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• What Is Action Research? | Definition & Examples

What Is Action Research? | Definition & Examples

Published on January 27, 2023 by Tegan George . Revised on January 12, 2024.

Table of contents

Types of action research, action research models, examples of action research, action research vs. traditional research, advantages and disadvantages of action research, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about action research.

There are 2 common types of action research: participatory action research and practical action research.

• Participatory action research emphasizes that participants should be members of the community being studied, empowering those directly affected by outcomes of said research. In this method, participants are effectively co-researchers, with their lived experiences considered formative to the research process.
• Practical action research focuses more on how research is conducted and is designed to address and solve specific issues.

Both types of action research are more focused on increasing the capacity and ability of future practitioners than contributing to a theoretical body of knowledge.

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Action research is often reflected in 3 action research models: operational (sometimes called technical), collaboration, and critical reflection.

• Operational (or technical) action research is usually visualized like a spiral following a series of steps, such as “planning → acting → observing → reflecting.”
• Collaboration action research is more community-based, focused on building a network of similar individuals (e.g., college professors in a given geographic area) and compiling learnings from iterated feedback cycles.
• Critical reflection action research serves to contextualize systemic processes that are already ongoing (e.g., working retroactively to analyze existing school systems by questioning why certain practices were put into place and developed the way they did).

Action research is often used in fields like education because of its iterative and flexible style.

After the information was collected, the students were asked where they thought ramps or other accessibility measures would be best utilized, and the suggestions were sent to school administrators. Example: Practical action research Science teachers at your city’s high school have been witnessing a year-over-year decline in standardized test scores in chemistry. In seeking the source of this issue, they studied how concepts are taught in depth, focusing on the methods, tools, and approaches used by each teacher.

Action research differs sharply from other types of research in that it seeks to produce actionable processes over the course of the research rather than contributing to existing knowledge or drawing conclusions from datasets. In this way, action research is formative , not summative , and is conducted in an ongoing, iterative way.

As such, action research is different in purpose, context, and significance and is a good fit for those seeking to implement systemic change.

Action research comes with advantages and disadvantages.

• Action research is highly adaptable , allowing researchers to mold their analysis to their individual needs and implement practical individual-level changes.
• Action research provides an immediate and actionable path forward for solving entrenched issues, rather than suggesting complicated, longer-term solutions rooted in complex data.
• Done correctly, action research can be very empowering , informing social change and allowing participants to effect that change in ways meaningful to their communities.

Disadvantages

• Due to their flexibility, action research studies are plagued by very limited generalizability  and are very difficult to replicate . They are often not considered theoretically rigorous due to the power the researcher holds in drawing conclusions.
• Action research can be complicated to structure in an ethical manner . Participants may feel pressured to participate or to participate in a certain way.
• Action research is at high risk for research biases such as selection bias , social desirability bias , or other types of cognitive biases .

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Normal distribution
• Degrees of freedom
• Null hypothesis
• Discourse analysis
• Control groups
• Mixed methods research
• Non-probability sampling
• Quantitative research
• Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Research bias

• Rosenthal effect
• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Selection bias
• Negativity bias
• Status quo bias

Action research is conducted in order to solve a particular issue immediately, while case studies are often conducted over a longer period of time and focus more on observing and analyzing a particular ongoing phenomenon.

Action research is focused on solving a problem or informing individual and community-based knowledge in a way that impacts teaching, learning, and other related processes. It is less focused on contributing theoretical input, instead producing actionable input.

Action research is particularly popular with educators as a form of systematic inquiry because it prioritizes reflection and bridges the gap between theory and practice. Educators are able to simultaneously investigate an issue as they solve it, and the method is very iterative and flexible.

A cycle of inquiry is another name for action research . It is usually visualized in a spiral shape following a series of steps, such as “planning → acting → observing → reflecting.”

Sources in this article

We strongly encourage students to use sources in their work. You can cite our article (APA Style) or take a deep dive into the articles below.

George, T. (2024, January 12). What Is Action Research? | Definition & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved June 9, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/action-research/

Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2017). Research methods in education (8th edition). Routledge.

Naughton, G. M. (2001).  Action research (1st edition). Routledge.

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Research design: Participatory Action Research (PAR)

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This study uses Participatory Action Research (PAR) as a research design. The whole research is based on a participatory approach: in collecting data, analysing data, and re-defining the research question and the research method. PAR bridges the gap between theory and practice through community-based participation. It is rooted in social psychology.

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Richter, J. (2016). Research design: Participatory Action Research (PAR). In: Human Rights Education Through Ciné Débat. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-12723-7_6

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• Published: 27 April 2023

Participatory action research

• Flora Cornish   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3404-9385 1 ,
• Nancy Breton   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8388-0458 1 ,
• Ulises Moreno-Tabarez   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3504-8624 2 ,
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Participatory action research (PAR) is an approach to research that prioritizes the value of experiential knowledge for tackling problems caused by unequal and harmful social systems, and for envisioning and implementing alternatives. PAR involves the participation and leadership of those people experiencing issues, who take action to produce emancipatory social change, through conducting systematic research to generate new knowledge. This Primer sets out key considerations for the design of a PAR project. The core of the Primer introduces six building blocks for PAR project design: building relationships; establishing working practices; establishing a common understanding of the issue; observing, gathering and generating materials; collaborative analysis; and planning and taking action. We discuss key challenges faced by PAR projects, namely, mismatches with institutional research infrastructure; risks of co-option; power inequalities; and the decentralizing of control. To counter such challenges, PAR researchers may build PAR-friendly networks of people and infrastructures; cultivate a critical community to hold them to account; use critical reflexivity; redistribute powers; and learn to trust the process. PAR’s societal contribution and methodological development, we argue, can best be advanced by engaging with contemporary social movements that demand the redressingl of inequities and the recognition of situated expertise.

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Introduction.

For the authors of this Primer, participatory action research (PAR) is a scholar–activist research approach that brings together community members, activists and scholars to co-create knowledge and social change in tandem 1 , 2 . PAR is a collaborative, iterative, often open-ended and unpredictable endeavour, which prioritizes the expertise of those experiencing a social issue and uses systematic research methodologies to generate new insights. Relationships are central. PAR typically involves collaboration between a  community with lived experience of a social issue and professional researchers, often based in universities, who contribute relevant knowledge, skills, resources and networks. PAR is not a research process driven by the imperative to generate knowledge for scientific progress, or knowledge for knowledge’s sake; it is a process for generating knowledge-for-action and knowledge-through-action, in service of goals of specific communities. The position of a PAR scholar is not easy and is constantly tested, as PAR projects and roles straddle university and community boundaries, involving unequal  power relations and multiple, sometimes conflicting interests. This Primer aims to support researchers in preparing a PAR project, by providing a scaffold to navigate the processes through which PAR can help us to collaboratively envisage and enact emancipatory futures.

We consider PAR an emancipatory form of scholarship 1 . Emancipatory scholarship is driven by interest in tackling injustices and building futures supportive of human thriving, rather than objectivity and neutrality. It uses research not primarily to communicate with academic experts but to inform grassroots collective action. Many users of PAR aspire to projects of liberation and/or transformation . Users are likely to be critical of research that perpetuates oppressive power relations, whether within the research relationships themselves or in a project’s messages or outcomes, often aiming to trouble or transform power relations. PAR projects are usually concerned with developments not only in knowledge but also in action and in participants’ capacities, capabilities and performances.

PAR does not follow a set research design or particular methodology, but constitutes a strategic rallying point for collaborative, impactful, contextually situated and inclusive efforts to document, interpret and address complex systemic problems 3 . The development of PAR is a product of intellectual and activist work bridging universities and communities, with separate genealogies in several Indigenous 4 , 5 , Latin American 6 , 7 , Indian 8 , African 9 , Black feminist 10 , 11 and Euro-American 12 , 13 traditions.

PAR, as an authoritative form of enquiry, became established during the 1970s and 1980s in the context of anti-colonial movements in the Global South. As anti-colonial movements worked to overthrow territorial and economic domination, they also strived to overthrow symbolic and epistemic injustices , ousting the authority of Western science to author knowledge about dominated peoples 4 , 14 . For Indigenous scholars, the development of PAR approaches often comprised an extension of Indigenous traditions of knowledge production that value inclusion and community engagement, while enabling explicit engagements with matters of power, domination and representation 15 . At the same time, exchanges between Latin American and Indian popular education movements produced Orlando Fals Borda’s articulation of PAR as a paradigm in the 1980s. This orientation prioritized people’s participation in producing knowledge, instead of the positioning of local populations as the subject of knowledge production practices imposed by outside experts 16 . Meanwhile, PAR appealed to those inspired by Black and postcolonial feminists who challenged established knowledge hierarchies, arguing for the wisdom of people marginalized by centres of power, who, in the process of survivance, that is, surviving and resisting oppressive social structures, came to know and deconstruct those structures acutely 17 , 18 .

Some Euro-American approaches to PAR are less transformational and more reformist, in the action research paradigm, as developed by Kurt Lewin 19 to enhance organizational efficacy during and after World War II. Action research later gained currency as a popular approach for professionals such as teachers and nurses to develop their own practices, and it tended to focus on relatively small-scale adjustments within a given institutional structure, instead of challenging power relations as in anti-colonial PAR 13 , 20 . In the late twentieth century, participatory research gained currency in academic fields such as participatory development 21 , 22 , participatory health promotion 23 and creative methods 24 . Although participatory research includes participants in the conceptualization, design and conduct of a project, it may not prioritize action and social change to the extent that PAR does. In the early twenty-first century, the development of PAR is occurring through sustained scholarly engagements in anti-colonial 5 , 25 , abolitionist 26 , anti-racist 27 , 28 , gender-expansive 29 , climate activist 30 and other radical social movements.

This Primer bridges these traditions by looking across them for mutual learning but avoiding assimilating them. We hope that readers will bring their own activist and intellectual heritages to inform their use of PAR and adapt and adjust the suggestions we present to meet their needs.

Four key principles

Drawing across its diverse origins, we characterize PAR by four key principles. The first is the authority of direct experience. PAR values the expertise generated through experience, claiming that those who have been marginalized or harmed by current social relations have deep experiential knowledge of those systems and deserve to own and lead initiatives to change them 3 , 5 , 17 , 18 . The second is knowledge in action. Following the tradition of action research, it is through learning from the experience of making changes that PAR generates new knowledge 13 . The third key principle is research as a transformative process. For PAR, the research process is as important as the outcomes; projects aim to create empowering relationships and environments within the research process itself 31 . The final key principle is collaboration through dialogue. PAR’s power comes from harnessing the diverse sets of expertise and capacities of its collaborators through critical dialogues 7 , 8 , 32 .

Because PAR is often unfamiliar, misconstrued or mistrusted by dominant scientific 33 institutions, PAR practitioners may find themselves drawn into competitions and debates set on others’ terms, or into projects interested in securing communities’ participation but not their emancipation. Engaging communities and participants in participatory exercises for the primary purpose of advancing research aims prioritized by a university or others is not, we contend, PAR. We encourage PAR teams to articulate their intellectual and political heritage and aspirations, and agree their core principles, to which they can hold themselves accountable. Such agreements can serve as anchors for decision-making or counterweights to the pull towards inegalitarian or extractive research practices.

Aims of the Primer

The contents of the Primer are shaped by the authors’ commitment to emancipatory, engaged scholarship, and their own experience of PAR, stemming from their scholar-activism with marginalized communities to tackle issues including state neglect, impoverishment, infectious and non-communicable disease epidemics, homelessness, sexual violence, eviction, pollution, dispossession and post-disaster recovery. Collectively, our understanding of PAR is rooted in Indigenous, Black feminist and emancipatory education traditions and diverse personal experiences of privilege and marginalization across dimensions of race, class, gender, sexuality and disability. We use an inclusive understanding of PAR, to include engaging, emancipatory work that does not necessarily use the term PAR, and we aim to showcase some of the diversity of scholar-activism around the globe. The contents of this Primer are suggestions and reflections based on our own experience of PAR and of teaching research methodology. There are multiple ways of conceptualizing and conducting a PAR project. As context-sensitive social change processes, every project will pose new challenges.

This Primer is addressed primarily to university-based PAR researchers, who are likely to work in collaboration with members of communities or organizations or with activists, and are accountable to academic audiences as well as to community audiences. Much expertise in PAR originates outside universities, in community groups and organizations, from whom scholars have much to learn. The Primer aims to familiarize scholars new to PAR and others who may benefit with PAR’s key principles, decision points, practices, challenges, dilemmas, optimizations, limitations and work-arounds. Readers will be able to use our framework of ‘building blocks’ as a guide to designing their projects. We aim to support critical thinking about the challenges of PAR to enable readers to problem-solve independently. The Primer aims to inspire with examples, which we intersperse throughout. To illustrate some of the variety of positive achievements of PAR projects, Box  1 presents three examples.

Box 1 What does participatory action research do?

The Tsui Anaa Project 60 in Accra, Ghana, began as a series of interviews about diabetes experiences in one of Accra’s oldest indigenous communities, Ga Mashie. Over a 12-year period, a team of interdisciplinary researchers expanded the project to a multi-method engagement with a wide range of community members. University and community co-researchers worked to diagnose the burden of chronic conditions, to develop psychosocial interventions for cardiovascular and associated conditions and to critically reflect on long-term goals. A health support group of people living with diabetes and cardiovascular conditions, called Jamestown Health Club (JTHC), was formed, met monthly and contributed as patient advocates to community, city and national non-communicable disease policy. The project has supported graduate collaborators with mixed methods training, community engagement and postgraduate theses advancing the core project purposes.

Buckles, Khedkar and Ghevde 39 were approached by members of the Katkari tribal community in Maharashtra, India, who were concerned about landlords erecting fences around their villages. Using their institutional networks, the academics investigated the villagers’ legal rights to secure tenure and facilitated a series of participatory investigations, through which Katkari villagers developed their own understanding of the inequalities they faced and analysed potential action strategies. Subsequently, through legal challenges, engagement with local politics and emboldened local communities, more than 100 Katkari communities were more secure and better organized 5 years later.

