collaborative inquiry, these schools are often using an action research model. It is good to think of all of your colleagues as potential research collaborators in the future.

Prioritize Ethical Practice

Try to always be cognizant of your own positionality during the action research process, its relation to your educational context, and any associated power relation to your positionality. Furthermore, you want to make sure that you are not coercing or engaging participants into harmful practices. While this may seem obvious, you may not even realize you are harming your participants because you believe the action is necessary for the research process.

For example, commonly teachers want to try out an intervention that will potentially positively impact their students. When the teacher sets up the action research study, they may have a control group and an experimental group. There is potential to impair the learning of one of these groups if the intervention is either highly impactful or exceedingly worse than the typical instruction. Therefore, teachers can sometimes overlook the potential harm to students in pursuing an experimental method of exploring an intervention.

If you are working with a university researcher, ethical concerns will be covered by the Institutional Review Board (IRB). If not, your school or district may have a process or form that you would need to complete, so it would beneficial to check your district policies before starting. Other widely accepted aspects of doing ethically informed research, include:

Confirm Awareness of Study and Negotiate Access – with authorities, participants and parents, guardians, caregivers and supervisors (with IRB this is done with Informed Consent).

Promise to Uphold Confidentiality – Uphold confidentiality, to your fullest ability, to protect information, identity and data. You can identify people if they indicate they want to be recognized for their contributions.
Ensure participants’ rights to withdraw from the study at any point .
Make sure data is secured, either on password protected computer or lock drawer .

Prepare to Problematize your Thinking

Educational researchers who are more philosophically-natured emphasize that research is not about finding solutions, but instead is about creating and asking new and more precise questions. This is represented in the action research process shown in the diagrams in Chapter 1, as Collingwood (1939) notes the aim in human interaction is always to keep the conversation open, while Edward Said (1997) emphasized that there is no end because whatever we consider an end is actually the beginning of something entirely new. These reflections have perspective in evaluating the quality in research and signifying what is “good” in “good pedagogy” and “good research”. If we consider that action research is about studying and reflecting on one’s learning and how that learning influences practice to improve it, there is nothing to stop your line of inquiry as long as you relate it to improving practice. This is why it is necessary to problematize and scrutinize our practices.

Ethical Dilemmas for Educator-Researchers

Classroom teachers are increasingly expected to demonstrate a disposition of reflection and inquiry into their own practice. Many advocate for schools to become research centers, and to produce their own research studies, which is an important advancement in acknowledging and addressing the complexity in today’s schools. When schools conduct their own research studies without outside involvement, they bypass outside controls over their studies. Schools shift power away from the oversight of outside experts and ethical research responsibilities are shifted to those conducting the formal research within their educational context. Ethics firmly grounded and established in school policies and procedures for teaching, becomes multifaceted when teaching practice and research occur simultaneously. When educators conduct research in their classrooms, are they doing so as teachers or as researchers, and if they are researchers, at what point does the teaching role change to research? Although the notion of objectivity is a key element in traditional research paradigms, educator-based research acknowledges a subjective perspective as the educator-researcher is not viewed separately from the research. In action research, unlike traditional research, the educator as researcher gains access to the research site by the nature of the work they are paid and expected to perform. The educator is never detached from the research and remains at the research site both before and after the study. Because studying one’s practice comprises working with other people, ethical deliberations are inevitable. Educator-researchers confront role conflict and ambiguity regarding ethical issues such as informed consent from participants, protecting subjects (students) from harm, and ensuring confidentiality. They must demonstrate a commitment toward fully understanding ethical dilemmas that present themselves within the unique set of circumstances of the educational context. Questions about research ethics can feel exceedingly complex and in specific situations, educator- researchers require guidance from others.

Think about it this way. As a part-time historian and former history teacher I often problematized who we regard as good and bad people in history. I (Clark) grew up minutes from Jesse James’ childhood farm. Jesse James is a well-documented thief, and possibly by today’s standards, a terrorist. He is famous for daylight bank robberies, as well as the sheer number of successful robberies. When Jesse James was assassinated, by a trusted associate none-the-less, his body travelled the country for people to see, while his assailant and assailant’s brother reenacted the assassination over 1,200 times in theaters across the country. Still today in my hometown, they reenact Jesse James’ daylight bank robbery each year at the Fall Festival, immortalizing this thief and terrorist from our past. This demonstrates how some people saw him as somewhat of hero, or champion of some sort of resistance, both historically and in the present. I find this curious and ripe for further inquiry, but primarily it is problematic for how we think about people as good or bad in the past. Whatever we may individually or collectively think about Jesse James as a “good” or “bad” person in history, it is vitally important to problematize our thinking about him. Talking about Jesse James may seem strange, but it is relevant to the field of action research. If we tell people that we are engaging in important and “good” actions, we should be prepared to justify why it is “good” and provide a theoretical, epistemological, or ontological rationale if possible. Experience is never enough, you need to justify why you act in certain ways and not others, and this includes thinking critically about your own thinking.

Educators who view inquiry and research as a facet of their professional identity must think critically about how to design and conduct research in educational settings to address respect, justice, and beneficence to minimize harm to participants. This chapter emphasized the due diligence involved in ethically planning the collection of data, and in considering the challenges faced by educator-researchers in educational contexts.

Planning Action

After the thinking about the considerations above, you are now at the stage of having selected a topic and reflected on different aspects of that topic. You have undertaken a literature review and have done some reading which has enriched your understanding of your topic. As a result of your reading and further thinking, you may have changed or fine-tuned the topic you are exploring. Now it is time for action. In the last section of this chapter, we will address some practical issues of carrying out action research, drawing on both personal experiences of supervising educator-researchers in different settings and from reading and hearing about action research projects carried out by other researchers.

Engaging in an action research can be a rewarding experience, but a beneficial action research project does not happen by accident – it requires careful planning, a flexible approach, and continuous educator-researcher reflection. Although action research does not have to go through a pre-determined set of steps, it is useful here for you to be aware of the progression which we presented in Chapter 2. The sequence of activities we suggested then could be looked on as a checklist for you to consider before planning the practical aspects of your project.

We also want to provide some questions for you to think about as you are about to begin.

Have you identified a topic for study?
What is the specific context for the study? (It may be a personal project for you or for a group of researchers of which you are a member.)
Have you read a sufficient amount of the relevant literature?
Have you developed your research question(s)?
Have you assessed the resource needed to complete the research?

As you start your project, it is worth writing down:

a working title for your project, which you may need to refine later;
the background of the study , both in terms of your professional context and personal motivation;
the aims of the project;
the specific outcomes you are hoping for.

Although most of the models of action research presented in Chapter 1 suggest action taking place in some pre-defined order, they also allow us the possibility of refining our ideas and action in the light of our experiences and reflections. Changes may need to be made in response to your evaluation and your reflections on how the project is progressing. For example, you might have to make adjustments, taking into account the students’ responses, your observations and any observations of your colleagues. All this is very useful and, in fact, it is one of the features that makes action research suitable for educational research.

