Action Research
Dissertation Outline
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION (Statement of the problem and its significance; brief
description of your specific study – i.e., research questions and design)
What is your study about – i.e., what problem(s) is your study going to address, how,
and why? (This should include both a brief identification of the problem that
motivates the study, and the goals of the study – i.e., what you hope to
accomplish)
What is action research and what are the implications of deciding to use action
research as your methodology? (i.e., what kind of study are you going to propose
for your dissertation and how it will differ from more traditional dissertation
studies?)
What is the theoretical framework informing this study – i.e., what assumptions are
you making and/or from what perspectives are you going to approach this
problem? (just identify them – you can go into more details about the support in
the literature in the next chapter)
Given this theoretical framework – and possibly some preliminary studies – what are
the research questions your study is going to address?
How are you going to address these questions and why? (do this very briefly, just to
give a sense of the study – a more detailed description will follow in Ch.3/4 – this
should include a brief description of both the intervention and the data sources;
make sure you include a statement about adopting an action research method and
why it seems appropriate for the study)
What potential contributions/implications can this study have for the field?
How is the rest of this document organized?
CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW (What we already know that is relevant to the
problem under study and informed the dissertation study)
What does this literature review cover, why, and how is it organized? (This
introduction is critical to orient the reader and allow you to make explicit upfront
why you chose to cover certain things versus others, and their relevance to your
study)
What support for your theoretical framework can you find in the literature? (do this
only for the most essential elements of your theoretical framework; use this also
as an opportunity to identify key elements of your theoretical framework that have
implications for your study, and make those implications explicit)
What do we already know about the problem under study from existing research, and
what implications does this knowledge have for the study? What are the “gaps”,
i.e., what do we NOT know yet about the problem, and how is the proposed study
going to address some of these gaps?
� (when appropriate) What do we know from previous studies that can help us design
a more effective intervention?
CHAPTER 3. RESEARCH DESIGN (In details, what you plan to do to address your
research questions and the rationale for these decisions)
Introduction.
What is your study? (Only if a reminder seems needed)
How is this chapter organized, and what is the function/goal of each section?
Choice of methodology.
What are the basic tenets of action research?
Why did you choose this approach for your study?
Context.
What is the context (i.e., district, school, agency, program, grant project, etc.) in which
you will conduct the study?
What are characteristic elements of that context that are most relevant for your study?
Why did you choose this context?
(if relevant) How is your study going to be influenced by this choice?
What is your own role and how does that position you as a researcher?
Overall design.
What are your research questions? (in some cases, you may be able now to state them
in more detail than in the introduction)
What is the overall design of your study to address these question? (only if it seems
needed – if so, include both a brief description of the intervention, its rationale,
and identify key data sources)
Participants’ recruitment.
� How will you recruit and select participants, and ensure all Human Subjects
regulations are met?
(If relevant) Plan for the proposed intervention.
� What is the detailed plan for the intervention, and what is the rationale for each of the
key design decisions?
Data collection and analysis.
What data are you going to collect, how and why? (this needs to be VERY
DETAILED, with careful justification for each decision made)
How will this data, when taken together, allow you to address all your research
questions?
How will you analyze these data to address each research question? (if at all possible,
identify some “initial codes” you will be using to organize the data, while
remaining open to changes)
Methodology “check”.
� How is the study you designed meeting the key tenets of action research? (Make
sure you address each of the tenets you identified at the beginning of the chapter;
some discussion of your positionality could be here, unless you fully addressed
this issue in the “context” subsection)
APPENDICES. (Additional documentation as needed -- to support points you have made
in the text, or describe/show specific research tools you will be using, for the readers’
examination)
NOTE. With minor modifications, these will also be the first chapters of your
dissertation, to which you will be likely to add.
CHAPTER 4. FINDINGS (this may take more than one chapter depending on the study
and the data)
CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSIONS (What you have learned about your research questions
and the problem under study more generally, and how this can contribute to the research
literature and to improve practice)