The Morris Justice Project 74 in New York, USA, sought to address stop-and-frisk policing in a neighbourhood local to the City University of New York, where a predominantly Black population was subject to disproportionate and aggressive policing. Local residents surveyed their neighbours to gather evidence on experiences of stop and frisk, compiling their statistics and experiences and sharing them with the local community on the sidewalk, projecting their findings onto public buildings and joining a coalition ‘Communities United for Police Reform’, which successfully campaigned for changes to the city’s policing laws.

Experimentation

This section sets out the core considerations for designing a PAR project.

Owing to the intricacies of working within complex human systems in real time, PAR practitioners do not follow a highly proceduralized or linear set of steps 34 . In a cyclical process, teams work together to come to an initial definition of their social problem, design a suitable action, observe and gather information on the results, and then analyse and reflect on the action and its impact, in order to learn, modify their understanding and inform the next iteration of the research–action cycle 3 , 35 (Fig.  1 ). Teams remain open throughout the cycle to repeating or revising earlier steps in response to developments in the field. The fundamental process of building relationships occurs throughout the cycles. These spiral diagrams orient readers towards the central interdependence of processes of participation, action and research and the nonlinear, iterative process of learning by doing 3 , 36 .

Participatory action research develops through a series of cycles, with relationship building as a constant practice. Cycles of research text adapted from ref. 81 , and figure adapted with permission from ref. 82 , SAGE.

Building blocks for PAR research design

We present six building blocks to set out the key design considerations for conducting a PAR project. Each PAR team may address these building blocks in different ways and with different priorities. Table  1 proposes potential questions and indicative goals that are possible markers of progress for each building block. They are not prescriptive or exhaustive but may be a useful starting point, with examples, to prompt new PAR teams’ planning.

Building relationships

‘Relationships first, research second’ is our key principle for PAR project design 37 . Collaborative relationships usually extend beyond a particular PAR project, and it is rare that one PAR project finalizes a desired change. A researcher parachuting in and out may be able to complete a research article, with community cooperation, but will not be able to see through the hard graft of a programme of participatory research towards social change. Hence, individual PAR projects are often nested in long-term collaborations. Such collaborations are strengthened by institutional backing in the form of sustainable staff appointments, formal recognition of the value of university–community partnerships and provision of administrative support. In such a supportive context, opportunities can be created for achievable shorter-term projects to which collaborators or temporary researchers may contribute. The first step of PAR is sometimes described as the entry, but we term this foundational step building relationships to emphasize the longer-term nature of these relationships and their constitutive role throughout a project. PAR scholars may need to work hard with and against their institutions to protect those relationships, monitoring potential collaborations for community benefit rather than knowledge and resource extraction. Trustworthy relationships depend upon scholars being aware, open and honest about their own interests and perspectives.

The motivation for a PAR project may come from university-based or community-based researchers. When university researchers already have a relationship with marginalized communities, they may be approached by community leaders initiating a collaboration 38 , 39 . Alternatively, a university-based researcher may reach out to representatives of communities facing evident problems, to explore common interests and the potential for collaboration 40 . As Indigenous scholars have articulated, communities that have been treated as the subjects or passive objects of research, commodified for the scientific knowledge of distant elites, are suspicious of research and researchers 4 , 41 . Scholars need to be able to satisfy communities’ key questions: Who are you? Why should we trust you? What is in it for our community? Qualifications, scholarly achievements or verbal reassurances are less relevant in this context than past or present valued contributions, participation in a heritage of transformational action or evidence of solidarity with a community’s causes. Being vouched for by a respected community member or collaborator can be invaluable.

Without prior relationships one can start cold, as a stranger, perhaps attending public events, informal meeting places or identifying organizations in which the topic is of interest, and introducing oneself. Strong collaborative relationships are based on mutual trust, which must be earned. It is important to be transparent about our interests and to resist the temptation to over-promise. Good PAR practitioners do not raise unrealistic expectations. Box  2 presents key soft skills for PAR researchers.

Positionality is crucial to PAR relationships. A university-based researcher’s positionalities (including, for example, their gender, race, ethnicity, class, politics, skills, age, life stage, life experiences, assumptions about the problem, experience in research, activism and relationship to the topic) interact with the positionalities of community co-researchers, shaping the collective definition of the problem and appropriate solutions. Positionalities are not fixed, but can be changing, multiple and even contradictory 42 . We have framed categories of university-based and community-based researchers here, but in practice these positionings of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ are often more complex and shifting 43 . Consideration of diversity is important when building a team to avoid  tokenism . For example, identifying which perspectives are included initially and why, and whether members of the team or gatekeepers have privileged access owing to their race, ethnicity, class, gender and/or able-bodiedness.

The centring of community expertise in PAR does not mean that a community is ‘taken for granted’. Communities are sites of the production of similarity and difference, equality and inequalities, and politics. Knowledge that has the status of common sense may itself reproduce inequalities or perpetuate harm. Relatedly, strong PAR projects cultivate  reflexivity 44 among both university-based and community-based researchers, to enable a critical engagement with the diversity of points of view, positions of power and stakes in a project. Developing reflexivity may be uncomfortable and challenging, and good PAR projects create a supportive culture for processing such discomfort. Supplementary files  1 and   2 present example exercises that build critical reflexivity.

Box 2 Soft skills of a participatory action researcher

Respect for others’ knowledge and the expertise of experience

Humility and genuine kindness

Ability to be comfortable with discomfort

Sharing power; ceding control

Trusting the process

Acceptance of uncertainty and tensions

Openness to learning from collaborators

Self-awareness and the ability to listen and be confronted

Willingness to take responsibility and to be held accountable

Confidence to identify and challenge power relations

Establishing working practices

Partnerships bring together people with different sets of norms, assumptions, interests, resources, time frames and working practices, all nested in institutional structures and infrastructures that cement those assumptions. University-based researchers often take their own working practices for granted, but partnership working calls for negotiation. Academics often work with very extended time frames for analysis, writing and review before publication, hoping to contribute to gradually shifting agendas, discourses and politics 45 . The urgency of problems that face a community often calls for faster responsiveness. Research and management practices that are normal in a university may not be accessible to people historically marginalized through dimensions that include disability, language, racialization, gender, literacy practices and their intersections 46 . Disrupting historically entrenched power dynamics associated with these concerns can raise discomfort and calls for skilful negotiation. In short, partnership working is a complex art, calling for thoughtful design of joint working practices and a willingness to invest the necessary time.

Making working practices and areas of tension explicit is one useful starting point. Not all issues need to be fully set out and decided at the outset of a project. A foundation of trust, through building relationships in building block 1, allows work to move ahead without every element being pinned down in advance. Supplementary file  1 presents an exercise designed to build working relationships and communicative practices.

Establishing a common understanding of the issue

Co-researchers identify a common issue or problem to address. University-based researchers tend to justify the selection of the research topic with reference to a literature review, whereas in PAR, the topic must be a priority for the community. Problem definition is a key step for PAR teams, where problem does not necessarily mean something negative or a deficit, but refers to the identification of an important issue at stake for a community. The definition of a problem, however, is not always self-evident, and producing a problem definition can be a valid outcome of PAR. In the example of risks of eviction from Buckles, Khedkar and Ghevde 39 (Box  1 ), a small number of Katkari people first experienced the problem in terms of landlords erecting barbed wire fences. Other villages did not perceive the risk of eviction as a big problem compared with their other needs. Facilitating dialogues across villages about their felt problems revealed how land tenure was at the root of several issues, thus mobilizing interest. Problem definitions are political; they imply some forms of action and not others. Discussion and reflexivity about the problem definition are crucial. Compared with other methodologies, the PAR research process is much more public from the outset, and so practices of making key steps explicit, shareable, communicable and negotiable are essential. Supplementary file  3 introduces two participatory tools for collective problem definition.

Consideration of who should be involved in problem definition is important. It may be enough that a small project team works closely together at this stage. Alternatively, group or public meetings may be held, with careful facilitation 5 . Out of dialogue, a PAR team aims to agree on an actionable problem definition, responding to the team’s combination of skills, capacities and priorities. A PAR scholar works across the university–community boundary and thus is accountable to both university values and grassroots communities’ values. PAR scholars should not deny or hide the multiple demands of the role because communities with experience of marginalization are attuned to being manipulated. Surfacing interests and constraints and discussing these reflexively is often a better strategy. Creativity may be required to design projects that meet both academic goals (such as when a project is funded to produce certain outcomes) and the community’s goals.

For example, in the context of a PAR project with residents of a public housing neighbourhood scheduled for demolition and redevelopment, Thurber and colleagues 47 describe how they overcame differences between resident and academic researchers regarding the purposes of their initial survey. The academic team members preferred the data to be anonymous, to maximize the scientific legitimacy of their project (considered valuable for their credibility to policymakers), whereas the resident team wanted to use the opportunity to recruit residents to their cause, by collecting contact details. The team discussed their different objectives and produced the solution of two-person survey teams, one person gathering anonymous data for the research and a second person gathering contact details for the campaign’s contact list.

Articulating research questions is an early milestone. PAR questions prioritize community concerns, so they may differ from academic-driven research questions. For example, Buckles, Khedkar and Ghevde 39 facilitated a participatory process that developed questions along the lines of: What are the impacts of not having a land title for Katkari people? How will stakeholders respond to Katkari organizing, and what steps can Katkari communities take towards the goal of securing tenure? In another case, incarcerated women in New York state, USA, invited university academics to evaluate a local college in prison in the interest of building an empirical argument for the value of educational opportunities in prisons 38 , 48 Like other evaluations, it asked: “What is the impact of college on women in prison?” But instead of looking narrowly at the impact on re-offending as the relevant impact (as prioritized by politicians and policymakers), based on the incarcerated women’s advice, the evaluation tracked other outcomes: women’s well-being within the prison; their relationships with each other and the staff; their children; their sense of achievement; and their agency in their lives after incarceration.

As a PAR project develops, the problem definition and research questions are often refined through the iterative cycles. This evolution does not undermine the value of writing problem definitions and research questions in the early stages, as a collaboration benefits from having a common reference point to build from and from which to negotiate.

Observing, gathering and generating materials

With a common understanding of the problem, PAR teams design ways of observing the details and workings of this problem. PAR is not prescriptive about the methods used to gather or generate observations. Projects often use qualitative methods, such as storytelling, interviewing or ethnography, or participatory methods, such as body mapping, problem trees, guided walks, timelines, diaries, participatory photography and video or participatory theatre. Gathering quantitative data is an option, particularly in the tradition of participatory statistics 49 . Chilisa 5 distinguishes sources of spatial data, time-related data, social data and technical data. The selected methods should be engaging to the community and the co-researchers, suited to answering the research questions and supported by available professional skills. Means of recording the process or products, and of storing those records, need to be agreed, as well as ethical principles. Developing community members’ research skills for data collection and analysis can be a valued contribution to a PAR project, potentially generating longer-term capacities for local research and change-making 50 .

Our selection of data generation methods and their details depends upon the questions we ask. In some cases, methods to explore problem definitions and then to brainstorm potential actions, their risks and benefits will be useful (Supplementary file  3 ). Others may be less prescriptive about problems and solutions, seeking to explore experience in an open-ended way, as a basis for generating new understandings (see Supplementary file  2 for an example reflective participatory exercise).

Less-experienced practitioners may take a naive approach to PAR, which assumes that knowledge should emerge solely from an authentic community devoid of outside ideas. More established PAR researchers, however, work consciously to combine and exchange skills and knowledge through dialogue. Together with communities, we want to produce effective products, and we recognize that doing so may require specific skills. In Marzi’s 51 participatory video project with migrant women in Colombia, she engaged professional film-makers to provide the women with training in filming, editing and professional film production vocabulary. The women were given the role of directors, with the decision-making power over what to include and exclude in their film. In a Photovoice project with Black and Indigenous youth in Toronto, Canada, Tuck and Habtom 25 drew on their prior scholar–activist experience and their critical analysis of scholarship of marginalization, which often uses tropes of victimhood, passivity and sadness. Instead of repeating narratives of damage, they intended to encourage desire-based narratives. They supported their young participants to critically consider which photographs they wanted to include or exclude from public representations. Training participants to be expert users of research techniques does not devalue their existing expertise and skills, but takes seriously their role in co-producing valid, critical knowledge. University-based researchers equally benefit from training in facilitation methods, team development and the history and context of the community.

Data generation is relational, mediated by the positionalities of the researchers involved. As such, researchers position themselves across boundaries, and need to have, or to develop, skills in interpreting across boundaries. In the Tsui Anaa Project (Box  1 ) in Ghana, the project recruited Ga-speaking graduate students as researchers; Ga is the language most widely spoken in the community. The students were recruited not only for their language skills, but also for their Ga cultural sensibilities, reflected in their sense of humour and their intergenerational communicative styles, enabling fluid communication and mutual understanding with the community. In turn, two community representatives were recruited as advocates to represent patient perspectives across university and community boundaries.

University-based researchers trained in methodological rigour may need reminders that the process of a PAR project is as important as the outcome, and is part of the outcome. Facilitation skills are the most crucial skills for PAR practitioners at this stage. Productive facilitation skills encourage open conversation and collective understandings of the problem at hand and how to address it. More specifically, good facilitation requires a sensitivity to the ongoing and competing social context, such as power relations, within the group to help shift power imbalances and enable participation by all 52 . Box  3 presents a PAR project that exemplifies the importance of relationship building in a community arts project.

Box 3 Case study of the BRIDGE Project: relationship building and collective art making as social change

The BRIDGE Project was a 3-week long mosaic-making and dialogue programme for youth aged 14–18 years, in Southern California. For several summers, the project brought together students from different campuses to discuss inclusion, bullying and community. The goal was to help build enduring relationships among young people who otherwise would not have met or interacted, thereby mitigating the racial tensions that existed in their local high schools.