Action research planning sheet

In the past, we have provided action researchers with the following planning list that incorporates all of these considerations. Again, like we have said many times, this is in no way definitive, or lock-in-step procedure you need to follow, but instead guidance based on our perspective to help you engage in the action research process. The left column is the simplified version, and the right column offers more specific advice if need.

Figure 4.1 Planning Sheet for Action Research

My topic of research is about …
Why do you wish to research this topic
Are your plans realistic, doable, and/or supported?
Write down a working title. What is your research question or aspect you are intending to study? What do you know and not know about your topic of study?
Who will be involved in the research? What is the timeline? What ethical procedures do you need?
Where will I search for literature?
What data do you need to collect? Why do you need each of them?
What are the possible outcomes of my research?
What is your research question?

Action Research Copyright © by J. Spencer Clark; Suzanne Porath; Julie Thiele; and Morgan Jobe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Action Research

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Understanding and analyzing your actions is vital for self-improvement. It would help if you recognized how your actions affect your future. Examining your progress is called action research. This method applies to psychology, marketing, and education. Action research is used by teachers to find solutions to problem areas or formulate research plans for factors that need improvement. The results of action research are useful to the participants since it helps them better themselves for the next tasks. This research has guaranteed relevance because the researchers get to decide what the focus of the study is. They are also the ones who will make use of the results.

Every action someone makes has a ripple effect on the future. One small act of kindness can lead to great fortunes. Likewise, any lousy act can turn into something terrible. A person’s mistakes are what makes him who he is today. Ziad K. Abdelnour even said, “Never erase your past. It shapes who you are today and will help you to be the person you’ll be tomorrow.” For one to grow as a person, one needs to be able to recognize one’s mistakes and learn from them. Perhaps you need to create an action plan or conduct action research to help yourself out.

The Power of Three

Not all types of research are useful for all fields; some are effective only on specific studies. Luckily, action research can serve many disciplines. Although most applicable to educational research settings, the action research design works for an endless variation of studies. This research approach can also be used by individuals or by groups of researchers. The difference in researchers also signifies a difference in purpose.

Reflective Practitioner When an individual practitioner decides to look into his way of teaching, he unconsciously analyzes his actions to improve the instruction. The more he studies himself, the more he masters the science and process of it all.

Large-Scale Progress In education, as the school progresses, the students progress with it. That is why many schools continuously seek ways to strengthen their instruction to build schoolwide improvement. When instructors come together to fix a single issue, organizational growth is bound to occur.

Professional Culture Medical and educational professionals don’t always agree on particular methods. Sometimes they need to do what they think is appropriate. The only important thing is that they lean towards the same organizational goal . With their differing approaches, they can share their own discoveries to their colleagues, making for more holistic improvement.

13+ Action Research Examples

The best way to improve yourself is by analyzing your actions and making adjustments along the way. This is a research method called action research. To help you further understand what action research is, here are multiple action research examples you can check out.

1. Research Action Plan Template

Google Docs
Apple Pages

Size: 63 KB

2. Research Corrective Action Plan Template

Size: 26 KB

3. Research Project Action Plan Template

Size: 32 KB

4. Sample Action Research Example

Size: 260 KB

5. Action Orientation Research Example

Size: 296 KB

6. Art Article Action Research Example

Size: 179 KB

7. Basic Action Research Example

Size: 327 KB

8. Five Phases of Action Research Example

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9. Standard Action Research Example

Size: 182 KB

10. Action Research in Teacher Education Example

Action Reseach in Teacher Education Example

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11. Action Research Support Notes Example

Size: 441 KB

12. Handbook for Action Research Example

13. Action Research in PDF

Size: 52 KB

14. Action Research for Professional Development Example

Size: 25 KB

Segments of a Cycle

Action research is an approach that lets an individual study one’s action to help enhance their basic skills and knowledge of a given task or topic. There is a cycle that this research follows to make continuous improvements to a group or individual. As with any research projects, there are steps you need to follow to accomplish your project goals.

1. Selecting Focus

The action research cycle begins with identifying an area that you think needs improvement. Only the researcher can assess if the research focus is worth the time. The outcome of the focus should be the betterment of a practitioner’s work. Thus, picking the right center is extremely important.

2. Clarifying Theories

The next step is figuring out what approach works best for the problem area. You can try out different methods to solve your problem. This way, you can identify what process flow you are going to follow for the duration of the research. Studying various methods, beliefs, and theories can help you decide what you feel is most effective.

3. Collecting data

Your data should be valid and reliable to guarantee improvement. That is why it would be wrong to just stick to one source of data. If you can find various academic references to answer any of your questions, you should utilize them. This way, you can match the right technique with the unique qualities your research holds.

4. Analyzing Data

When conducting data analysis , you need not use complex calculations and statistical methods; you just need to examine the data you have collected. In studying the patterns and trends in your research data, you just need to answer two questions. What story does the data tell? Why is the story executed this way?

In a day, teachers face more students than fellow teachers. That’s why, given a chance to speak with their colleagues, teachers make share their discoveries from their research. This way, they get to express organizational knowledge they think is useful for other teachers while gaining insight as well.

The last step of the research action plan is, of course, to take action. This part is where teachers make their lesson plans . This part is satisfying to teachers because they feel they have gotten wiser with every piece of knowledge they have uncovered.

Everyone should learn from their mistakes. With every trial and error is a new way of looking at things. You just need to be vigilant with all your actions and know that there is always a better way of doing things. Once you’ve refined your skills, you are sure to become a master.

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Professional

10 Examples of Public speaking

20 Examples of Gas lighting

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<span class='p-name'>Four steps to conducting action research in the classroom</span>

Please also note that it is possible and appropriate to move from one frame to another, or include bits and pieces across the research process. You’ll just want to understand where you’re obtaining your results, and what lenses you’re using as you analyze and interpret your data.

Taking action

The fourth step includes you making a decision about your research and identifying next possible actions. Let us suppose you have researched the question above about teacher morale and have uncovered the root cause of the problem. You’ve surveyed the students, teachers, and supervisors and you know exactly how to “fix” the problem.

You now have to take action and this includes several possibilities. First, you may choose to continue the system as it currently operates and make no changes. Second, you may choose to disband the organization to address the problem. This may include shutting down the school and sending all of the students, teachers, and supervisors elsewhere. Third, you may choose to modify or make small tweaks to the school, program, or relationships between all partners to address the culture of the school.

Your decision on how you take action will be determined by a multitude of factors…some of which may be out of your control. Please note that action research typically follows a cycle as you move through each of the steps. As you work through the sequence, you’ll learn a bit more about the problem or research question. You’ll use this information as a way to improve your focus, research, or action in subsequent steps through the cycle. This most likely will not be the end of the cycle. You’ll continue to observe, act, and reflect as you continue to plan and operate in the classroom.

