Action research: systematic reflective action to improve practice

When you are teaching you may come across problems which aren’t solved simply, one part of your professional role will be to try different approaches to solving them, evaluating those approaches and using the results of that evaluation to inform your practice. Systematic exploration of this kind is often termed ‘action research’. Action research takes many forms, but the term always indicates cycles of systematic exploration designed to solve a problem or at least improve a situation in professional practice