Youth were taught how to make broken tile mosaic artworks, facilitated through community-building exercises. After the first days, as relationships grew, so did the riskiness of the discussion topics. Youth explored ideas and beliefs that contribute to one’s individual sense of identity, followed by discussion of wider social identities around race, class, sex, gender, class, sexual orientation and finally their identities in relationship to others.

The art-making process was structured in a manner that mirrored the building of their relationships. Youth learned mosaic-making skills while creating individual pieces. They were discouraged from collaborating with anyone else until after the individual pieces were completed and they had achieved some proficiency. When discussions transitioned to focus on the relationship their identities had to each other, the facilitators assisted them in creating collaborative mosaics with small groups.

Staff facilitation modelled the relationship-building goal of the project. The collaborative art making was built upon the rule that no one could make any changes without asking for and receiving permission from the person or people who had placed the piece (or pieces) down. To encourage participants to engage with each other it was vital that they each felt comfortable to voice their opinions while simultaneously learning how to be accountable to their collaborators and respectful of others’ relationships to the art making.

The process culminated in the collective creation of a tile mosaic wall mural, which is permanently installed in the host site.

Collaborative analysis

In PAR projects, data collection and analysis are not typically isolated to different phases of research. Instead, a tried and tested approach to collaborative analysis 53 is to use generated data as a basis for reflection on commonalities, patterns, differences, underlying causes or potentials on an ongoing basis. For instance, body mapping, photography, or video projects often proceed through a series of workshops, with small-scale training–data collection–data analysis cycles in each workshop. Participants gather or produce materials in response to a prompt, and then come together to critically discuss the meaning of their productions.

Simultaneously, or later, a more formal data analysis may be employed, using established social science analytical tools such as grounded theory, thematic, content or discourse analysis, or other forms of visual or ethnographic analysis, with options for facilitated co-researcher involvement. The selection of a specific orientation or approach to analysis is often a low priority for community-based co-researchers. It may be appropriate for university-based researchers to take the lead on comprehensive analysis and the derivation of initial messages. Fine and Torre 29 describe the university-based researchers producing a “best bad draft” so that there is something on the table to react to and discuss. Given the multiple iterations of participants’ expressions of experiences and analyses by this stage, the university-based researchers should be in a position that their best bad draft is grounded in a good understanding of local perspectives and should not appear outlandish, one-sided or an imposition of outside ideas.

For the results and recommendations to reflect community interests, it is important to incorporate a step whereby community representatives can critically examine and contribute to emerging findings and core messages for the public, stakeholders or academic audiences.

Planning and taking action

Taking action is an integral part of a PAR process. What counts as action and change is different for each PAR project. Actions could be targeted at a wide range of scales and different stakeholders, with differing intended outcomes. Valid intended outcomes include creating supportive networks to share resources through mutual aid; empowering participants through sharing experiences and making sense of them collectively; using the emotional impact of artistic works to influence policymakers and journalists; mobilizing collective action to build community power; forging a coalition with other activist and advocacy groups; and many others. Selection between the options depends on underlying priorities, values, theories of how social change happens and, crucially, feasibility.

Articulating a theory of change is one way to demonstrate how we intend to bring about changes through designing an action plan. A theory of change identifies an action and a mechanism, directed at producing outcomes, for a target group, in a context. This device has often been used in donor-driven health and development contexts in a rather prescriptive way, but PAR teams can adapt the tool as a scaffolding for being explicit about action plans and as a basis for further discussions and development of those plans. Many health and development organizations (such as Better Evaluation ) have frameworks to help design a theory of change.

Alternatively, a community action plan 5 can serve as a tangible roadmap to produce change, by setting out objectives, strategies, timeline, key actors, required resources and the monitoring and evaluation framework.

Social change is not easy, and existing social systems benefit, some at the expense of others, and are maintained by power relations. In planning for action, analysis of the power relations at stake, the beneficiaries of existing systems and their potential resistance to change is crucial. It is often wise to assess various options for actions, their potential benefits, risks and ways of mitigating those risks. Sometimes a group may collectively decide to settle for relatively secure, and less-risky, small wins but with the building of sufficient power, a group may take on a bigger challenge 54 .

Ethical considerations are fundamental to every aspect of PAR. They include standard research ethics considerations traditionally addressed by research ethics committees or institutional review boards (IRBs), including key principles of avoidance of harm, anonymity and confidentiality, and voluntary informed consent, although these issues may become much more complex than traditionally presented, when working within a PAR framework 55 . PAR studies typically benefit from IRBs that can engage with the relational specificities of a case, with a flexible and iterative approach to research design with communities, instead of being beholden to very strict and narrow procedures. Wilson and colleagues 56 provide a comprehensive review of ethical challenges in PAR.

Beyond procedural research ethics perspectives, relational ethics are important to PAR projects and raise crucial questions regarding the purpose and conduct of knowledge production and application 37 , 57 , 58 . Relational ethics encourage an emphasis on inclusive practices, dialogue, mutual respect and care, collective decision-making and collaborative action 57 . Questions posed by Indigenous scholars seeking to decolonize Western knowledge production practices are pertinent to a relational ethics approach 4 , 28 . These include: Who designs and manages the research process? Whose purposes does the research serve? Whose worldviews are reproduced? Who decides what counts as knowledge? Why is this knowledge produced? Who benefits from this knowledge? Who determines which aspects of the research will be written up, disseminated and used, and how? Addressing such questions requires scholars to attend to the ethical practices of cultivating trusting and reciprocal relationships with participants and ensuring that the organizations, communities and persons involved co-govern and benefit from the project.

Reflecting on the ethics of her PAR project with young undocumented students in the USA, Cahill 55 highlights some of the intensely complex ethical issues of representation that arose and that will face many related projects. Determining what should be shared with which audiences is intensely political and ethical. Cahill’s team considered editing out stories of dropping out to avoid feeding negative stereotypes. They confronted the dilemma of framing a critique of a discriminatory educational system, while simultaneously advocating that this flawed system should include undocumented students. They faced another common dilemma of how to stay true to their structural analysis of the sources of harms, while engaging decision-makers invested in the current status quo. These complex ethical–political issues arise in different forms in many PAR projects. No answer can be prescribed, but scholar–activists can prepare themselves by reading past case studies and being open to challenging debates with co-researchers.

The knowledge built by PAR is explicitly knowledge-for-action, informed by the relational ethical considerations of who and what the knowledge is for. PAR builds both  local knowledge and conceptual knowledge. As a first step, PAR can help us to reflect locally, collectively, on our circumstances, priorities, diverse identities, causes of problems and potential routes to tackle them.

Such local knowledge might be represented in the form of statistical findings from a community survey, analyses of participants’ verbal or visual data, or analyses of workshop discussions. Findings may include elements such as an articulation of the status quo of a community issue; a participatory analysis of root causes and/or actionable elements of the problem; a power analysis of stakeholders; asset mapping; assessment of local needs and priorities. Analysis goes beyond the surface problems, to identify underlying roots of problems to inform potential lines of action.

Simultaneously, PAR also advances more global conceptual knowledge. As liberation theorists have noted, developments in societal understandings of inequalities, marginalization and liberation are often led by those battling such processes daily. For example, the young Black and Indigenous participants working with Tuck and Habtom 25 in Toronto, Canada, engaged as co-theorists in their project about the significance of social movements to young people and their post-secondary school futures. Through their photography project, they expressed how place, and its history, particularly histories of settler colonialism, matters in cities — against a more standard view that treated the urban as somehow interchangeable, modern or neutral. The authors argue for altered conceptions of urban and urban education scholarly literatures, in response to this youth-led knowledge.

A key skill in the art of PAR is in creating achievable actions by choosing a project that is engaging and ambitious with achievable elements, even where structures are resistant to change. PAR projects can produce actions across a wide range of scales (from ‘small, local’ to ‘large, structural’) and across different temporal scales. Some PAR projects are part of decades-long programmes. Within those programmes, an individual PAR project, taking place over 12 or 24 months, might make one small step in the process towards long-term change.

For example, an educational project with young people living in communities vulnerable to flooding in Brazil developed a portfolio of actions, including a seminar, a native seeds fair, support to an individual family affected by a landslide, a campaign for a safe environment for a children’s pre-school, a tree nursery at school and influencing the city’s mayor to extend the environmental project to all schools in the area 30 .

Often the ideal scenario is that such actions lead to material changes in the power of a community. Over the course of a 5-year journey, the Katkari community (Box  1 ) worked with PAR researchers to build community power to resist eviction. The community team compiled households’ proof of residence; documented the history of land use and housing; engaged local government about their situations and plans; and participated more actively in village life to cultivate support 39 . The university-based researchers collected land deeds and taught sessions on land rights, local government and how to acquire formal papers. They opened conversations with the local government on legal, ethical and practical issues. Collectively, their legal knowledge and groundwork gave them confidence to remove fencing erected by landlords and to take legal action to regularize their land rights, ultimately leading to 70 applications being made for formal village sites. This comprised a tangible change in the power relation between landlords and the communities. Even here, however, the authors do not simply celebrate their achievements, but recognize that power struggles are ongoing, landlords would continue to aggressively pursue their interests, and, thus, their achievements were provisional and would require vigilance and continued action.

Most crucially, PAR projects aim to develop university-based and community-based researchers’ collective agency, by building their capacities for collaboration, analysis and action. More specifically, collaborators develop multiple transferable skills, which include skills in conducting research, operating technology, designing outputs, leadership, facilitation, budgeting, networking and public speaking 31 , 59 , 60 .

University-based researchers build their own key capacities through exercising and developing skills, including those for collaboration, facilitation, public engagement and impact. Strong PAR projects may build capacities within the university to sustain long-term relationships with community projects, such as modified and improved infrastructures that work well with PAR modalities, appreciation of the value of long-term sustained reciprocal relations and personal and organizational relationships with communities outside the university.

Applications

PAR disrupts the traditional theory–application binary, which usually assumes that abstract knowledge is developed through basic science, to then be interpreted and applied in professional or community contexts. PAR projects are always applied in the sense that they are situated in concrete human and social problems and aim to produce workable local actions. PAR is a very flexible approach. A version of a PAR project could be devised to tackle almost any real-world problem — where the researchers are committed to an emancipatory and participatory epistemology. If one can identify a group of people interested in collectively generating knowledge-for-action in their own context or about their own practices, and as long as the researchers are willing and able to share power, the methods set out in this Primer could be applied to devise a PAR project.

PAR is consonant with participatory movements across multiple disciplines and sectors, and thus finds many intellectual homes. Its application is supported by social movements for inclusion, equity, representation of multiple voices, empowerment and emancipation. For instance, PAR responds to the value “nothing about us without us”, which has become a central tenet of disability studies. In youth studies, PAR is used to enhance the power of young people’s voices. In development studies, PAR has a long foundation as part of the demand for greater participation, to support locally appropriate, equitable and locally owned changes. In health-care research, PAR is used by communities of health professionals to reflect and improve on their own practices. PAR is used by groups of health-care service users or survivors to give a greater collective power to the voices of those at the sharp end of health care, often delegitimized by medical power. In environmental sciences, PAR can support local communities to take action to protect their environments. In community psychology, PAR is valued for its ability to nurture supportive and inclusive processes. In summary, PAR can be applied in a huge variety of contexts in which local ownership of research is valued.

Limitations to PAR’s application often stem from the institutional context. In certain (often dominant) academic circles, local knowledge is not valued, and contextually situated, problem-focused, research may be considered niche, applied or not generalizable. Hence, research institutions may not be set up to be responsive to a community’s situation or needs or to support scholar–activists working at the research–action boundary. Further, those who benefit from, or are comfortable with, the status quo of a community may actively resist attempts at change from below and may undermine PAR projects. In other cases, where a community is very divided or dispersed, PAR may not be the right approach. There are plenty of examples of PAR projects floundering, failing to create an active group or to achieve change, or completely falling through. Even such failures, however, shed light on the conditions of communities and the power relations they inhabit and offer lessons on ways of working and not working with groups in those situations.

Reproducibility and data deposition

Certain aspects of the open science movement can be productively engaged from within a PAR framework, whereas others are incompatible. A key issue is that PAR researchers do not strive for reproducibility, and many would contest the applicability of this construct. Nonetheless, there may be resonances between the open science principle of making information publicly available for re-use and those PAR projects that aim to render visible and audible the experience of a historically under-represented or mis-represented community. PAR projects that seek to represent previously hidden realities of, for example, environmental degradation, discriminatory experiences at the hands of public services, the social history of a traditionally marginalized group, or their neglected achievements, may consider creating and making public robust databases of information, or social history archives, with explicit informed permission of the relevant communities. For such projects, making knowledge accessible is an essential part of the action. Publicly relevant information should not be sequestered behind paywalls. PAR practitioners should thus plan carefully for cataloguing, storing and archiving information, and maintaining archives.

On the other hand, however, a blanket assumption that all data should be made freely available is rarely appropriate in a PAR project and may come into conflict with ethical priorities. Protecting participants’ confidentiality can mean that data cannot be made public. Protecting a community from reputational harm, in the context of widespread dehumanization, criminalization or stigmatization of dispossessed groups, may require protection of their privacy, especially if their lives or coping strategies are already pathologized 25 . Empirical materials do not belong to university-based researchers as data and cannot be treated as an academic commodity to be opened to other researchers. Open science practices should not extend to the opening of marginalized communities to knowledge exploitation by university researchers.

The principle of reproducibility is not intuitively meaningful to PAR projects, given their situated nature, that is, the fact that PAR is inherently embedded in particular concrete contexts and relationships 61 . Beyond reproducibility, other forms of mutual learning and cross-case learning are vitally important. We see increasing research fatigue in communities used, extractively, for research that does not benefit them. PAR teams should assess what research has been done in a setting to avoid duplication and wasting people’s time and should clearly prioritize community benefit. At the same time, PAR projects also aspire to produce knowledge with wider implications, typically discussed under the term generalizability or transferability. They do so by articulating how the project speaks to social, political, theoretical and methodological debates taking place in wider knowledge communities, in a form of “communicative generalisation” 62 . Collaborating and sharing experiences across PAR sites through visits, exchanges and joint analysis can help to generalize experiences 30 , 61 .