Continuing the action research cycle

Information gained from previous research may open new avenues of research. You may choose to come down to this last step and decide to move back to the top of the cycle and start the process over again after tweaking one small variable in the sequence. Action research is ongoing. In this cycle, you are continually involved in assessing instruction and seeking ways of improving your practice, classroom, or even more.

For more guidance, please review some of the resources I used to compile this post:

A practical guide to action research for literacy educators
Action Research: A guide for associate lecturers
Action research in education
Action Research in Qualitative Research

If needed, I am available to help guide you in this process. You should also subscribe to my newsletter to continue your thinking about these skills and habits.

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How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

How to Write a Literature Review | Guide, Examples, & Templates

Published on January 2, 2023 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 11, 2023.

What is a literature review? A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research that you can later apply to your paper, thesis, or dissertation topic .

There are five key steps to writing a literature review:

Search for relevant literature
Evaluate sources
Identify themes, debates, and gaps
Outline the structure
Write your literature review

A good literature review doesn’t just summarize sources—it analyzes, synthesizes , and critically evaluates to give a clear picture of the state of knowledge on the subject.

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What is the purpose of a literature review, examples of literature reviews, step 1 – search for relevant literature, step 2 – evaluate and select sources, step 3 – identify themes, debates, and gaps, step 4 – outline your literature review’s structure, step 5 – write your literature review, free lecture slides, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions, introduction.

Quick Run-through
Step 1 & 2

When you write a thesis , dissertation , or research paper , you will likely have to conduct a literature review to situate your research within existing knowledge. The literature review gives you a chance to:

Demonstrate your familiarity with the topic and its scholarly context
Develop a theoretical framework and methodology for your research
Position your work in relation to other researchers and theorists
Show how your research addresses a gap or contributes to a debate
Evaluate the current state of research and demonstrate your knowledge of the scholarly debates around your topic.

Writing literature reviews is a particularly important skill if you want to apply for graduate school or pursue a career in research. We’ve written a step-by-step guide that you can follow below.

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Writing literature reviews can be quite challenging! A good starting point could be to look at some examples, depending on what kind of literature review you’d like to write.

Example literature review #1: “Why Do People Migrate? A Review of the Theoretical Literature” ( Theoretical literature review about the development of economic migration theory from the 1950s to today.)
Example literature review #2: “Literature review as a research methodology: An overview and guidelines” ( Methodological literature review about interdisciplinary knowledge acquisition and production.)
Example literature review #3: “The Use of Technology in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Thematic literature review about the effects of technology on language acquisition.)
Example literature review #4: “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review” ( Chronological literature review about how the concept of listening skills has changed over time.)

You can also check out our templates with literature review examples and sample outlines at the links below.

Download Word doc Download Google doc

Before you begin searching for literature, you need a clearly defined topic .

If you are writing the literature review section of a dissertation or research paper, you will search for literature related to your research problem and questions .

Make a list of keywords

Start by creating a list of keywords related to your research question. Include each of the key concepts or variables you’re interested in, and list any synonyms and related terms. You can add to this list as you discover new keywords in the process of your literature search.

Social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok
Body image, self-perception, self-esteem, mental health
Generation Z, teenagers, adolescents, youth

Search for relevant sources

Use your keywords to begin searching for sources. Some useful databases to search for journals and articles include:

Your university’s library catalogue
Google Scholar
Project Muse (humanities and social sciences)
Medline (life sciences and biomedicine)
EconLit (economics)
Inspec (physics, engineering and computer science)

You can also use boolean operators to help narrow down your search.

Make sure to read the abstract to find out whether an article is relevant to your question. When you find a useful book or article, you can check the bibliography to find other relevant sources.

You likely won’t be able to read absolutely everything that has been written on your topic, so it will be necessary to evaluate which sources are most relevant to your research question.

For each publication, ask yourself:

What question or problem is the author addressing?
What are the key concepts and how are they defined?
What are the key theories, models, and methods?
Does the research use established frameworks or take an innovative approach?
What are the results and conclusions of the study?
How does the publication relate to other literature in the field? Does it confirm, add to, or challenge established knowledge?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the research?

Make sure the sources you use are credible , and make sure you read any landmark studies and major theories in your field of research.

You can use our template to summarize and evaluate sources you’re thinking about using. Click on either button below to download.

Take notes and cite your sources

As you read, you should also begin the writing process. Take notes that you can later incorporate into the text of your literature review.

It is important to keep track of your sources with citations to avoid plagiarism . It can be helpful to make an annotated bibliography , where you compile full citation information and write a paragraph of summary and analysis for each source. This helps you remember what you read and saves time later in the process.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

To begin organizing your literature review’s argument and structure, be sure you understand the connections and relationships between the sources you’ve read. Based on your reading and notes, you can look for:

Trends and patterns (in theory, method or results): do certain approaches become more or less popular over time?
Themes: what questions or concepts recur across the literature?
Debates, conflicts and contradictions: where do sources disagree?
Pivotal publications: are there any influential theories or studies that changed the direction of the field?
Gaps: what is missing from the literature? Are there weaknesses that need to be addressed?

This step will help you work out the structure of your literature review and (if applicable) show how your own research will contribute to existing knowledge.

Most research has focused on young women.
There is an increasing interest in the visual aspects of social media.
But there is still a lack of robust research on highly visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat—this is a gap that you could address in your own research.

There are various approaches to organizing the body of a literature review. Depending on the length of your literature review, you can combine several of these strategies (for example, your overall structure might be thematic, but each theme is discussed chronologically).

Chronological

The simplest approach is to trace the development of the topic over time. However, if you choose this strategy, be careful to avoid simply listing and summarizing sources in order.

Try to analyze patterns, turning points and key debates that have shaped the direction of the field. Give your interpretation of how and why certain developments occurred.

If you have found some recurring central themes, you can organize your literature review into subsections that address different aspects of the topic.

For example, if you are reviewing literature about inequalities in migrant health outcomes, key themes might include healthcare policy, language barriers, cultural attitudes, legal status, and economic access.

Methodological

If you draw your sources from different disciplines or fields that use a variety of research methods , you might want to compare the results and conclusions that emerge from different approaches. For example:

Look at what results have emerged in qualitative versus quantitative research
Discuss how the topic has been approached by empirical versus theoretical scholarship
Divide the literature into sociological, historical, and cultural sources

Theoretical

A literature review is often the foundation for a theoretical framework . You can use it to discuss various theories, models, and definitions of key concepts.

You might argue for the relevance of a specific theoretical approach, or combine various theoretical concepts to create a framework for your research.

Like any other academic text , your literature review should have an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion . What you include in each depends on the objective of your literature review.

