"Action research" is a term used to describe professionals studying their own practice in order to improve it. Applied to teaching, it involves gathering and interpreting "data" to better understand an aspect of your teaching that interests or concerns you. Action research is an important recent development in the broad territory of "teachers' professional development." Action research offers an alternative to teachers who have been encouraged to look to others, rather than to themselves and their students, for ways to improve their teaching.

• Why is it called "research"? Try to avoid your everyday assumptions about "research" as you think about action research. Focus instead on the action part of the term. Action research has nothing to do with lab coats, number-crunching, and familiar stereotypes about "objectivity." The term "research" simply refers to trying to better understand what you are doing in your classroom.
• Who does action research? Act, Reflect, Revise: Revitalize! indicates, action research is done by teachers who are encouraged and supported in the study of their own teaching. Action research has a long tradition in parts of England and Australia, and there is a journal called Educational Action Research. Since 1990, there has been a growing interest in Malaysia  in teacher research and action research.
• Why do teachers do action research? As you might expect, some action research is done by teachers taking programs of graduate study in education. The support of action research by OPSTF is a significant signal that action research does not need to be limited to graduate work. The "climate" of individual schools is crucial to creating an environment that supports action research.

How long does an action research project take? Typically, an action research project will take place over several weeks or months of your practice. The length of time needed to observe or demonstrate improvement will depend upon the target of your action research

• Where do I start? "What is my concern in my practice?" is where you begin. It should be a concern that YOU can do something about. It should not depend on others. Notice that the word "concern" calls attention to personal values, and you should select some aspect of your teaching that relates to what is important to you about your students' learning. It would be very helpful to discuss your concern with fellow educators in your school, to let them help you focus your concern, and to let their concerns help you find yours. If two or more people have similar concerns, so much the better!
• What do I do next? Once you find a focus, the next question is "What am I going to do about it?" Ask yourself if there is some relatively modest change you could introduce to your students that would help you help them improve the quality of their learning. If you need to know more before you DO something, then talk with them to get a sense of how they see the quality of their learning. ("Quality" is a wonderful word because it is so broad-learning has so many different qualities-yet it also points in the direction of improvement. Parents, teachers and students all prefer high quality over low.)
• How do I find out if I made a difference? The next question is, "What evidence will let me make a judgement about what I did?" It could be evidence written by students for you, or it could be some improvement in their written work or in the classroom environment. This is where action research starts to pay off, because it makes us look at our teaching through something other than the relatively soft and friendly eyes of our own memories.
• So what? The final question is, "How will I validate any claims about what I have done?" And the answer has several steps: You prepare a written report, no matter how short, that summarizes your concern, your action, your evidence and your interpretation of the evidence. Then you meet with other teachers to invite them to comment on your report, to offer suggestions for going further and to offer additional interpretations of your evidence. This is perhaps the most challenging step, but you can see how this kind of conversation in schools could begin to improve our "self-help" efforts in the field of education.

You might also search the internet as well as your nearest Education library.