Limitations and optimizations

PAR projects often challenge the social structures that reproduce established power relations. In this section, we outline common challenges to PAR projects, to prompt early reflection. When to apply a workaround, compromise, concede, refuse or regroup and change strategy are decisions that each PAR team should make collectively. We do not have answers to all the concerns raised but offer mitigations that have been found useful.

Institutional infrastructure

Universities’ interests in partnerships with communities, local relevance, being outward-facing, public engagement and achieving social impact can help to create a supportive environment for PAR research. Simultaneously, university bureaucracies and knowledge hierarchies that prize their scientists as individuals rather than collaborators and that prioritize the methods of dominant science can undermine PAR projects 63 . When Cowan, Kühlbrandt and Riazuddin 45 proposed using gaming, drama, fiction and film-making for a project engaging young people in thinking about scientific futures, a grants manager responded “But this project can’t just be about having fun activities for kids — where is the research in what you’re proposing?” Research infrastructures are often slow and reluctant to adapt to innovations in creative research approaches.

Research institutions’ funding time frames are also often out of sync with those of communities — being too extended in some ways and too short in others 45 , 64 . Securing funding takes months and years, especially if there are initial rejections or setbacks. Publishing findings takes further years. For community-based partners, a year is a long time to wait and to maintain people’s interest. On the other hand, grant funding for one-off projects over a year or two (or even five) is rarely sufficient to create anything sustainable, reasserting precarity and short-termism. Institutions can better support PAR through infrastructure such as bridging funds between grants, secure staff appointments and institutional recognition and resources for community partners.

University infrastructures can value the long-term partnership working of PAR scholars by recognizing partnership-building as a respected element of an academic career and recognizing collaborative research as much as individual academic celebrity. Where research infrastructures are unsupportive, building relationships within the university with like-minded professional and academic colleagues, to share work-arounds and advocate collectively, can be very helpful. Other colleagues might have developed mechanisms to pay co-researchers, or to pay in advance for refreshments, speed up disbursement of funds, or deal with an ethics committee, IRB, finance office or thesis examiner who misunderstands participatory research. PAR scholars can find support in university structures beyond the research infrastructure, such as those concerned with knowledge exchange and impact, campus–community partnerships, extension activities, public engagement or diversity and inclusion 64 . If PAR is institutionally marginalized, exploring and identifying these work-arounds is extremely labour intensive and depends on the cultivation of human, social and cultural capital over many years, which is not normally available to graduate students or precariously employed researchers. Thus, for PAR to be realized, institutional commitment is vital.

Co-option by powerful structures

When PAR takes place in collaboration or engagement with powerful institutions such as government departments, health services, religious organizations, charities or private companies, co-option is a significant risk. Such organizations experience social pressure to be inclusive, diverse, responsive to communities and participatory, so they may be tempted to engage communities in consultation, without redistributing power. For instance, when ‘photovoice’ projects invite politicians to exhibitions of photographs, their activity may be co-opted to serving the politician’s interest in being seen to express support, but result in no further action. There is a risk that using PAR in such a setting risks tokenizing marginalized voices 65 . In one of our current projects, co-researchers explore the framing of sexual violence interventions in Zambia, aiming to promote greater community agency and reduce the centrality of approaches dominated by the Global North 66 . One of the most challenging dilemmas is the need to involve current policymakers in discussions without alienating them. The advice to ‘be realistic’, ‘be reasonable’ or ‘play the game’ to keep existing power brokers at the table creates one of the most difficult tensions for PAR scholars 48 .

We also caution against scholars idealizing PAR as an ideal, egalitarian, inclusive or perfect process. The term ‘participation’ has become a policy buzzword, invoked in a vaguely positive way to strengthen an organization’s case that they have listened to people. It can equally be used by researchers to claim a moral high ground without disrupting power relations. Depriving words of their associated actions, Freire 7 warns us, leads to ‘empty blah’, because words gain their meaning in being harnessed to action. Labelling our work PAR does not make it emancipatory, without emancipatory action. Equally, Freire cautions against acting without the necessary critical reflection.

To avoid romanticization or co-option, PAR practitioners benefit from being held accountable to their shared principles and commitments by their critical networks and collaborators. Our commitments to community colleagues and to action should be as real for us as any institutional pressures on us. Creating an environment for that accountability is vital. Box  4 offers a project exemplar featuring key considerations regarding power concerns.

Box 4 Case study: participatory power and its vulnerability

Júba Wajiín is a pueblo in a rural mountainous region in the lands now called Guerrero, Mexico, long inhabited by the Me’phaa people, who have fiercely resisted precolonial, colonial and postcolonial displacement and dispossession. Using collective participatory action methods, this small pueblo launched and won a long legal battle that now challenges extractive mining practices.

Between 2001 and 2012, the Mexican government awarded massive mining concessions to mining companies. The people of Júba Wajiín discovered in mid-2013 that, unbeknown to them, concessions for mining exploration of their lands had been awarded to the British-based mining company Horschild Mexico. They engaged human rights activists who used participatory action research methods to create awareness and to launch a legal battle. Tlachinollan, a regional human rights organization, held legal counselling workshops and meetings with local authorities and community elders.

The courts initially rejected the case by denying that residents could be identified as Indigenous because they practised Catholicism and spoke Spanish. A media organization, La Sandia Digital , supported the community to collectively document their syncretic religious and spiritual practices, their ability to speak Mhe’paa language and their longstanding agrarian use of the territory. They produced a documentary film Juba Wajiin: Resistencia en la Montaña , providing visual legal evidence.

After winning in the District court, they took the case to the Supreme Court, asking it to review the legality and validity of the mining concessions. Horschild, along with other mining companies, stopped contesting the case, which led to the concessions being null and void.

The broader question of Indigenous peoples’ territorial rights continued in the courts until mid-2022 when the Supreme Court ruled that Indigenous peoples had the constitutional right to be consulted before any mining activities in their territory. This was a win, but a partial one. ‘Consultations’ are often manipulated by state and private sectors, particularly among groups experiencing dire impoverishment. Júba Wajiín’s strategies proved successful but the struggle against displacement and dispossession is continual.

Power inequalities within PAR

Power inequalities also affect PAR teams and communities. For all the emphasis on egalitarian relationships and dialogue, communities and PAR teams are typically composed of actors with unequal capacities and powers, introducing highly complex challenges for PAR teams.

Most frequently, university-based researchers engaging with marginalized communities do not themselves share many aspects of the identities or life experiences of those communities. They often occupy different, often more privileged, social networks, income brackets, racialized identities, skill sets and access to resources. Evidently, the premise of PAR is that people with different lives can productively collaborate, but gulfs in life experience and privilege can yield difficult tensions and challenges. Expressions of discomfort, dissatisfaction or anger in PAR projects are often indicative of power inequalities and an opportunity to interrogate and challenge hierarchies. Scholars must work hard to undo their assumptions about where expertise and insights may lie. A first step can be to develop an analysis of a scholar’s own participation in the perpetuation of inequalities. Projects can be designed to intentionally redistribute power, by redistributing skills, responsibilities and authority, or by redesigning core activities to be more widely accessible. For instance, Marzi 51 in a participatory video project, used role swapping to distribute the leadership roles of chairing meetings, choosing themes for focus and editing, among all the participants.

Within communities, there are also power asymmetries. The term ‘community participation’ itself risks homogenizing a community, such that one or a small number of representatives are taken to qualify as the community. Yet, communities are characterized by diversity as much as by commonality, with differences across sociological lines such as class, race, gender, age, occupation, housing tenure and health status. Having the time, resources and ability to participate is unlikely to be evenly distributed. Some people need to devote their limited time to survival and care of others. For some, the embodied realities of health conditions and disabilities make participation in research projects difficult or undesirable 67 . If there are benefits attached to participation, careful attention to the distribution of such benefits is needed, as well as critical awareness of the positionality of those involved and those excluded. Active efforts to maximize accessibility are important, including paying participants for their valued time; providing accommodations for people with health conditions, disabilities, caring responsibilities or other specific needs; and designing participatory activities that are intuitive to a community’s typical modes of communication.

Lack of control and unpredictability

For researchers accustomed to leading research by taking responsibility to drive a project to completion, using the most rigorous methods possible, to achieve stated objectives, the collaborative, iterative nature of PAR can raise personal challenges. Sense 68 likens the facilitative role of a PAR practitioner to “trying to drive the bus from the rear passenger seat—wanting to genuinely participate as a passenger but still wanting some degree of control over the destination”. PAR works best with collaborative approaches to leadership and identities among co-researchers as active team members, facilitators and participants in a research setting, prepared to be flexible and responsive to provocations from the situation and from co-researchers and to adjust project plans accordingly 28 , 68 , 69 . The complexities involved in balancing control issues foreground the importance of reflexive practice for all team members to learn together through dialogue 70 . Training and socialization into collaborative approaches to leadership and partnership are crucial supports. Well-functioning collaborative ways of working are also vital, as their trusted structure can allow co-researchers to ‘trust the process’, and accept uncertainties, differing perspectives, changes of emphasis and disruptions of assumptions. We often want surprises in PAR projects, as they show that we are learning something new, and so we need to be prepared to accept disruption.

The PAR outlook is caught up in the ongoing history of the push and pull of popular movements for the recognition of local knowledge and elite movements to centralize authority and power in frameworks such as universal science, professional ownership of expertise, government authority or evidence-based policy. As a named methodological paradigm, PAR gained legitimacy and recognition during the 1980s, with origins in popular education for development, led by scholars from the Global South 16 , 32 , and taken up in the more Global-North-dominated field of international development, where the failings of externally imposed, contextually insensitive development solutions had become undeniable 21 . Over the decades, PAR has both participated in radical social movements and risked co-option and depoliticization as it became championed by powerful institutions, and it is in this light that we consider PAR’s relation to three contemporary societal movements.

Decolonizing or re-powering

The development of PAR took place in tandem with anti-colonial movements and discourses during the 1970s and 1980s, in which the colonization of land, people and knowledge were all at stake. During the mid-2010s, calls for decolonization of the university were forced onto the agenda of the powerful by various groups, including African students and youth leading the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’, ‘Fees must Fall’ and ‘Gandhi must Fall’ movements 71 , followed by the eruption of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 (ref. 72 ). PAR is a methodology that stands to contribute to decolonization-colonization through the development of alternatives to centralizing knowledge and power. As such, the vitality of local and global movements demanding recognition of grassroots knowledge and the dismantling of oppressive historical power–knowledge systems heralds many openings and exciting potential collaborations and causes for PAR practitioners 73 , 74 . As these demands make themselves felt in powerful institutions, they create openings for PAR.

Yet, just as PAR has been subject to co-option and depoliticization, the concept of decolonization too is at risk of appropriation by dominant groups and further tokenization of Indigenous groups, as universities, government departments and global health institutions absorb the concept, fitting it into their existing power structures 41 , 75 . In this context, Indigenous theorists in Aotearoa/New Zealand are working on an alternative concept of ‘re-powering Indigenous knowledge’ instead of ‘decolonizing knowledge’. By doing so, they centre Indigenous people and their knowledge, instead of the knowledge or actions of colonizers, and foreground the necessity of changes to power relations. African and African American scholars working on African heritage and political agency have drawn on the Akan philosophy of Sankofa for a similar purpose 76 . Sankofa derives from a Twi proverb Se wo were fi na wosan kofa a yenkyiri (It is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind). Going back to fetch what is lost is a self-grounded act that draws on the riches of Indigenous history to re-imagine and restructure the future 77 . It is also an act independent of the colonial and colonizing gaze. Contributing to a mid-twenty-first century re-powering community knowledge is a promising vision for PAR. More broadly, the loud voices and visionary leadership of contemporary anti-racist, anti-colonial, Indigenous, intersectional feminist and other emancipatory movements provide a vibrant context to re-invent and renew PAR.

Co-production

In fields concerned with health and public service provision, a renewed discourse of respectful engagement with communities and service users has centred in recent years on the concept of  co-production 78 . In past iterations, concepts such as citizen engagement, patient participation, community participation and community mobilization had a similar role. Participatory methods have proved their relevance within such contexts, for example, providing actionable and wise insights to clinicians seeking to learn from patients, or to providers of social services seeking to target their services better. Thus, the introduction of co-production may create a receptive environment for PAR in public services. Yet again, if users are participating in something, critical PAR scholars should question in which structures they are participating, instantiating which power relations and to whose benefit. PAR scholars can find themselves compromised by institutional requirements. Identifying potential compromises, lines that cannot be crossed and areas where compromises can be made; negotiating with institutional orders; and navigating discomfort and even conflict are key skills for practitioners of PAR within institutional settings.

One approach to engaging with institutional structures has been to gather evidence for the value of PAR, according to the measures and methods of dominant science. Anyon and colleagues 59 systematically reviewed the Youth PAR literature in the United States. They found emerging evidence that PAR produces positive outcomes for youth and argued for further research using experimental designs to provide harder evidence. They make the pragmatic argument that funding bodies require certain forms of evidence to justify funding, and so PAR would benefit by playing by those rules.

A different approach, grounded in politics rather than the academy, situates co-production as sustained by democratic struggles. In the context of sustainability research in the Amazon, for instance, Perz and colleagues 79 argue that the days of externally driven research are past. Mobilization by community associations, Indigenous federations, producer cooperatives and labour unions to demand influence over the governance of natural resources goes hand in hand with expectations of local leadership and ownership of research, often implemented through PAR. These approaches critically question the desirability of institutional, external funding or even non-monetary support for a particular PAR project.