The introduction should clearly establish the focus and purpose of the literature review.

Depending on the length of your literature review, you might want to divide the body into subsections. You can use a subheading for each theme, time period, or methodological approach.

As you write, you can follow these tips:

Summarize and synthesize: give an overview of the main points of each source and combine them into a coherent whole
Analyze and interpret: don’t just paraphrase other researchers — add your own interpretations where possible, discussing the significance of findings in relation to the literature as a whole
Critically evaluate: mention the strengths and weaknesses of your sources
Write in well-structured paragraphs: use transition words and topic sentences to draw connections, comparisons and contrasts

In the conclusion, you should summarize the key findings you have taken from the literature and emphasize their significance.

When you’ve finished writing and revising your literature review, don’t forget to proofread thoroughly before submitting. Not a language expert? Check out Scribbr’s professional proofreading services !

This article has been adapted into lecture slides that you can use to teach your students about writing a literature review.

Scribbr slides are free to use, customize, and distribute for educational purposes.

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If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Sampling methods
Simple random sampling
Stratified sampling
Cluster sampling
Likert scales
Reproducibility

Statistics

Null hypothesis
Statistical power
Probability distribution
Effect size
Poisson distribution

Research bias

Optimism bias
Cognitive bias
Implicit bias
Hawthorne effect
Anchoring bias
Explicit bias

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a thesis, dissertation , or research paper , in order to situate your work in relation to existing knowledge.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

To familiarize yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your thesis or dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

A literature review is a survey of credible sources on a topic, often used in dissertations , theses, and research papers . Literature reviews give an overview of knowledge on a subject, helping you identify relevant theories and methods, as well as gaps in existing research. Literature reviews are set up similarly to other academic texts , with an introduction , a main body, and a conclusion .

An annotated bibliography is a list of source references that has a short description (called an annotation ) for each of the sources. It is often assigned as part of the research process for a paper .

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Striking the balance: Catalyzing a sustainable land-use transition

Humanity’s appetite for land continues to grow, driven by increasing demand for food, livestock, and fuel. At the same time, there is a greater awareness of—and commitment to—the vital importance of protecting natural capital. Striking the balance between these sometimes competing demands is possible, though difficult. The future is bringing new challenges and additional commitments to climate and biodiversity, and our use of land will need to adapt.

We estimate that 70 to 80 million hectares (Mha) of additional cropland will be required by 2030 (see sidebar “About our research”). This figure could rise to more than 110 Mha if humanity collectively fails to convert enough degraded land into cropland and in light of extreme weather events, as well as the potential impact of geopolitical, pandemic-related, and other disruptions on trade. While a pathway to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by 2050 remains achievable, the assumptions underpinning our scenarios would give between a 50 and 67 percent chance of staying below 1.8°C. 1 Based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) carbon budgets.

About our research

The analysis in this article is based on McKinsey’s Transition Scenarios in Agriculture and Land Use Sectors (TRAILS) model, which optimizes land use to meet 2030–50 demands for food, fuel, nature capital and materials. TRAILS is built on top of the Potsdam Institute’s MAgPIE (Model of Agricultural Production and its Impact on the Environment) model but uses an updated set of values to inform key assumptions. 1 For more information about MAgPIE, see “MAgPIE - Modelling framework,” Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, accessed October 10, 2023.

The key inputs to the TRAILS model are a set of assumptions about the evolution of demand for food—both for livestock and crops—energy, and materials through 2030, as well as about factors such as greenhouse-gas prices, the extent of protected areas, and nationally determined contributions (NDCs) over the same period. By focusing on 2030, we benefit from a reasonable degree of certainty over these key inputs. Our assumptions are informed by the latest research, market insights, and expert interviews.

TRAILS calculates the least-cost land-use scenario in which demands can be met, subject to the assumptions we have made on yield constraints, carbon prices, and land supply. While land-suitability changes due to climatic impacts over time are considered in the model, the adverse effects of climate change are not, and they are likely to increase total land needs due to their impact on crop yields.

In producing an optimized land-use scenario, the model can convert land that is currently used for other purposes, boost yields, increase trade, and increase commodity prices to match demand and supply. As a result, outputs of the model include land-use and land-cover data by region, production and price data for key commodities, and greenhouse-gas emission and biodiversity data.

In our base-case scenario, an additional 70 to 80 million hectares (Mha) of cropland would be required to meet the global demand for food, fuel, nature capital, and materials by 2030. This scenario assumes, based on McKinsey analysis, that demand is driven by moderate dietary shifts (with animal protein consumption falling slightly in developed countries but increasing in emerging economies) and that the proportion of the earth’s surface that is protected in 2030 will be approximately 14 percent. It also assumes that the supply of land is driven by stable-to-moderate yield gains of about 1 percent per annum, trade increases, and food waste reduction—all of which are in line with historical trends—and that there are no new acute climate events before 2030.

In our upper bound scenario—in which extreme weather events and geopolitical issues negatively affect both yields and trade flows—more than 110 Mha of cropland could be required by 2030.

We calculate that land-use emissions from these scenarios, coupled with emissions from outside the land-use sector from the Forecast Policy Scenario of the Inevitable Policy Response 2021, 2 “The Inevitable Policy Response 2021: Forecast Policy Scenario and 1.5C Require Policy Scenario,” Principles for Responsible Investing, October 18, 2021. would give between a 50 and 67 percent chance of limiting global warming to below 1.8°C, based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) carbon budgets. 3 Global warming of 1.5°C , IPCC, 2019.

While the additional cropland requirement calculated by our model is less than 10 percent of today’s total cropland, it is a substantial amount—equivalent to the total cropland of Brazil today and almost three times that of Tanzania. While land may not be scarce at a global level, competition for available and suitable parcels, which make up just a subset of the total, is intensifying. Hot spots for land competition are already emerging in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, which are likely to be the source of most of the additional cropland.

About the authors

Action across three primary levers can help to meet and, where possible, offset additional demands for land. Conversion of degraded land could expand cropland in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, outpacing the deforestation that has historically been the norm in these regions. This land conversion can supply a significant portion of the additional cropland required by 2030, while stronger yield growth and efficiencies from increased trade could offset part of the remainder. These supply-side levers will likely not be sufficient, however. Actions to reduce land demand—including through encouraging behavioral change, reducing food waste, seeking alternative offshore resources, and increasing innovation—are also likely to be important for a sustainable land transition.

We have identified ten actions that could lay the foundation for a global pattern of 2030 land use that both meets our needs and protects our planet. These actions would require substantial effort and outlay—converting degraded land on the scale required could cost at least $300 billion, for example—but they also represent a meaningful investment opportunity. This figure is based on McKinsey estimates of the price per hectare to convert pastureland to cropland in Brazil.

