Identifying the non-negotiable or defining characteristics of action research is difficult because action research values multiple perspectives and worldviews, and encourages participants to own and create their knowledge.  This results in a family of approaches as action research evolves to serve practitioners and communities with which they work in their learning process.  Here is a listing of some of the family members and close cousins of action research. 

Action Research Family 

• Action Research

• Collaborative Action Research

• Participatory Action Research 

• Community-Based Participatory Action Research

• Youth Action Research

• Action Learning 

• Participatory Action Learning and Action Research 

• Exploratory Action Research

Action Research Family

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Action research is collaborative and participatory so why do people add more modifiers?  The reason is that there are different ways in which different players work together in the context of the action that is introduced and studied.  To see a definition of action research visit the Action Research Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), USA.

Collaborative Action Research often focuses on the relationship of the practitioner action researcher with other action researchers, some of which might come from different settings like the university.  The balance of power and decision-making in this collaborative partnership can affect the definition of the research activity.  If expertise coming from outside of the setting dominates, the nature of the activity may shift away from collaborative action research and toward Design Research. Similarly, if the reason for researching the action is to validate its success, rather than to understand the change process, the researcher partnership might be engaging in Formative Evaluative Research. See the  Center for Collaborative Learning CA, USA, for a definition of Collaborative action research. 

Participatory Action Research suggests a collaborative relationship with a team of practitioner action researchers in the same setting.  In this arrangement, each person is doing their own action research, but the action that is being studied has many authors.   So the multiple understandings come from their collective work.  Here are some links to follow this type of action research: Cousins & Whitmore (1998); Greene (2006); Whitmore (1998). Here is a website on Participatory Action Research by the Institute of Development Studies, based at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK. 

Community-Based Participatory Action Research suggests that the action researchers are working within a complex community working and listening to how they want to proceed.  They may, or may not define themselves as action researchers, but they understand that the action is shared and that they are part of the activity system, including stakeholders that are not part of the setting that is being altered. Community-based participatory action research focuses on who "owns" the problem and giving voice to groups that are often marginalized when solutions are proposed (Ramsden, McKay, & Crowe 2010; Wallerstein, Duran, Oetzel, & Minkler (2018); Wallerstein & Duran (2006).  Here is A Short Guide to Community-Based Action Research by Taisha Bonilla and Tahirah Farris from Los Angeles, CA, USA.. 

Youth Action Research refers to youth tackling problems or issues (Ozer 2017).  They try, by their actions, to create change. Some excellent examples are described by Carlos Chiu in this work with students and teachers in Peru.  The work you see in the student videos was done by student action researchers who did not receive either money or class credit for their community work. 

Action Learning is a way of highlighting the continuous learning aspect of the action research process.  This concept is somewhat similar to informal action research (Beck, 20l7). For more about action learning see the World Institute for Action Learning. 

Participatory Action Learning, Action Research is a philosophy, a methodology, a theory of learning, and a process for professional and community engagement (Wood and Zuber-Skerritt, 2012; Zuber-Skerritt and Wood,  2019).  It involves a partnership with community members with university researchers.  Action learning makes the project feel more inclusive as there are lots of different roles and ways to be engaged in the project. Here is a review of Lesley Wood's new book on this approach by Mariëtte Koen in South Africa. 

Exploratory Action Research is described as the first step in the iterative process of action research.  These two documents describe this approach to action research.  

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Champion Teachers: Stories of Exploratory Action Research (2016) in Chile

http://bit.ly/champion-teachers

A Handbook for Exploratory Action Research (2018)

http://bit.ly/handbook-EAR

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Close Cousins to Action Research

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Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a way of starting with what is working well and then using action research strategies to better understand and improve it  (Reed 2007; Watkins, Mohr, & Kelly 2011). To learn more about this approach, see the AI Commons  Website by the David L. Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry at Champlain College, Burlington, Vermont, USA. in continuing partnership with Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management, Cleveland, Oh, USA.  

Lesson Study  (jyugyo kenkyu) is an approach to professional development that originated in Japan 150 years ago. It was introduced to the United States in the late 1990s and is now widely practiced in over 50 countries. Lesson study places the teaching of a shared lesson as the action and has a set of protocols for understanding the outcomes.  lesson study focuses on improving teaching and teachers increasing pedagogical knowledge and beliefs thus supporting instructional improvement, and student learning (Lewis, Perry, Friedkin, and Roth 2012). The Lesson Study Group at Mills College is an insightful community in the US to learn more about Lesson Study.  Catherine Lewis shares an overview on CBS.

Practitioner Research does not have to be action research, as practitioners can engage in any of the many forms of research (Anderson, Herr, & Nihlen  2007; Cochran-Smith & Lytle 2015; Coughlan 2014.  Some people make the assumption that any research done by practitioners is action research, but this is not necessarily the case. While action research is generally practitioner research, not all practitioner research is action research.  

Reflective Practice/Self Study is the first part of action research but does not require the practitioner to make the results public, to share the results of the learning with others.  Many of these approaches will be described in these resources. Here is an annotated review of books on professional or reflective self-study. 

Teacher Research can be any form of research that teachers do, including action research, but not limited to it. At George Mason University, teacher research is described in a way that is very similar to what most authors understand as action research. And at some point, they suggest that action research can be a synonym for teacher research.  The description of action research posted on this site is more closely aligned with what we have called reflective practice.   This shows the variation in the way that people working in the field have of conceptualizing these terms. 

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Action Inquiry draws on action research and recasts evaluation research to help navigate complexity when enacting collective leadership. It is an approach to learning and inquiry that combines research and practice for the purpose of transformational change, often applied to leadership practices.  (Sharp,  2018); Tobort, 2004)

Action or Improvement Science is explicitly designed to accelerate learning-by-doing (Argyris, Putnam, & Smith 1985; Friedman, Razer, & Sykes 2004). It's a more user-centered and problem-centered approach to improving teaching and learning that is highly similar to action research supported by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.