Global–local inequality and solidarity

Insufferable global and local inequalities continue to grow, intensified by climate catastrophes, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and extreme concentrations of wealth and political influence, and contested by increasingly impactful analyses, protests and refusals by those disadvantaged and discriminated against. Considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on PAR projects, Auerbach and colleagues 64 identify increasing marketization and austerity in some universities, and the material context of growing pressure on marginalized communities to simply meet their needs for survival, leaving little capacity for participating in and building long-term partnerships. They describe university-based researchers relying on their own capacities to invent new modes of digital collaboration and nourish their partnerships with communities, often despite limited institutional support.

We suggest that building solidaristic networks, and thus building collective power, within and beyond universities offers the most promising grounding for a fruitful outlook for PAR. PAR scholars can find solidarity across a range of disciplines, traditions, social movements, topics and geographical locations. Doing so offers to bridge traditions, share strategies and resonances, build methodologies and politics, and crucially, build power. In global health research, Abimbola and colleagues 80 call for the building of Southern networks to break away from the dominance of North–South partnerships. They conceptualize the South not only as a geographical location, as there are of course knowledge elites in the South, but as the communities traditionally marginalized from centres of authority and power. We suggest that PAR can best maximize its societal contribution and its own development and renewal by harnessing the diverse wisdom of knowledge generation and participatory methods across Southern regions and communities, using that wisdom to participate in global solidarities and demands for redistribution of knowledge, wealth and power.

Kemmis, S., McTaggart, R. & Nixon, R. in The SAGE Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice (eds Reason, P. & Bradbury, H.) 453–464 (Sage, 2015).

Kindon, S., Pain, R. & Kesby, M. Participatory Action Research Approaches and Methods: Connecting People, Participation and Place (Routledge, 2007). A classic, reflective and practical, all-rounder PAR textbook, with a social science/geography orientation and a Global North origin.

McIntyre, A. Participatory Action Research (Sage, 2007).

Smith, L. T. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (Bloomsbury, 2021). A foundational book in decolonization and Indigenous methods, including theory, critique and methodological guidance, rooted in Indigenous thought in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Chilisa, B. Indigenous Research Methodologies (Sage, 2019). A thorough and accessible grounding in the epistemology, methodology and methods of postcolonial, Indigenous research, suitable for a wide audience and rooted in African knowledge systems.

Fals-Borda, O. & Rahman, M. A. Action and Knowledge (Practical Action Publishing, 1991).

Freire, P. Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Continuum, 1970).

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank their PAR collaborators and teachers, who have shown us how to take care of each other, our communities and environments. They thank each other for generating such a productive critical thinking space and extending care during challenging times.

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Ulises Moreno-Tabarez

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Involving multiple team members in the analysis and interpretation of materials generated, typically in iterative cycles of individual or pair work and group discussion.

Both a structure and a process, community refers to a network of often diverse and unequal persons engaged in common tasks or actions, stakes or interests that lead them to form social ties or commune with one another.

A process through which a person or group’s activities are altered or appropriated to serve another group’s interests.

A term typically used in service provision to describe partnership working between service providers and service users, to jointly produce decisions or designs.

A call to recognize and dismantle the destructive legacies of colonialism in societal institutions, to re-power indigenous groups and to construct alternative relationships between peoples and knowledges that liberate knowers and doers from colonial extraction and centralization of power.

Scholarship that creates knowledge of the conditions that limit or oppress us to liberate ourselves from those conditions and to support others in their own transformations.

Injustices in relation to knowledge, including whose knowledge counts and which knowledge is deemed valid or not.

Research that extracts information and exploits relationships, places and peoples, producing benefit for scholars or institutions elsewhere, and depleting resources at the sites of the research.

Knowledge that is rooted in experience in a particular social context, often devalued by social science perspectives that make claims to generalizability or universality.

The relationships of domination, subordination and resistance between individuals or social groups, allowing some to advance their perspectives and interests more than others.

A methodological practice through which scholars critically reflect on their own positionality and how it impacts on participants and co-researchers, understanding of the topic and the knowledge produced.

An approach to ethical conduct that situates ethics as ongoingly negotiated within the context of respectful relationships, beyond following the procedural rules often set out by ethics committees.

A dual role in which scholars use their knowledge (scholarship) to tackle injustices and instigate changes (activism) in collaboration with marginalized communities and/or organizations.

Doing something or appointing a person for reasons other than in the interest of enabling meaningful change.

A systemic change in which relationships and structures are fundamentally altered, often contrasted with smaller-scale changes such as varying or refining existing relations.

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• Section 2: Home
• Developing the Quantitative Research Design
• Qualitative Descriptive Design
• Design and Development Research (DDR) For Instructional Design
• Qualitative Narrative Inquiry Research
• Action Research Resource

What is Action Research?

Considerations, creating a plan of action.

• Case Study Design in an Applied Doctorate
• SAGE Research Methods
• Research Examples (SAGE) This link opens in a new window
• Dataset Examples (SAGE) This link opens in a new window
• IRB Resource Center This link opens in a new window

Action research is a qualitative method that focuses on solving problems in social systems, such as schools and other organizations. The emphasis is on solving the presenting problem by generating knowledge and taking action within the social system in which the problem is located. The goal is to generate shared knowledge of how to address the problem by bridging the theory-practice gap (Bourner & Brook, 2019). A general definition of action research is the following: “Action research brings together action and reflection, as well as theory and practice, in participation with others, in the pursuit of practical solutions to issues of pressing concern” (Bradbury, 2015, p. 1). Johnson (2019) defines action research in the field of education as “the process of studying a school, classroom, or teacher-learning situation with the purpose of understanding and improving the quality of actions or instruction” (p.255).

Origins of Action Research

Kurt Lewin is typically credited with being the primary developer of Action Research in the 1940s. Lewin stated that action research can “transform…unrelated individuals, frequently opposed in their outlook and their interests, into cooperative teams, not on the basis of sweetness but on the basis of readiness to face difficulties realistically, to apply honest fact-finding, and to work together to overcome them” (1946, p.211).

Sample Action Research Topics

Some sample action research topics might be the following:

• Examining how classroom teachers perceive and implement new strategies in the classroom--How is the strategy being used? How do students respond to the strategy? How does the strategy inform and change classroom practices? Does the new skill improve test scores? Do classroom teachers perceive the strategy as effective for student learning?
• Examining how students are learning a particular content or objectives--What seems to be effective in enhancing student learning? What skills need to be reinforced? How do students respond to the new content? What is the ability of students to understand the new content?
• Examining how education stakeholders (administrator, parents, teachers, students, etc.) make decisions as members of the school’s improvement team--How are different stakeholders encouraged to participate? How is power distributed? How is equity demonstrated? How is each voice valued? How are priorities and initiatives determined? How does the team evaluate its processes to determine effectiveness?
• Examining the actions that school staff take to create an inclusive and welcoming school climate--Who makes and implements the actions taken to create the school climate? Do members of the school community (teachers, staff, students) view the school climate as inclusive? Do members of the school community feel welcome in the school? How are members of the school community encouraged to become involved in school activities? What actions can school staff take to help others feel a part of the school community?
• Examining the perceptions of teachers with regard to the learning strategies that are more effective with special populations, such as special education students, English Language Learners, etc.—What strategies are perceived to be more effective? How do teachers plan instructionally for unique learners such as special education students or English Language Learners? How do teachers deal with the challenges presented by unique learners such as special education students or English Language Learners? What supports do teachers need (e.g., professional development, training, coaching) to more effectively deliver instruction to unique learners such as special education students or English Language Learners?

Remember—The goal of action research is to find out how individuals perceive and act in a situation so the researcher can develop a plan of action to improve the educational organization. While these topics listed here can be explored using other research designs, action research is the design to use if the outcome is to develop a plan of action for addressing and improving upon a situation in the educational organization.

Considerations for Determining Whether to Use Action Research in an Applied Dissertation

• When considering action research, first determine the problem and the change that needs to occur as a result of addressing the problem (i.e., research problem and research purpose). Remember, the goal of action research is to change how individuals address a particular problem or situation in a way that results in improved practices.
• If the study will be conducted at a school site or educational organization, you may need site permission. Determine whether site permission will be given to conduct the study.
• Consider the individuals who will be part of the data collection (e.g., teachers, administrators, parents, other school staff, etc.). Will there be a representative sample willing to participate in the research?
• If students will be part of the study, does parent consent and student assent need to be obtained?
• As you develop your data collection plan, also consider the timeline for data collection. Is it feasible? For example, if you will be collecting data in a school, consider winter and summer breaks, school events, testing schedules, etc.
• As you develop your data collection plan, consult with your dissertation chair, Subject Matter Expert, NU Academic Success Center, and the NU IRB for resources and guidance.
• Action research is not an experimental design, so you are not trying to accept or reject a hypothesis. There are no independent or dependent variables. It is not generalizable to a larger setting. The goal is to understand what is occurring in the educational setting so that a plan of action can be developed for improved practices.

Considerations for Action Research

Below are some things to consider when developing your applied dissertation proposal using Action Research (adapted from Johnson, 2019):

• Research Topic and Research Problem -- Decide the topic to be studied and then identify the problem by defining the issue in the learning environment. Use references from current peer-reviewed literature for support.
• Purpose of the Study —What need to be different or improved as a result of the study?
• Research Questions —The questions developed should focus on “how” or “what” and explore individuals’ experiences, beliefs, and perceptions.
• Theoretical Framework -- What are the existing theories (theoretical framework) or concepts (conceptual framework) that can be used to support the research. How does existing theory link to what is happening in the educational environment with regard to the topic? What theories have been used to support similar topics in previous research?
• Literature Review -- Examine the literature, focusing on peer-reviewed studies published in journal within the last five years, with the exception of seminal works. What about the topic has already been explored and examined? What were the findings, implications, and limitations of previous research? What is missing from the literature on the topic?  How will your proposed research address the gap in the literature?
• Data Collection —Who will be part of the sample for data collection? What data will be collected from the individuals in the study (e.g., semi-structured interviews, surveys, etc.)? What are the educational artifacts and documents that need to be collected (e.g., teacher less plans, student portfolios, student grades, etc.)? How will they be collected and during what timeframe? (Note--A list of sample data collection methods appears under the heading of “Sample Instrumentation.”)
• Data Analysis —Determine how the data will be analyzed. Some types of analyses that are frequently used for action research include thematic analysis and content analysis.
• Implications —What conclusions can be drawn based upon the findings? How do the findings relate to the existing literature and inform theory in the field of education?
• Recommendations for Practice--Create a Plan of Action— This is a critical step in action research. A plan of action is created based upon the data analysis, findings, and implications. In the Applied Dissertation, this Plan of Action is included with the Recommendations for Practice. The includes specific steps that individuals should take to change practices; recommendations for how those changes will occur (e.g., professional development, training, school improvement planning, committees to develop guidelines and policies, curriculum review committee, etc.); and methods to evaluate the plan’s effectiveness.
• Recommendations for Research —What should future research focus on? What type of studies need to be conducted to build upon or further explore your findings.
• Professional Presentation or Defense —This is where the findings will be presented in a professional presentation or defense as the culmination of your research.

Adapted from Johnson (2019).

Considerations for Sampling and Data Collection

Below are some tips for sampling, sample size, data collection, and instrumentation for Action Research:

Sampling and Sample Size

Action research uses non-probability sampling. This is most commonly means a purposive sampling method that includes specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. However, convenience sampling can also be used (e.g., a teacher’s classroom).

Critical Concepts in Data Collection

Triangulation- - Dosemagen and Schwalbach (2019) discussed the importance of triangulation in Action Research which enhances the trustworthiness by providing multiple sources of data to analyze and confirm evidence for findings.

Trustworthiness —Trustworthiness assures that research findings are fulfill four critical elements—credibility, dependability, transferability, and confirmability. Reflect on the following: Are there multiple sources of data? How have you ensured credibility, dependability, transferability, and confirmability? Have the assumptions, limitations, and delimitations of the study been identified and explained? Was the sample a representative sample for the study? Did any individuals leave the study before it ended? How have you controlled researcher biases and beliefs? Are you drawing conclusions that are not supported by data? Have all possible themes been considered? Have you identified other studies with similar results?

Sample Instrumentation

Below are some of the possible methods for collecting action research data:

• Pre- and Post-Surveys for students and/or staff
• Staff Perception Surveys and Questionnaires
• Semi-Structured Interviews
• Focus Groups
• Observations
• Document analysis
• Student work samples
• Classroom artifacts, such as teacher lesson plans, rubrics, checklists, etc.
• Attendance records
• Discipline data
• Journals from students and/or staff
• Portfolios from students and/or staff

A benefit of Action Research is its potential to influence educational practice. Many educators are, by nature of the profession, reflective, inquisitive, and action-oriented. The ultimate outcome of Action Research is to create a plan of action using the research findings to inform future educational practice. A Plan of Action is not meant to be a one-size fits all plan. Instead, it is mean to include specific data-driven and research-based recommendations that result from a detailed analysis of the data, the study findings, and implications of the Action Research study. An effective Plan of Action includes an evaluation component and opportunities for professional educator reflection that allows for authentic discussion aimed at continuous improvement.

When developing a Plan of Action, the following should be considered:

• How can this situation be approached differently in the future?
• What should change in terms of practice?
• What are the specific steps that individuals should take to change practices?
• What is needed to implement the changes being recommended (professional development, training, materials, resources, planning committees, school improvement planning, etc.)?
• How will the effectiveness of the implemented changes be evaluated?
• How will opportunities for professional educator reflection be built into the Action Plan?