But as the window for action closes, the magnitude of the challenge must not be underestimated. Uncertainties and obstacles remain, and if the foundations of the land transition are not in place by 2030—which is just six harvest cycles away—then the risk of passing crucial climate tipping points could be substantially higher. Success is likely to require concerted, urgent action from public- and private-sector stakeholders. Every organization that uses land in any way—or that is concerned with food security, energy security, or the protection of the environment—can be a part of the solution.

Globally, land is not scarce, but only a fraction is suitable to meet our demands for food, fuel, and natural capital

Around 30 percent of the surface of our planet is land, and the majority of this—12,800 Mha—is habitable. Sixty percent of this land surface is suitable for additional cropland but currently has multiple uses (Exhibit 1). According to McKinsey analysis of Potsdam Institute’s MAgPIE (Model of Agricultural Production and its Impact on the Environment) model, today, one-third of our land surface is natural land, one-third is forested, and the remainder is pastureland, cropland, and a small share of urban land.

Our appetite for land continues to increase, though the way in which land is used is shifting. The global population will continue to grow over the next decade, which means increased demand for land to produce food, livestock (both pasture and feed), and bioenergy crops. Biomass will also be needed to decarbonize a number of other sectors, including chemicals. 2 “ Sustainable feedstocks: Accelerating recarbonization in chemicals ,” McKinsey, October 26, 2023.

At the same time, an increasingly adverse climate will depress agricultural yields and change land suitability in most countries. 3 Climate and development: An agenda for action , World Bank Group, November 3, 2022. Our needs for food and fuel also contend with the commitments that have been made related to natural capital, including increasing tree coverage for carbon sequestration and storage and preserving biodiversity.

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While land may not be scarce at a global level, the remaining available land is not all suitable or accessible for these competing needs. Challenges can emerge when a given parcel of land is well suited for multiple crops, pastureland and grazing, biodiversity conservation, carbon storage sequestration, and other uses.

By 2030, the world will need an additional 70 to 80 Mha—and perhaps more than 110 Mha—of cropland

We estimate that by 2030, the world will need additional cropland of at least 70 to 80 Mha to satisfy our needs for food, fuel, and nature (Exhibit 2). This base case is based on a set of conservative assumptions that reflect the likely condition of the world in 2030. If we factor in the possible impact of extreme weather events on yields and of geopolitical issues on trade, the additional cropland requirement could increase to more than 110 Mha.

This increase in land use is driven by three principal factors. The production of feedstock for livestock may account for around 70 percent of all incremental cropland needed by 2030, crop production for human consumption may account for around 20 percent, and biofuel production may account for the remaining approximately 10 percent. The main drivers of land use are harder to predict beyond 2030 but are likely to shift (see sidebar “Shifts in land use in the decades leading up to 2050”).

Shifts in land use in the decades leading up to 2050

As we have seen, the additional demand for land in 2030 is mostly driven by the need for food and livestock. The key drivers of longer-term land-use shifts are more uncertain.

A number of the factors that affect 2030 land use will continue to be important. Chronic climate change may have a substantial impact on land suitability and yields, for example, and the global population will continue to grow—from roughly 8.1 billion today to 9.7 billion in 2050, according to UN estimates.

Additional drivers are likely to produce localized hot spots for land competition, though they may not cause major shifts in land use at the regional level. These drivers include urban expansion; mining for rare minerals and materials, including to power AI computing; and renewable energy development. At the same time, new technological innovations in the food and energy space, such as alternative feedstocks and proteins and next-horizon energy sources, could meaningfully decrease pressures on land.

Our TRAILS model predicts that an additional 50 million hectares (Mha) of cropland may be needed to address food security between 2030 and 2050, while 100 Mha or more of forest land may be needed to address climate change and biodiversity needs. This provisional estimate of additional land required to address these two needs is equivalent to the total cropland area of the United States today. 1 “Map of croplands in the United States,” United States Geological Survey, accessed October 12, 2023.

While it is more difficult to predict how these longer-term forces will play out, it is clear that public- and private-sector stakeholders need to move quickly to lay the basis of a sustainable land-use transition. If this basis is not in place by 2030, the risk of passing crucial climate tipping points is likely to be substantially higher.

In the base case, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa are identified as the most cost-effective locations to add nearly two-thirds of the new cropland requirement—around 20 to 30 Mha each. While these projected cropland gains are in line with historic cropland expansion, these historical trends are becoming increasingly hard to replicate due to issues with land access and climate-related shifts in land suitability. 4 These regions are home to much of the world’s available cropland. Some estimates suggest that Africa could hold almost 50 percent of the world’s arable land (see Lutz Goedde, Amandla Ooko-Ombaka, and Gillian Pais, “ Winning in Africa’s agricultural market ,” McKinsey, February 15, 2019), with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimating that there may be 480–840 Mha of potential arable land or cropland in sub-Saharan Africa (see “How good the Earth?,” FAO, accessed October 12, 2023). However, only a fraction of this land may be accessible once forested land, conservation areas, and areas affected by conflict or disease are excluded (see “Arable land (% of land area) - Fragile and conflict affected situations,” The World Bank, January 19, 2019). For example, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa are particularly vulnerable to climate change; according to McKinsey analysis, around 80 percent of smallholders in Mexico and Ethiopia are likely to face at least one extreme weather event by 2050. 5 Chania Frost, Kartik Jayaram, and Gillian Pais, “ What climate-smart agriculture means for smallholder farmers ,” McKinsey, February 28, 2023.

As competition rises for the remaining suitable and accessible parcels of land, prices will likely follow. In our base case, commodity prices could increase as much as 20 to 30 percent. The increase may be even higher in land competition hot spots, further pushing up the value of land. Countries at risk of high levels of land competition include Argentina, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uruguay (Exhibit 3). In countries such as these, cropland demands do not exist in isolation. Tradeoffs on land use are necessary to manage competing priorities such as food security, the protection of biodiversity, the production of necessary energy and materials, and the securing of land for work and play.

Land competition in Africa and Latin America

In sub-Saharan Africa, while existing degraded land could satisfy most future cropland demand, converting this land may be challenging due to both local market conditions, including smallholder land ownership, and meeting commitments to nature. The heavily forested Congo basin, which includes part of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania, is the world’s largest carbon sink and adjacent to many fertile cropland areas. Pastoralists who lose their pastureland to the cultivation of crops may compensate by clearing secondary and managed forests for grazing. Without adequate intervention, 6Mha of secondary and managed forests may be at risk. Several areas in and adjacent to the basin, including Ethiopia, have also experienced armed conflict over the last five years, putting further pressure on available land.

In Latin America, there is enough pastureland in the region to satisfy the cropland needs, with certain areas of natural land (for example, the Pampas) also suitable for crops. However, competition and prices are likely to intensify in areas that have multiple productive uses—for example, use as pastureland, land for reforestation, or cropland that would be suitable for five or more crops. In Brazil, some hot spots are emerging around the southwestern part of MATOPIBA (that is, a region comprising the Cerrado biome in the states of Maranhão, Tocantins, Piauí, and Bahia). Some pressure areas are also emerging in northeastern Argentina and in Paraguay and Uruguay.

