How can action research contribute to your organization?
I am very excited about action research and find that it is perfect for a community such as my work place.
To answer this question I turn to the Three Questions Posed by Action Researchers( as stated by Coghlan and Brannick):
1. What happened? The relating of the story.
2. How do you make sense of what happened? this involves rigorous reflection on that story.
3. So what? The most challenging question deals with the extrapolation of usable knowledge or theory from the reflection on the story.
Everyday there are situations where I see places that these questions would help identify and eventually solve a workable problem in our workplace.
One example concerns a story that I have related previously, so bear with me. The short version is that my TeamCrew Director does not see the reason to identify the performance objectives associated with our specific cutting method. This is troublesome because I am often tasked with relating to students why they did not do well on their assessment or why they have not been recommended for movement up through the team’s ranks. I clearly see a need to identify what our assessments are assign and how we know when someone has passed. She probably feels a number of things, first of all the fear of letting go of information that provides you with a job.
Asking myself the questions above would not only help me see things from multiple perspectives, but find a problem that could be studied and best practices identified. This would create (at least some) peace and harmony within our little world.