Sample Action Research Studies

Anderson, A. J. (2020). A qualitative systematic review of youth participatory action research implementation in U.S. high schools. A merican Journal of Community Psychology, 65 (1/2), 242–257. https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.proxy1.ncu.edu/doi/epdf/10.1002/ajcp.12389

Ayvaz, Ü., & Durmuş, S.(2021). Fostering mathematical creativity with problem posing activities: An action research with gifted students. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 40. https://proxy1.ncu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edselp&AN=S1871187121000614&site=eds-live

Bellino, M. J. (2018). Closing information gaps in Kakuma Refugee Camp: A youth participatory action research study. American Journal of Community Psychology, 62 (3/4), 492–507. https://proxy1.ncu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ofs&AN=133626988&site=eds-live

Beneyto, M., Castillo, J., Collet-Sabé, J., & Tort, A. (2019). Can schools become an inclusive space shared by all families? Learnings and debates from an action research project in Catalonia. Educational Action Research, 27 (2), 210–226. https://proxy1.ncu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=135671904&site=eds-live

Bilican, K., Senler, B., & Karısan, D. (2021). Fostering teacher educators’ professional development through collaborative action research. International Journal of Progressive Education, 17 (2), 459–472. https://proxy1.ncu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=149828364&site=eds-live

Black, G. L. (2021). Implementing action research in a teacher preparation program: Opportunities and limitations. Canadian Journal of Action Research, 21 (2), 47–71. https://proxy1.ncu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=149682611&site=eds-live

Bozkuş, K., & Bayrak, C. (2019). The Application of the dynamic teacher professional development through experimental action research. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 11 (4), 335–352. https://proxy1.ncu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=135580911&site=eds-live

Christ, T. W. (2018). Mixed methods action research in special education: An overview of a grant-funded model demonstration project. Research in the Schools, 25( 2), 77–88. https://proxy1.ncu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=135047248&site=eds-live

Jakhelln, R., & Pörn, M. (2019). Challenges in supporting and assessing bachelor’s theses based on action research in initial teacher education. Educational Action Research, 27 (5), 726–741. https://proxy1.ncu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=140234116&site=eds-live

Klima Ronen, I. (2020). Action research as a methodology for professional development in leading an educational process. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 64 . https://proxy1.ncu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edselp&AN=S0191491X19302159&site=eds-live

Messiou, K. (2019). Collaborative action research: facilitating inclusion in schools. Educational Action Research, 27 (2), 197–209. https://proxy1.ncu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=135671898&site=eds-live

Mitchell, D. E. (2018). Say it loud: An action research project examining the afrivisual and africology, Looking for alternative African American community college teaching strategies. Journal of Pan African Studies, 12 (4), 364–487. https://proxy1.ncu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ofs&AN=133155045&site=eds-live

Pentón Herrera, L. J. (2018). Action research as a tool for professional development in the K-12 ELT classroom. TESL Canada Journal, 35 (2), 128–139. https://proxy1.ncu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ofs&AN=135033158&site=eds-live

Rodriguez, R., Macias, R. L., Perez-Garcia, R., Landeros, G., & Martinez, A. (2018). Action research at the intersection of structural and family violence in an immigrant Latino community: a youth-led study. Journal of Family Violence, 33 (8), 587–596. https://proxy1.ncu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=132323375&site=eds-live

Vaughan, M., Boerum, C., & Whitehead, L. (2019). Action research in doctoral coursework: Perceptions of independent research experiences. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 13 . https://proxy1.ncu.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsdoj&AN=edsdoj.17aa0c2976c44a0991e69b2a7b4f321&site=eds-live

Sample Journals for Action Research

Educational Action Research

Canadian Journal of Action Research

Sample Resource Videos

Call-Cummings, M. (2017). Researching racism in schools using participatory action research [Video]. Sage Research Methods  http://proxy1.ncu.edu/login?URL=https://methods.sagepub.com/video/researching-racism-in-schools-using-participatory-action-research

Fine, M. (2016). Michelle Fine discusses community based participatory action research [Video]. Sage Knowledge. http://proxy1.ncu.edu/login?URL=https://sk-sagepub-com.proxy1.ncu.edu/video/michelle-fine-discusses-community-based-participatory-action-research

Getz, C., Yamamura, E., & Tillapaugh. (2017). Action Research in Education. [Video]. You Tube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2tso4klYu8

Bradbury, H. (Ed.). (2015). The handbook of action research (3rd edition). Sage.

Bradbury, H., Lewis, R. & Embury, D.C. (2019). Education action research: With and for the next generation. In C.A. Mertler (Ed.), The Wiley handbook of action research in education (1st edition). John Wiley and Sons. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nu/reader.action?docID=5683581&ppg=205

Bourner, T., & Brook, C. (2019). Comparing and contrasting action research and action learning. In C.A. Mertler (Ed.), The Wiley handbook of action research in education (1st edition). John Wiley and Sons. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nu/reader.action?docID=5683581&ppg=205

Bradbury, H. (2015). The Sage handbook of action research . Sage. https://www-doi-org.proxy1.ncu.edu/10.4135/9781473921290

Dosemagen, D.M. & Schwalback, E.M. (2019). Legitimacy of and value in action research. In C.A. Mertler (Ed.), The Wiley handbook of action research in education (1st edition). John Wiley and Sons. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nu/reader.action?docID=5683581&ppg=205

Johnson, A. (2019). Action research for teacher professional development. In C.A. Mertler (Ed.), The Wiley handbook of action research in education (1st edition). John Wiley and Sons. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nu/reader.action?docID=5683581&ppg=205

Lewin, K. (1946). Action research and minority problems. In G.W. Lewin (Ed.), Resolving social conflicts: Selected papers on group dynamics (compiled in 1948). Harper and Row.

Mertler, C. A. (Ed.). (2019). The Wiley handbook of action research in education. John Wiley and Sons. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/nu/detail.action?docID=5683581

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Action research

A type of applied research designed to find the most effective way to bring about a desired social change or to solve a practical problem, usually in collaboration with those being researched.

SAGE Research Methods Videos

How do you define action research.

Professor David Coghlan explains action research as an approach that crosses many academic disciplines yet has a shared focus on taking action to address a problem. He describes the difference between this approach and empirical scientific approaches, particularly highlighting the challenge of getting action research to be taken seriously by academic journals

Dr. Nataliya Ivankova defines action research as using systematic research principles to address an issue in everyday life. She delineates the six steps of action research, and illustrates the concept using an anti-diabetes project in an urban area.

This is just one segment in a whole series about action research. You can find the rest of the series in our SAGE database, Research Methods:

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INTRODUCTION TO ACTION RESEARCH

This chapter excerpt describes the salient elements of action research and the basic process.

Related Papers

Andrew Johnson

Teachers are the most significant variable in determining the quality of education students receive and the amount of learning that occurs. Yet, when it comes to discussions about how to enhance learning or improve the quality of education, this most significant variable is often ignored. To make this variable even more significant, there must be continued investment in teacher professional development. Action research can be an efficient and effective method to use in this regard. This chapter will examine the following: (a) the process of becoming an expert teacher, (b) the basics of action research, (c) traditional professional development for teachers, (d) strategies for developing teacher expertise, (f) proposals, products, and presentations, and (g) effective professional development and action research

Action research can be defined as a systematic observation of one’s own teaching practice. It is a way to link theories and research directly to classroom practice. It also empowers teachers to make the changes that are best for their own teaching situations. In this sense, action research is an effective and economical way to attend to the professional development of teachers. This article describes the basic elements of action research.

This article describes the elements necessary for designing cohesive and effective field experiences in teacher education.

Journal of Teaching in Physical Education

Thomas J. Templin , K. Andrew R. Richards

Using occupational socialization theory, this investigation describes the socialization of Janet, an induction phase physical education (PE) teacher. Special attention was given to the forms of induction assistance Janet was exposed to during her first two years at Liberty Middle School. Data were collected through seven interviews with Janet and interviews with Janet’s mentor, principal, and assistant superintendent. Analyses were conducted using inductive analysis and the constant comparative method. Results indicate that Janet was exposed to several forms of assistance including a state wide induction assistance initiative called the State Mentoring and Assessment Program (S-MAP). She found the informal assistance provided by her teaching colleague and the community of practice they formed to be among the most important elements of her induction, and she was critical of the formal support she received through the S-MAP.

This chapter excerpt describes the process of doing a literature review.

Kachinga Sichimata

Usage and addiction of dangerous drugs which has been identified as Narcotics, Depressants, Stimulants, hallucinogens and Cannabis (Dharmapriya, 2001 ), in various countries has been a common trend in both developed and developing countries specially among the youth. They get adverse effect on physical and mental conditions through continued usage of drug. Throughout the human history, people have been using some kind of stimulants in the form of alcohol or drugs for one or other reasons. However, in the resent past with the introduction of narcotics it has been spread throughout the world very fast and millions of people and their families have made suffered. In Zambia, historical reports say that even in Colonial rule, Colonialists had to impose laws to prohibit trafficking of Cannabis and Cocaine (proclamation in 1675). During the colonial time alcoholism and drug addiction among Zambian people gradually developed (CSO, 1969). During the last two decades drug addiction has been a growing phenomenon in Zambia and other countries due to a multitude of factors. On the other hand, the illegal economy of the drug trade not only drug production and trafficking but also other related criminal activities causes market distortions and damages a society’s overall capacity to produce. The drug economy results in losses for governments. It generates no tax revenues, and anti-drug policies significantly increase public expenditures(education, police, courts, prisons, health care systems). This issue is not just an academic exercise. The numbers play a significant role in the implementation of drug and crime control policies and regulations, both nationally as well as globally. All anti-drug supporters and adversaries of the current drug abuse control regime use the billions of money for the global drug abuse reduction, although nobody really knows if the number of addicts will ever reduce and this has been the question of centuries. It is indeed imperative to find out and explore the impact of drug addiction in communities especially among the youth, with reference to the economic development of the country.

wastiti adiningrum

This chapter excerpt describes how to use action research for a Master's Thesis. Included are a proposal form and what should be included in each chapter of a thesis.

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Interpretivism Paradigm & Research Philosophy

Charlotte Nickerson

Research Assistant at Harvard University

Undergraduate at Harvard University

Charlotte Nickerson is a student at Harvard University obsessed with the intersection of mental health, productivity, and design.

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The interpretivist paradigm is a research approach in sociology that focuses on understanding the subjective meanings and experiences of individuals within their social context.

Key Takeaways

• Interpretivism is an approach to social science that asserts that understanding the beliefs, motivations, and reasoning of individuals in a social situation is essential to decoding the meaning of the data that can be collected around a phenomenon.
• There are numerous interpretivist approaches to sociology, three of the most influential of which are hermeneutics, phenomenology and ethnomethodology, and symbolic interactionism.
• Sociologists who have adopted an interpretivists approach include Weber, Garfinkle, Bulmer, Goffman, Cooley, Mead, and Husser.
• Interpretivists use both qualitative and quantitative research methods. However, they believe that there is no one “right path” to knowledge, thus rejecting the idea that there is one methodology that will consistently get at the “truth” of a phenomenon.
• Interpretivist approaches to research differ from positivist ones in their emphasis on qualitative data and focus on context.

The Interpretivist Paradigm

Interpretivism uses qualitative research methods that focus on individuals” beliefs, motivations, and reasoning over quantitative data to gain understanding of social interactions.

Interpretivists assume that access to reality happens through social constructions such as language, consciousness, shared meanings, and instruments (Myers, 2008).

What is a Paradigm?

A paradigm is a set of ideas and beliefs which provide a framework or model which research can follow. A paradigm defines existing knowledge, the nature of the problem(s) to be investigated, appropriate methods of investigation, and the way data should be analyzed and interpreted.

The interpretivist paradigm developed as a critique of positivism in the social sciences

Interpretivism has its roots in idealistic philosophy. The umbrella term has also been used to group together schools of thought ranging from social constructivism to phenomenology and hermeneutics: approaches that reject the view that meaning exists in the world independently of people”s consciousness and interpretation.

Because meaning exists through the lens of people, interpretivist approaches to social science consider it important for researchers to appreciate the differences between people, and seek to understand how these differences inform how people find meaning.

The Interpretivist Assumptions

The interpretive approach is based on the following assumptions:

Human life can only be understood from within

According to interpretivism, individuals have consciousness. This means that they are not merely coerced puppets that react to social forces in the way that positivists mean. This has the result that people in a society are intricate and complex.

Different people in a society experience and understand the same “objective” reality in different ways, and have individual reasons for their actions (Alharahshel & Pius, 2020; Bhattacherjee, 2012).

This more sense-based approach of interpretivism to research has roots in anthropology, sociology, psychology, linguistics, and semiotics, and has been used since the early 19th century, long before the development of positivist sociology.

The social world does not “exist” independently of human knowledge

Interpretivists do not deny that there is an external reality. However, they do not accept that there is an independently knowable reality.

Contrary to positivist approaches to sociology, interpretivists assert that all research is influenced and shaped by the pre-existing theories and worldviews of the researchers.

Terms, procedures, and data used in research have meaning because a group of academics have agreed that these things have meaning. This makes research a socially constructed activity, which means phenomena is created by society and not naturally occurring. It will vary from culture to culture.

Consequently, the reality that research tells us is also socially constructed (Alharahshel & Pius, 2020).

Research should be based on qualitative methods

Interpretivists also use a broad range of qualitative methods . They also accept reflective discussions of how researchers do research, considering these to be prized sources of knowledge and understanding.

This is in contrast to post positivists, who generally consider their reflections and personal stories of researchers to be unacceptable as research because they are neither scientific nor objective (Smith, 1993).

The term interpretive research is often used synonymously with qualitative research , but the two concepts are different. Interpretive research is a research paradigm, or set of common beliefs and agreements shared between scientists about how problems should be understood and addressed (Kuhn, 1970).

Because interpretivists see social reality as embedded within and impossible to abstract from their social settings, they attempt to make “sense” of reality rather than testing hypotheses.

Research should be based on a grounded theory

There can be causal explanation in sociology but there is no need for a hypothesis before starting research. By stating an hypothesis at the start of the study Glaser and Strauss argue that researchers run the risk of imposing their own views on the data rather than those of the actors being researched.

Instead, there should be a grounded theory which means allowing ideas to emerge as the data is collected which can later be used to produce a testable hypothesis.

Research Design

Interpretivists believe that there is no particular right or correct path to knowledge, and no special method that automatically leads to intellectual progress (Smith, 1993). This means that interpretivists are antifoundationalists.