Both demand and supply measures will be needed to meet—or offset—this increased cropland requirement

A broad portfolio of interventions may be required to strike the land-use balance and secure 110 Mha—or perhaps even more—additional cropland by 2030. We estimate that supply-side interventions could meet or offset around 60 percent of the land required. These interventions could include actions across three primary levers: stronger yield growth, trade expansion, and the conversion of degraded land into cropland.

Demand-side interventions, though not the focus of this article, could offset the remainder. These interventions could include actions to alter behavior related to food waste and meat consumption, innovation to decrease land-use requirements, and shifts to prioritize sustainable offshore and marine resources.

Yield growth

Increasing yields per hectare will directly decrease the total number of hectares required to meet our crop needs. As such, boosting yields is likely to have the greatest impact of the three levers. However, according to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), yield growth has been relatively flat since the 1990s, as compared with the rest of the 20th century. Historically, yield increases were driven by technological innovation and conversion of fertile lands, including forests; the global population was able to grow five times faster than cropland between 1960 and 2000, a remarkable achievement. 6 Based on McKinsey analysis of FAO land-use statistics and World Bank population data. While some opportunities exist to grow yields in these developed markets, including, for example, through the use of nitrogen-fixing technologies, much of the low-hanging fruit may already have been captured. Boosting yields in mature agricultural regions will likely require technological disruptions in genetics and agronomy and further research and development related to agricultural inputs. 7 “ The agricultural transition: Building a sustainable future ,” McKinsey, June 27, 2023; Michael Chui and Matthias Evers, “ Long live the Bio-Revolution ,” McKinsey Global Institute, January 5, 2021; David Fiocco, Vasanth Ganesan, Maria Garcia de la Serrana Lozano, and Liz Harrison, “ Voice of the US farmer in 2022: Innovating through uncertainty ,” McKinsey, September 23, 2022.

However, substantial pockets of opportunities do exist to increase yields and adopt innovations, particularly in the developing world. Acting on these opportunities could go a considerable way in offsetting land needs. 8 For more, see “ Winning in Africa’s agricultural market ,” February 15, 2019; “ How agtech is poised to transform India into a farming powerhouse ,” McKinsey, May 10, 2023; Avinash Goyal, Ed Lock, Deepak Moorthy, and Ranali Perera, “ Saving Southeast Asia’s crops: Four key steps toward food security ,” McKinsey, June 13, 2023. For example, China’s maize yield is currently less than two-thirds that of the United States, though the area under cultivation is similar. 9 “China,” Global Yield Gap Atlas, accessed October 12, 2023; “United States,” Global Yield Gap Atlas, accessed October 12, 2023. Cutting this yield gap in half could mitigate almost 10 percent of the total additional cropland required in our base-case scenario—and this gain would be solely from action on one individual crop in one country. Similar yield gaps exist in other parts of the world. For instance, sub-Saharan Africa harvests maize over slightly more land than the United States, but cereal yields are, on average, one-fifth that of the United States and half that of India. 10 “Maize production in nine Sub-Saharan African countries,” Global Yield Gap Atlas, accessed October 12, 2023; Hannah Ritchie, “Increasing agricultural productivity across Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most important problems this century,” Our World in Data, April 4, 2022.

Trade expansion

Open channels of global trade and logistics can support food security goals and reduce overall cropland expansion as global production adjusts to meet demand through the most cost-efficient pathway. Expanding trade, both through an increase in trade volumes on existing routes and the opening of new trade routes, can therefore be an important tool to decrease the overall amount of land required. Trade expansion can also increase system resilience because global value chains tend to stabilize and adapt within two years of major shocks. Since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, for example, countries have formed new trade routes and partnerships to address the shock to the food supply system. 11 Michele Ruta, “The impact of the war in Ukraine on global trade and investment (English),” The World Bank, April 25, 2022. Without such resilience, further land degradation might have been needed to meet food and fuel needs.

In particular, there may be an opportunity to boost intra-Africa trade, which stood at around 16 percent between 2017 and 2021, compared with 21 percent intra-ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) trade at the end of the same period. 12 “Merchandise: Intra-trade and extra-trade of country groups by product, annual,” United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), updated August 8, 2023; ASEAN statistical yearbook 2021 , Association of Southeast Asian Nations, December 2021. For more information about intra-African trade, see the Intra Africa Trade Fair website. A number of African countries already rely on agricultural imports to meet many of their food security needs, and both food imports and the area of cropland under cultivation continue to rise—the latter by more than 10 percent annually, according to McKinsey analysis. Actions to simultaneously boost yields and increase intra-African trade could both reduce pressure on cropland expansion and support food security needs.

Increasing trade can be challenging, but recent experiences in Asia show that it is possible. China, the world’s largest food importer, has significantly increased trade in recent decades, including within its region: trade with ASEAN has almost doubled since 2010. The total cropland used in China decreased by nearly 6 percent from 2010 to 2019. 13 “China’s total arable land shrinks nearly 6% from 2009-2019 - survey,” Reuters, August 27, 2021.

The conversion of degraded land

In our base case, at least 30 Mha of additional cropland is expected to come from land converted from other uses. However, our historical approach to land conversion is no longer sustainable. McKinsey analysis suggests that, in the past, land competition pressures in regions such as Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa have been relieved by an annual rate of forest cover loss of 3 to 5 percent. Continued deforestation at these rates is incompatible with global and national commitments to climate and biodiversity, including the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to reduce GHG emissions under the Paris Agreement. Based on these commitments, our model assumes a significant decrease in the rate of deforestation, with 20 Mha of forest—mostly secondary forest 14 Primary forests are intact ecosystems that have not undergone human disturbance, and they tend to be the most biologically diverse type of forests. These forests are primarily located in South and Central America, Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Secondary forests are those that have been affected by human activity, such as logging or agriculture, and have since regrown. —at risk of conversion between 2020 and 2030 if at least 30 Mha of cropland is not converted from other uses. While this rate is significantly less than the 100 Mha of forest lost in the last decade, it means that the world will likely not achieve net-zero deforestation by 2030. 15 “Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020,” FAO, accessed October 12, 2023.

Going forward, a more sustainable way to procure cropland will likely be the restoration of degraded lands. Our hot spot analysis identified more than 190 Mha of degraded land across Latin America (about two thirds of the total) and sub-Saharan Africa (about a third of the total), which would be sufficient to cover even our upper-bound land requirement scenario for local and global food needs. Converting degraded land can nonetheless be challenging, time-consuming, and costly, though the extent of these difficulties varies significantly across regions (Exhibit 4).

