At the simplest level, therefore, action research involves a spiral or cycle of planning, action, monitoring and reflection:
This sequence underpins the process of the inquiry but be prepared to find fuzzy edges between the stages as your inquiry proceeds. For a start, you will probably not start with planning; there may be much monitoring and observation of existing practice (reconnaissance) before you are ready to plan and implement a change. As you become more involved with your research, you may find it hard to detach one element of the process from another. You may find yourself reflecting as you are acting – something that Donald Schön (1983) calls ‘knowing-in-action’ – and monitoring also will take place as action proceeds. However, once that first change is implemented the action research cycle proceeds generally in the above manne