Interpretivists, however, accept that there are standards that guide research. However, they believe that these standards cannot be universal. Instead, interpretivists believe that research standards are the products of a particular group or culture

Interpretivists do not always abandon standards such as the rules of the scientific method; they simply accept that whatever standards are used are subjective, and potentially able to fail, rather than objective and universal (Smith, 1993).

Qualitative Methods

Qualitative data is virtually any type of information that can be observed and recorded, not numerical, and can be in the form of written or verbal communication.

Interpretivists can collect qualitative data using a variety of techniques. The most frequent of these is interviews. These can manifest in many forms, such as face-to-face, over the telephone, or f ocus groups . Another technique for interpretivist data collection is observation.

Observation can include direct observation, a technique common to case research where the researcher is a neutral and passive external observer and is not involved in the phenomena that they are studying.

Interpretivists can also use documentation as a data collecting technique, collecting external and internal documents , such as memos, emails, annual reports, financial statements, newspaper articles, websites, and so on, to cast further insight into a phenomenon of interest or to corroborate other forms of evidence (Smith, 1993).

Case Research

Case research is an intensive, longitudinal study of a phenomenon at least one research site that intends to derive detailed, contextualized inferences and understand the dynamics that underlie the phenomenon that is being studied.

In this research design, the case researcher is a neutral observer, rather than an active participant. In the end, drawing meaningful inferences from case research largely depends on the observational skills and integrative abilities of the research (Schwartz-Shea & Yanow, 2013).

Action Research

Action research, meanwhile, is a qualitative albeit positivist research design aimed at testing, rather than building theories.

Action research designs interaction, assuming that complex social phenomena are best understood by introducing changes, interventions, or “Actions” into the phenomena being studied and observing the outcomes of such actions on that phenomena.

Usually, the researcher in this method is a consultant or organizational member embedded into a social context who initiates an action in response to a social problem, and examines how their action influences the phenomenon while also learning and generating insights about the relationship between the action and the phenomenon.

Some examples of actions may include organizational changes, such as through introducing people or technology, initiated with the goal of improving an organization”s performance or profitability as a business.

The researcher”s choice of actions may be based on theory which explains why and how certain actions could bring forth desired social changes (Schwartz-Shea & Yanow, 2013).

Interpretivist Sociological Perspectives

There are three major interpretivist approaches to sociology (Williams, 2000):

Hermeneutics , which refers to the philosophy of interpretation and understanding. Often, Hermeneutics focuses on influential, ancient texts, such as scripture.

Phenomenology and Ethnomethodology , which is a philosophical tradition that seeks to understand the world through directly experiencing the phenomena within it. Ethnomethodology , which has a phenomenological foundation, is the study of how people make sense of and navigate their everyday world through norms and rituals.

Symbolic interaction , which accepts symbols as culturally derived social objects that have shared meanings. These symbols provide a means to construct reality.

Hermeneutics

Originally, the term hermeneutics referred exclusively to the study of sacred texts such as the Talmud or the Bible.

Hermeneuticists originally used various methods to get at the meaning of these texts, such as through studying the meaning of terms and phrases from the document in other writings from the same era, the social and political context in which the passage was written, and the way the concepts discussed are used in other parts of the document (Williams, 2000).

Gradually, however, hermeneutics expanded beyond this original meaning to include understanding human action in context.

There are many variations on hermeneutics; however, Smith (1991) concluded that they all share two characteristics in common:

An emphasis on the importance of language in understanding, because language can both limit and make possible what people can say,

An emphasis on the context, particularly the historical one, as a frame for understanding, because human behavior and ideas must be understood in context, rather than in isolation.

Hermeneutics has several different subcategories, including validation, critical, and philosophical. The first of these, validation, is based on post positivism and assumes that hermeneutics can be a scientific way to find the truth.

Critical hermeneutics is focused on critical theory, and aims to highlight the historical conditions that lead to oppression.

Finally, philosophical hermeneutics aims to develop understanding and rejects the idea that there is a certain research method that will uncover the truth without fail (Smith, 1991).

Phenomenology

Phenomenology is a type of social action theory that focuses on studying people’s perceptions of the world.

Understanding different perspectives often call for different methods of research and different ways of reporting results. Research methods that attempt to examine the subjective perceptions of the person being studied are often called phenomenological research methods.

Interpretivists generally tend to use qualitative methods such as case studies and ethnography, writing reports that are rich in detail in order to depict the context needed for understanding.

Ethnography

Ethnography, a research method derived largely from anthropology, emphasizes studying a phenomenon within the context of its culture.

In practice, an ethnographic researcher must immerse themself into a social culture over an extended period of time and engage, observe, and record the daily life of the culture being studied and its social participants within their natural setting.

In addition, ethnographic researchers must take extensive field notes and narrate their experience in descriptive detail so that readers can experience the same culture as the researcher.

This gives the researcher two roles: relying on their unique knowledge and engagement to generate insights, and convincing the scientific community that this behavior applies across different situations (Schwandt, 1994).

Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic interactionism starts which the assumptions that humans inhabit a symbolic world, in which symbols, such as language, have a shared meaning.

The social world is therefore constructed by the meaning that individual attach to events and phenomena and these are transmitted across generations through language.

A central concept of symbolic interactionism is the Self , which allows individuals to calculate the effects of their actions.

Interpretivist Research Designs

Interpretivists can collect qualitative data using a variety of techniques. The most frequent of these are interviews. These can manifest in many forms, such as face-to-face, over the telephone, or in focus groups.

Another technique for interpretivist data collection is observation. Observation can include direct observation, a technique common to case research where the researcher is a neutral and passive external observer and is not involved in the phenomena that they are studying.

Thirdly, interpretivists can use documentation as a data collecting technique, collecting external and internal documents, such as memos, emails, annual reports, financial statements, newspaper articles, websites, and so on — to cast further insight into a phenomenon of interest or to corroborate other forms of evidence (Smith, 1993).

Some examples of actions may include organizational changes, such as through introducing people or technology, initiated with the goal of improving an organization’s performance or profitability as a business.

Examples of Interpretive Research

Decision making in businesses.

Although interpretive research tends to rely heavily on qualitative data, quantitative data can add more precision and create a clearer understanding of the phenomenon being studied than qualitative data.

For example, Eisenhardt (1989) conducted an interpretive study of decision-making in high-velocity firms.

Eisenhardt collected numerical data on how long it took each firm to make certain strategic decisions (ranging from 1.5 months to 18 months), how many decision alternatives were considered for each decision, and surveyed her respondents to capture their perceptions of organizational conflict.

This numerical data helped Eisenhardt to clearly distinguish high-speed decision making firms from low-speed decision makers without relying on respondents” subjective perceptions.

This differentiation then allowed Eisenhardt to examine the number of decision alternatives considered by and the extent of conflict in high-speed and low-speed firms.

Eisenhardt”s study is one example of how interpretivist researchers can use a mixture of quantitative and qualitative data to study their phenomena of interest.

Teaching and Technology

Waxman and Huang (1996) conducted an interpretivist study on the relationship between computers and teaching strategies.

While positivists and post positivists may use the data from that study to make a general statement about the relationship between computers and teaching strategies, interpretivists would argue that the context of the study could alter this general conclusion entirely.

For example, Waxman and Huang (1996) mention in their paper that the school district where the data were collected had provided training for teachers that emphasized the use of “constructivist” approaches to teaching and learning.

This training may mean that the study would have generated different results in a school district where teachers were provided extensive training on a different teaching method.

Interpretivists are concerned about how data are situated, and how this context can affect the data.

Interpretivism vs. Positivism

Whereas positivism looks for universals based on data, interpretivism looks for an understanding of a particular context, because this context is critical to interpreting the data gathered.

Generally, interpretivist research is prepared to sacrifice reliability and representativeness for greater validity while positivism requires research to be valid, reliable, and representative.

While a positivist may use largely quantitative research methods, official statistics, social surveys, questionnaires, and structured interviews to conduct research, interpretivists may rely on qualitative methods, such as personal documents , participant observation, and unstructured interviews (Alharahshel & Pius, 2020; Bhattacherjee, 2012).

Interprevists and positivists also differ in how they see the relationship between the society and the individual. Positivists believe that society shapes the individual, and that society consists of “social facts” that exercise coercive control over individuals.

This means that people”s actions can generally be explained by the social norms that they have been exposed to through socialization, social class, gender, and ethnic background.

Many positivist researchers view interpretive research as erroneous and biased, given the subjective nature of qualitative data collection and the process of interpretation used in such research.

However, the failure of many positivist techniques to generate insights has resulted in a resurgence of interest in interpretive research since the 1970s, now informed with exacting methods and criteria to ensure the reliability and validity of interpretive inferences (Bhattacherjee, 2012).

Alharahsheh, H. H., & Pius, A. (2020). A review of key paradigms: Positivism VS interpretivism . Global Academic Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2 (3), 39-43.

Bhattacherjee, A. (2012). Social science research: Principles, methods, and practices . University of South Florida.

Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Making fast strategic decisions in high-velocity environments. Academy of Management Journal, 32 (3), 543-576.

Goldkuhl, G. (2012). Pragmatism vs interpretivism in qualitative information systems research .  European journal of information systems, 21 (2), 135-146.

Kuhn, T. S. (1970). Criticism and the growth of knowledge: Volume 4: Proceedings of the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science , London, 1965 (Vol. 4). Cambridge University Press.

Myers, M. D. (2008). Qualitative Research in Business & Management . SAGE Publications.

Schwandt, T. A. (1994). Constructivist, interpretivist approaches to human inquiry. Handbook of qualitative research, 1 (1994), 118-137.

Schwartz-Shea, P., & Yanow, D. (2013). Interpretive research design: Concepts and processes . Routledge.

Smith, D. G. (1991). Hermeneutic inquiry: The hermeneutic imagination and the pedagogic text. Forms of curriculum inquiry , 3.

Smith, J. K. (1993). After the demise of empiricism: The problem of judging social and education inquiry .

Waxman, H. C., & Huang, S. Y. L. (1996). Classroom instruction differences by level of technology use in middle school mathematics. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 14 (2), 157-169.

Walsham, G. (1995). The emergence of interpretivism in IS research .  Information systems research, 6 (4), 376-394.

Williams, M. (2000). Interpretivism and generalisation. Sociology, 34 (2), 209-224.

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• 39 Human-Data Interaction by Andy Crabtree, Jon Crowcroft, Hamed Haddadi, Tristan Henderson, Derek McAuley and Richard Mortier
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• 43 Semi-structured qualitative studies by Ann Blandford
• 44 Service Design by Jodi Forlizzi and John Zimmerman

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Net Zero by 2050

A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector

This report is part of Net Zero Emissions

About this report

The number of countries announcing pledges to achieve net zero emissions over the coming decades continues to grow. But the pledges by governments to date – even if fully achieved – fall well short of what is required to bring global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050 and give the world an even chance of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 °C. This special report is the world’s first comprehensive study of how to transition to a net zero energy system by 2050 while ensuring stable and affordable energy supplies, providing universal energy access, and enabling robust economic growth. It sets out a cost-effective and economically productive pathway, resulting in a clean, dynamic and resilient energy economy dominated by renewables like solar and wind instead of fossil fuels. The report also examines key uncertainties, such as the roles of bioenergy, carbon capture and behavioural changes in reaching net zero.

Summary for policy makers

Reaching net zero emissions globally by 2050 is a critical and formidable goal.

The energy sector is the source of around three-quarters of greenhouse gas emissions today and holds the key to averting the worst effects of climate change, perhaps the greatest challenge humankind has faced. Reducing global carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions to net zero by 2050 is consistent with efforts to limit the long-term increase in average global temperatures to 1.5˚C. This calls for nothing less than a complete transformation of how we produce, transport and consume energy. The growing political consensus on reaching net zero is cause for considerable optimism about the progress the world can make, but the changes required to reach net zero emissions globally by 2050 are poorly understood. A huge amount of work is needed to turn today’s impressive ambitions into reality, especially given the range of different situations among countries and their differing capacities to make the necessary changes. This special IEA report sets out a pathway for achieving this goal, resulting in a clean and resilient energy system that would bring major benefits for human prosperity and well-being.

The global pathway to net zero emissions by 2050 detailed in this report requires all governments to significantly strengthen and then successfully implement their energy and climate policies. Commitments made to date fall far short of what is required by that pathway. The number of countries that have pledged to achieve net zero emissions has grown rapidly over the last year and now covers around 70% of global emissions of CO 2 . This is a huge step forward. However, most pledges are not yet underpinned by near-term policies and measures. Moreover, even if successfully fulfilled, the pledges to date would still leave around 22 billion tonnes of CO 2 emissions worldwide in 2050. The continuation of that trend would be consistent with a temperature rise in 2100 of around 2.1 °C. Global emissions fell in 2020 because of the Covid-19 crisis but are already rebounding strongly as economies recover. Further delay in acting to reverse that trend will put net zero by 2050 out of reach.

In this Summary for Policy Makers, we outline the essential conditions for the global energy sector to reach net zero CO 2 emissions by 2050. The pathway described in depth in this report achieves this objective with no offsets from outside the energy sector, and with low reliance on negative emissions technologies. It is designed to maximise technical feasibility, cost-effectiveness and social acceptance while ensuring continued economic growth and secure energy supplies. We highlight the priority actions that are needed today to ensure the opportunity of net zero by 2050 – narrow but still achievable – is not lost. The report provides a global view, but countries do not start in the same place or finish at the same time: advanced economies have to reach net zero before emerging markets and developing economies, and assist others in getting there. We also recognise that the route mapped out here is a path, not necessarily the path, and so we examine some key uncertainties, notably concerning the roles played by bioenergy, carbon capture and behavioural changes. Getting to net zero will involve countless decisions by people across the world, but our primary aim is to inform the decisions made by policy makers, who have the greatest scope to move the world closer to its climate goals.