Conversion costs can be particularly high in sub-Saharan Africa, where the viability of sourcing additional degraded land will often depend on the ability of fragmented, smallholder farm stakeholders to boost yields and convert pastureland in a sustainable manner. While these conversion costs are relatively high, there are few compelling alternatives. Continued deforestation in the region is becoming untenable. Securing similar amounts of land in other parts of the world will likely be even more challenging and costly: the United States, for example, has reduced cropland expansion in the last decade, and cropland values can be five times higher than in countries such as South Africa. 16 Information is based on 2022 US land-use data from FAO. US cropland value averaged $5,050 per acre, up 14.3 percent from 2021 (see Land values 2022 summary , United States Department of Agriculture and National Agricultural Statistics Service, August 2022); cropland in Mato Grosso, Brazil is around $4,475 per acre (see Jim Baltz et al., “Farmland prices in Brazil more than doubled in the last three years,” Farmdoc Daily , April 2023, Volume 13, Number 79); in the Western Cape of South Africa, which exports more agricultural produce than the rest of the country combined, agricultural land is worth around $972 per acre at September 2023 exchange rates (see Provincial agricultural land prices , Western Cape Government Department of Agriculture, September 28, 2022).

The example of Brazil, however, shows that the sustainable conversion of degraded land is possible. Brazil has committed to recovering around 15 Mha of degraded pasturelands by 2030, 17 “NDC checklist: Brazil analysis,” World Wildlife Fund, accessed August 13, 2023. with around ten Mha to date already successfully restored for crop production through the creation of several strategic public–private partnerships (PPP). 18 Mariana Grilli, “After a decade of the ABC Plan, measuring results and expanding access are challenges,” Globorural, updated August 15, 2020. Projects in the Cerrado, for example, extended credit to rural producers and also provided technical assistance to rural producers to recover degraded pastures, including soil analysis and technical knowledge to implement sustainable practices. 19 “Restoring degraded landscapes in the Cerrado,” The Nature Conservancy, April 25, 2022. The country has also pioneered the use of integrated crop–livestock–forestry systems (ICLF), which maximize land utilization while providing agronomical benefits; as of 2021, 17.4 Mha of cropland were already using these techniques. 20 “Integrated crop-livestock-forestry systems,” Embrapa, accessed September 16, 2023; Fernando Gregio, “Network projects 35 million hectares with ILPF systems by 2030” May 5, 2021.

The investments and assistance needed to provide incentives for Brazilian landowners to shift to more-sustainable land use may—according to McKinsey interviews with agricultural experts—have cost around $4,000 to $6,000 per hectare, which would imply that converting 70 to 80 Mha of pastureland to cropland could cost at least $300 billion. This is likely a conservative estimate, given that the costs of conversion in sub-Saharan Africa could be higher. The value of these investments is likely to be significant: the market price of cropland is substantially higher than pastureland, and a holistic understanding of returns should also factor in the benefits related to the protection of climate and biodiversity.

Ten actions to help strike the land-use balance

Without concerted action by public- and private-sector actors on the above three levers—as well as on-demand issues—both land competition pressure and prices are likely to rise.

To this end, we have identified a portfolio of ten critical actions that could substantially accelerate efforts to strike the balance across our needs for food and fuel while also meeting our commitments to nature. These actions are organized by key stakeholder, cover demand and supply issues, and address the three primary levers listed above: yield, trade, and the conversion of degraded land.

Actions for agriculture and food actors

As detailed above, up to 90 percent of the additional demand for cropland by 2030 will be driven by increased demand for food and feed. Action by key stakeholders to meet or offset this demand is therefore likely to be particularly important.

1. Restore degraded land through public-private partnerships. Significant investment will be required in infrastructure and financing to drive productivity and to enable sustainable practices (for example, regenerative farming) to build land value beyond the crop. 21 Tom Brennan, Shane Bryan, Summit Byrne, and Chris Rogers, “ Building food and agriculture businesses for a green future ,” McKinsey, September 19, 2023. These costs could be offset through novel financing mechanisms and PPPs, which support market access and capacity building for smallholder farmers and landowners—as was illustrated using the case study of Brazil above.

2. Scale up resilient agriculture practices. Research, innovation, and investment are needed to increase productivity while minimizing land footprint. This can be done, for example, through double cropping or the use of climate-smart crops. A private-sector company has recently introduced an oilseed crop from a common Eurasian weed. This crop can both generate biofuels and serve as feedstock for a wide variety of animals; the team reports promising early results that suggest eight Mha could be planted within the next five years.

3. Expand access and adoption of yield-boosting inputs. Inputs such as fertilizers and biologicals can boost yields and nutrient intensity and restore the land biome. For example, a multinational food-products manufacturer established a network of development centers across West Africa and Asia to promote a package of interventions for farm rehabilitation. This package included planting material, high-quality and appropriate inputs—including fertilizers and pesticides—and agronomic and economic training for farmers. This program is already delivering results: tens of thousands of local farmers have received agricultural training, and crop yields on farms receiving the package of interventions have approximately doubled. In certain regions, organic-matter content per hectare has increased by 14 percent.

4. Invest in hybrid land-use approaches. Techniques such as agrivoltaics, crop rotation, ICLF, and cover cropping can decrease land competition by allowing the same piece of land to be used for multiple purposes. For example, a not-for-profit institution recently found that 20 percent of available land in a Western European country could be suitable for the simultaneous production of solar energy and crops. This finding is now being used to support investments in both the regulation and ecological work that would be required to support these installations.

5. Reduce food and production waste. Optimizing the supply chain—including, for example, through precision agriculture and cold storage—can significantly decrease waste and therefore decrease overall land requirements. For example, a global beverage company recently used its farmer data platform to support real-time decision making along its supply chain by integrating weather and field-level data. This platform is available to more than 30,000 farmers across 13 countries and has helped farmers reduce production waste by more than $45 million and reduce water consumption by 10 percent.

Actions for fuel actors

Around 10 percent of the additional demand for cropland by 2030 will be driven by increased demand for fuel, but this can be offset by scaling developing technologies and increasing overall efficiency.

6. Provide incentives for at-scale deployment of energy and power crops. Developing energy technologies could enable the world to meet fuel requirements with a lower emissions profile and land footprint. For example, a Brazilian sugar company invested early in equipment and enzymatic capabilities to ferment sugarcane, which has enabled the scale-up of second-generation ethanol created from bagasse. The company can now convert sugarcane biomass into advanced fuels with 97 percent less greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions than traditional gasoline. In addition, denser nonfood power crops such as jathropha, macauba, and brassica carinata show promising results as feedstock for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), 22 Samuel Peres Chagas et al., “Light biodiesel from macaúba and palm kernel: Properties of their blends with fossil kerosene in the perspective of an alternative aviation fuel,” Renewable Energy , May 2020, Volume 151. which will be particularly important in the coming years. Developing and scaling these technologies requires substantial investment, which can be encouraged through supportive regulations, the increased availability of financing, and the implementation of industry standards to increase biofuel land efficiency.

