Comments on Systematic Methodologies of Action Research in the New Millennium: A Review of Publications 2000 – 2014

Action research was introduced in China in 1980s and has become popular from kindergartens to universities. Inspired by existing AR studies, we have initiated an international project the Action Research on Curriculum Development of Human Values in Education in Schools of Mainland China since 2000, collaborating with primary schools, Education Bureau and overseas experts, and moving across the world, such as Guangdong Province in China and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.

Also, we have implemented curriculum reform through AR in South China Normal University. Under the leadership of Prof. Huang, we established Primary Education Major, designed six experimental courses and created a new teaching method—Network Collaborative Active Teaching and Learning.

We try to solve emergent problems by changing AR plans and learning from action researchers worldwide. We read relevant articles and books. New AR theories have emerged in 21st century. Development of AR in China is not as prosperous as that in western countries. So we conducted a review on AR papers to get a whole picture. We analyzed empirical AR from the perspectives of paradigms, data collection and analysis methods. Though the manuscript was accepted for publication, there were still limitations. For example, what about articles written in other languages? How to deal better with the ambiguous terminology of AR when doing classification?

Blog post written by Siyu Chen 陈思宇.

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