Action Research Series | Heather Francis & Alyssa Escalante Dixon | Action research vs self study research

When it comes to action research you have a lot of choices, you can study a behavior, an intervention, an attitude, an instructional tool, your environment or you can study yourself. When you are studying yourself as the main subject of your action research you are conducting a self-study project. If you're studying anything else, it's action research from another vantage point, and not self-study. 

Self-study might sound like a selfish form of research but it is far from it. Yes, it is self-centered, but is not for wholly selfish purposes. The purpose of self-study is to uncover your teaching practice so you can be a better teacher for your students in the future. It's the unveiling of your teaching attitudes, choices, practices and behaviors that helps you to advocate for what you are doing well and realize where improvement can still be made. 

Whether you are doing action research on an intervention or environment or self-study research where you, the teacher, are the subject of inquiry, you can use a critical friend to help you along your journey. A critical friend is a friend who works in tandem with you as you thinking critically and constructively on the evidence of your teaching practice and student responses or student work. A critical friend helps us see elements of our experience we cannot see because of our own goals or tunnel vision. They can also encourage us and support us when we feel discouraged or disappointed in the results we see from ourselves or our students performance in the classroom. Critical friendships are based on trust and understanding, they can take time to develop but they are certainly worth it.

This episode doesn't state that action research or self-study is better than the other, although Heather is certainly biased towards self-study research. But knowing the differences between the two can help teachers determine the best course of action for their personal research experiences.

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