7. Support next-horizon technologies to meet the demand for sustainable fuels and materials. Negative-emissions solutions, which remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it over the long term, can offset existing emissions. 23 “ How negative emissions can help organizations meet their climate goals ,” McKinsey, June 30, 2021. Many of these solutions will require the use of land, though this use can also contribute to nature- and biodiversity-related goals. The Coalition for Negative Emissions (CNE), for example, has brought together public- and private-sector actors to articulate the business case for negative-emissions technologies. In 2021, they identified four to nine metric gigatons of annual negative-emissions potential by 2050 through the use of natural climate solutions (NCS) to sequester carbon (for example, agroforestry) and through bioenergy and carbon capture and storage (BECCS) technologies (for example, forest residue). 24 The case for negative emissions , Coalition for Negative Emissions, June 2021.

Actions for nature actors

Nature actors can take several steps to ensure that efforts to meet food, feed, and fuel needs do not undermine our vital commitments to preserving natural capital.

8. Secure private sector commitments to avoid deforestation. The preservation of forests and implementation of nature-based solutions, such as habitat restoration, will be vital in preserving natural capital and lowering the level of GHGs in the atmosphere. Several private-sector firms are already taking action in this space: a North America investment firm, for example, created a biodiversity strategy that resulted in a reduction in emissions of tens of millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. This strategy involved launching a new fund dedicated to accelerating and scaling the regenerative agriculture transition as well as mitigating biodiversity loss by direct investment in ecosystem preservation and restoration.

9. Conserve land in hot spots that have high carbon storage or biodiversity potential. Land conservation can be one of the effective means of preserving natural capital, and the resulting carbon credits can represent a significant trade opportunity. Conservation efforts generally require cooperation between a broad variety of stakeholders. For example, a development-partner-led program worked with private-sector companies and communities that depend on forests for their livelihood in Africa and Asia to invest more than $1 billion in forest-preserving grants and technical assistance.

10. Provide incentives for the long-term conversion of degraded land to forest cover. PPPs and other financing and carbon credit mechanisms can be used to stimulate the sustainable conversion of degraded land. In Australia, for example, the government devised a carbon credit program funded by PPPs to encourage farmers to adopt emission-reducing projects, including the planting of trees. To date, farmers have received $800 million of carbon farming credits. 25 Tara de Landgrafft, Courtney Fowler, and Michelle Stanley, “Multi-billion-dollar potential for Western Australia’s carbon farming industry,” Australian Broadcasting Corporation, April 19, 2018.

Getting started

While land may not (yet) be scarce globally, competition for remaining parcels is intensifying quickly. This should matter for any public- or private-sector leader who uses land in any capacity, as well as those who are concerned about food security, energy security, or natural capital.

It can be daunting for any organization to develop a land-use strategy in the context of competing requirements for land and the required global sustainability land-use transition, particularly because many industry leaders already expect significant disruptions across the agriculture value chain over the next two years. The right strategy will look different for each organization. Organizations—whether they be public-sector actors, businesses, or nongovernment organizations—could start, however, by working through the following steps:

1. Understand your current land-use trajectory and exposure to related dynamics. Organizations can map out their current projected land need by 2030 and their exposure to land competition hot spots. Input providers, for example, would likely benefit from understanding where land and commodity prices will be most volatile and the impact that this could have on their farmers. Understanding these impacts can help input providers shape their supply chain, sales, and marketing strategies.

2. Link land use to your broader level of ambition related to sustainability, climate, and biodiversity. Organizations may have made (or want to make) commitments regarding emissions reductions, deforestation, or the preservation of natural capital. Their land-use strategy should be informed by—and form an integral part of the effort to achieve—those ambitions. Organizations that have committed to the COP15 goal of protecting 30 percent of the planet for nature by 2030, for example, may have particularly ambitious goals for increasing their own land-use efficiency or investing in the preservation of natural capital.

3. Identify areas for improvement and prioritize investments to build land value beyond crops. Once organizations are clear on both their current trajectories and their ambitions for land use, they can identify areas in which to reduce their total demand for land or increase the rate at which degraded land can be sustainably converted. They could then consider prioritizing their investments across these initiatives based on factors such as cost and environmental impact. Landowners, farmers, input providers, and other value chain participants can consider comprehensive aspects of land value as they decide on their portfolio of interventions, including those with benefits that may take more time to materialize (for example, soil preservation, which can create new future revenue streams, including through carbon credits). 26 Tom Brennan, Shane Bryan, Summit Byrne, and Chris Rogers, “ Building food and agriculture businesses for a green future ,” McKinsey, September 19, 2023.

With rapidly increasing competition for prime land and just six harvest cycles before 2030, organizations are running out of time to strike the balance and get their land use onto a sustainable footing. By quickly developing a more informed perspective on land use, leaders can decide where and how to invest to meet their own land-use needs without endangering global commitments to emissions reduction and the preservation of natural capital.

Tom Brennan is a partner in McKinsey’s Philadelphia office, Nicolas Denis is a partner in the Brussels office, Nelson Ferreira is a senior partner in the São Paulo office, Amandla Ooko-Ombaka is a partner in the Seattle office, Pradeep Prabhala is a partner in the Mumbai office, and Stephanie Stefanski is a consultant in the Washington, DC, office.

The authors wish to thank David Andrieux, Miroslav Batka, Yoseph Biresaw, Charlie Briggs, Julien Claes, Jason Eis, Ruth Hütte, Swamini Khurana, Antoine Stevens, Annie W. Sun, Bryan Vadheim, Franz Waldner, and Daniel Wu for their contributions to this article.

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Action Research: What it is, Stages & Examples

What is action research?

Stage 1: Plan

Stage 2: Act

Stage 3: Observe

Stage 4: Reflect

Identify the action research question or problem

Review existing knowledge

Plan the research

Collect data

Analyze the data

Reflect on the findings

Develop an action plan

Implement the action plan

Evaluate and monitor progress

Reflect and iterate

Disadvantages

Frequently Asked Questions(FAQ’s)

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Action Research: Steps, Benefits, and Tips

Introduction

Applications for action research

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Advantages of action research

Disadvantages of action research

Examples of action research

Collaborative action research

Participatory action research

Educational action research

Community-based action research

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Understanding the action research cycle

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What is action research and how do we do it?

The decline and rediscovery of action research

Undertaking action research

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Action research guides

Action research in informal education

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Introduction

What Action Research Is

The Purposes of Conducting Action Research

The Development of Action Research

What is Involved in Action Research

The Models and Definitions of Action Research

The Key Characteristics of Action Research

The Philosophical Worldview of The Action Researcher

Examples of Action Research Projects.

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