Net zero by 2050 hinges on an unprecedented clean technology push to 2030

The path to net zero emissions is narrow: staying on it requires immediate and massive deployment of all available clean and efficient energy technologies. In the net zero emissions pathway presented in this report, the world economy in 2030 is some 40% larger than today but uses 7% less energy. A major worldwide push to increase energy efficiency is an essential part of these efforts, resulting in the annual rate of energy intensity improvements averaging 4% to 2030 – about three-times the average rate achieved over the last two decades. Emissions reductions from the energy sector are not limited to CO 2 : in our pathway, methane emissions from fossil fuel supply fall by 75% over the next ten years as a result of a global, concerted effort to deploy all available abatement measures and technologies.

Ever-cheaper renewable energy technologies give electricity the edge in the race to zero. Our pathway calls for scaling up solar and wind rapidly this decade, reaching annual additions of 630 gigawatts (GW) of solar photovoltaics (PV) and 390 GW of wind by 2030, four-times the record levels set in 2020. For solar PV, this is equivalent to installing the world’s current largest solar park roughly every day. Hydropower and nuclear, the two largest sources of low-carbon electricity today, provide an essential foundation for transitions. As the electricity sector becomes cleaner, electrification emerges as a crucial economy-wide tool for reducing emissions. Electric vehicles (EVs) go from around 5% of global car sales to more than 60% by 2030.  

Priority action: Make the 2020s the decade of massive clean energy expansion

All the technologies needed to achieve the necessary deep cuts in global emissions by 2030 already exist, and the policies that can drive their deployment are already proven.

As the world continues to grapple with the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is essential that the resulting wave of investment and spending to support economic recovery is aligned with the net zero pathway. Policies should be strengthened to speed the deployment of clean and efficient energy technologies. Mandates and standards are vital to drive consumer spending and industry investment into the most efficient technologies. Targets and competitive auctions can enable wind and solar to accelerate the electricity sector transition. Fossil fuel subsidy phase-outs, carbon pricing and other market reforms can ensure appropriate price signals. Policies should limit or provide disincentives for the use of certain fuels and technologies, such as unabated coal-fired power stations, gas boilers and conventional internal combustion engine vehicles. Governments must lead the planning and incentivising of the massive infrastructure investment, including in smart transmission and distribution grids.

Electric car sales in the net zero pathway, 2020-2030

Capacity additions of solar pv and wind in the net zero pathway, 2020-2030, energy intensity of gdp in the net zero pathway, 2020-2030, net zero by 2050 requires huge leaps in clean energy innovation.

Reaching net zero by 2050 requires further rapid deployment of available technologies as well as widespread use of technologies that are not on the market yet. Major innovation efforts must occur over this decade in order to bring these new technologies to market in time. Most of the global reductions in CO 2 emissions through 2030 in our pathway come from technologies readily available today. But in 2050, almost half the reductions come from technologies that are currently at the demonstration or prototype phase. In heavy industry and long-distance transport, the share of emissions reductions from technologies that are still under development today is even higher.

The biggest innovation opportunities concern advanced batteries, hydrogen electrolysers, and direct air capture and storage. Together, these three technology areas make vital contributions the reductions in CO 2 emissions between 2030 and 2050 in our pathway. Innovation over the next ten years – not only through research and development (R&D) and demonstration but also through deployment – needs to be accompanied by the large-scale construction of the infrastructure the technologies will need. This includes new pipelines to transport captured CO 2 emissions and systems to move hydrogen around and between ports and industrial zones.

Priority action: Prepare for the next phase of the transition by boosting innovation

Clean energy innovation must accelerate rapidly, with governments putting R&D, demonstration and deployment at the core of energy and climate policy.

Government R&D spending needs to be increased and reprioritised. Critical areas such as electrification, hydrogen, bioenergy and carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) today receive only around one-third of the level of public R&D funding of the more established low-carbon electricity generation and energy efficiency technologies. Support is also needed to accelerate the roll-out of demonstration projects, to leverage private investment in R&D, and to boost overall deployment levels to help reduce costs. Around USD 90 billion of public money needs to be mobilised globally as soon as possible to complete a portfolio of demonstration projects before 2030. Currently, only roughly USD 25 billion is budgeted for that period. Developing and deploying these technologies would create major new industries, as well as commercial and employment opportunities.

Annual CO2 emissions savings in the net zero pathway, 2030 and 2050, relative to 2020

The transition to net zero is for and about people.

A transition of the scale and speed described by the net zero pathway cannot be achieved without sustained support and participation from citizens. The changes will affect multiple aspects of people’s lives – from transport, heating and cooking to urban planning and jobs. We estimate that around 55% of the cumulative emissions reductions in the pathway are linked to consumer choices such as purchasing an EV, retrofitting a house with energy-efficient technologies or installing a heat pump. Behavioural changes, particularly in advanced economies – such as replacing car trips with walking, cycling or public transport, or foregoing a long-haul flight – also provide around 4% of the cumulative emissions reductions.

Providing electricity to around 785 million people that have no access and clean cooking solutions to 2.6 billion people that lack those options is an integral part of our pathway. Emissions reductions have to go hand-in-hand with efforts to ensure energy access for all by 2030. This costs around USD 40 billion a year, equal to around 1% of average annual energy sector investment, while also bringing major co-benefits from reduced indoor air pollution.

Some of the changes brought by the clean energy transformation may be challenging to implement, so decisions must be transparent, just and cost-effective. Governments need to ensure that clean energy transitions are people-centred and inclusive. Household energy expenditure as a share of disposable income – including purchases of efficient appliances and fuel bills – rises modestly in emerging market and developing economies in our net zero pathway as more people gain access to energy and demand for modern energy services increases rapidly. Ensuring the affordability of energy for households demands close attention: policy tools that can direct support to the poorest include tax credits, loans and targeted subsidies.

Priority action: Clean energy jobs will grow strongly but must be spread widely

Energy transitions have to take account of the social and economic impacts on individuals and communities, and treat people as active participants.

The transition to net zero brings substantial new opportunities for employment, with 14 million jobs created by 2030 in our pathway thanks to new activities and investment in clean energy. Spending on more efficient appliances, electric and fuel cell vehicles, and building retrofits and energy-efficient construction would require a further 16 million workers. But these opportunities are often in different locations, skill sets and sectors than the jobs that will be lost as fossil fuels decline. In our pathway, around 5 million jobs are lost. Most of those jobs are located close to fossil fuel resources, and many are well paid, meaning structural changes can cause shocks for communities with impacts that persist over time. This requires careful policy attention to address the employment losses. It will be vital to minimise hardships associated with these disruptions, such as by retraining workers, locating new clean energy facilities in heavily affected areas wherever possible, and providing regional aid.

Global employment in energy supply in the Net Zero Scenario, 2019-2030

An energy sector dominated by renewables.

In the net zero pathway, global energy demand in 2050 is around 8% smaller than today, but it serves an economy more than twice as big and a population with 2 billion more people. More efficient use of energy, resource efficiency and behavioural changes combine to offset increases in demand for energy services as the world economy grows and access to energy is extended to all.

Instead of fossil fuels, the energy sector is based largely on renewable energy. Two-thirds of total energy supply in 2050 is from wind, solar, bioenergy, geothermal and hydro energy. Solar becomes the largest source, accounting for one-fifth of energy supplies. Solar PV capacity increases 20-fold between now and 2050, and wind power 11-fold.

Net zero means a huge decline in the use of fossil fuels. They fall from almost four-fifths of total energy supply today to slightly over one-fifth by 2050. Fossil fuels that remain in 2050 are used in goods where the carbon is embodied in the product such as plastics, in facilities fitted with CCUS, and in sectors where low-emissions technology options are scarce.

Electricity accounts for almost 50% of total energy consumption in 2050. It plays a key role across all sectors – from transport and buildings to industry – and is essential to produce low-emissions fuels such as hydrogen. To achieve this, total electricity generation increases over two-and-a-half-times between today and 2050. At the same time, no additional new final investment decisions should be taken for new unabated coal plants, the least efficient coal plants are phased out by 2030, and the remaining coal plants still in use by 2040 are retrofitted. By 2050, almost 90% of electricity generation comes from renewable sources, with wind and solar PV together accounting for nearly 70%. Most of the remainder comes from nuclear.    

Emissions from industry, transport and buildings take longer to reduce. Cutting industry emissions by 95% by 2050 involves major efforts to build new infrastructure. After rapid innovation progress through R&D, demonstration and initial deployment between now and 2030 to bring new clean technologies to market, the world then has to put them into action. Every month from 2030 onwards, ten heavy industrial plants are equipped with CCUS, three new hydrogen-based industrial plants are built, and 2 GW of electrolyser capacity are added at industrial sites. Policies that end sales of new internal combustion engine cars by 2035 and boost electrification underpin the massive reduction in transport emissions. In 2050, cars on the road worldwide run on electricity or fuel cells. Low-emissions fuels are essential where energy needs cannot easily or economically be met by electricity. For example, aviation relies largely on biofuels and synthetic fuels, and ammonia is vital for shipping. In buildings, bans on new fossil fuel boilers need to start being introduced globally in 2025, driving up sales of electric heat pumps. Most old buildings and all new ones comply with zero-carbon-ready building energy codes. 1

Priority action: Set near-term milestones to get on track for long-term targets

Governments need to provide credible step-by-step plans to reach their net zero goals, building confidence among investors, industry, citizens and other countries.

Governments must put in place long-term policy frameworks to allow all branches of government and stakeholders to plan for change and facilitate an orderly transition. Long-term national low-emissions strategies, called for by the Paris Agreement, can set out a vision for national transitions, as this report has done on a global level. These long-term objectives need to be linked to measurable short-term targets and policies. Our pathway details more than 400 sectoral and technology milestones to guide the global journey to net zero by 2050.  

There is no need for investment in new fossil fuel supply in our net zero pathway

Beyond projects already committed as of 2021, there are no new oil and gas fields approved for development in our pathway, and no new coal mines or mine extensions are required. The unwavering policy focus on climate change in the net zero pathway results in a sharp decline in fossil fuel demand, meaning that the focus for oil and gas producers switches entirely to output – and emissions reductions – from the operation of existing assets. Unabated coal demand declines by 98% to just less than 1% of total energy use in 2050. Gas demand declines by 55% to 1 750 billion cubic metres and oil declines by 75% to 24 million barrels per day (mb/d), from around 90 mb/d in 2020.

Clean electricity generation, network infrastructure and end-use sectors are key areas for increased investment. Enabling infrastructure and technologies are vital for transforming the energy system. Annual investment in transmission and distribution grids expands from USD 260 billion today to USD 820 billion in 2030. The number of public charging points for EVs rises from around 1 million today to 40 million in 2030, requiring annual investment of almost USD 90 billion in 2030. Annual battery production for EVs leaps from 160 gigawatt-hours (GWh) today to 6 600 GWh in 2030 – the equivalent of adding almost 20 gigafactories 2  each year for the next ten years. And the required roll-out of hydrogen and CCUS after 2030 means laying the groundwork now: annual investment in CO 2 pipelines and hydrogen-enabling infrastructure increases from USD 1 billion today to around USD 40 billion in 2030.

Priority action: Drive a historic surge in clean energy investment

Policies need to be designed to send market signals that unlock new business models and mobilise private spending, especially in emerging economies.

Accelerated delivery of international public finance will be critical to energy transitions, especially in developing economies, but ultimately the private sector will need to finance most of the extra investment required. Mobilising the capital for large-scale infrastructure calls for closer co operation between developers, investors, public financial institutions and governments. Reducing risks for investors will be essential to ensure successful and affordable clean energy transitions. Many emerging market and developing economies, which rely mainly on public funding for new energy projects and industrial facilities, will need to reform their policy and regulatory frameworks to attract more private finance. International flows of long-term capital to these economies will be needed to support the development of both existing and emerging clean energy technologies.

Clean energy investment in the net zero pathway, 2016-2050

An unparalleled clean energy investment boom lifts global economic growth.

Total annual energy investment surges to USD 5 trillion by 2030, adding an extra 0.4 percentage point a year to annual global GDP growth, based on our joint analysis with the International Monetary Fund. This unparalleled increase – with investment in clean energy and energy infrastructure more than tripling already by 2030 – brings significant economic benefits as the world emerges from the Covid-19 crisis. The jump in private and government spending creates millions of jobs in clean energy, including energy efficiency, as well as in the engineering, manufacturing and construction industries. All of this puts global GDP 4% higher in 2030 than it would be based on current trends.

Governments have a key role in enabling investment-led growth and ensuring that the benefits are shared by all. There are large differences in macroeconomic impacts between regions. But government investment and public policies are essential to attract large amounts of private capital and to help offset the declines in fossil fuel income that many countries will experience. The major innovation efforts needed to bring new clean energy technologies to market could boost productivity and create entirely new industries, providing opportunities to locate them in areas that see job losses in incumbent industries. Improvements in air quality provide major health benefits, with 2 million fewer premature deaths globally from air pollution in 2030 than today in our net zero pathway. Achieving universal energy access by 2030 would provide a major boost to well-being and productivity in developing economies.

New energy security concerns emerge, and old ones remain

The contraction of oil and natural gas production will have far-reaching implications for all the countries and companies that produce these fuels. No new oil and natural gas fields are needed in our pathway, and oil and natural gas supplies become increasingly concentrated in a small number of low-cost producers. For oil, the OPEC share of a much-reduced global oil supply increases from around 37% in recent years to 52% in 2050, a level higher than at any point in the history of oil markets. Yet annual per capita income from oil and natural gas in producer economies falls by about 75%, from USD 1 800 in recent years to USD 450 by the 2030s, which could have knock-on societal effects. Structural reforms and new sources of revenue are needed, even though these are unlikely to compensate fully for the drop in oil and gas income. While traditional supply activities decline, the expertise of the oil and natural gas industry fits well with technologies such as hydrogen, CCUS and offshore wind that are needed to tackle emissions in sectors where reductions are likely to be most challenging.

The energy transition requires substantial quantities of critical minerals, and their supply emerges as a significant growth area. The total market size of critical minerals like copper, cobalt, manganese and various rare earth metals grows almost sevenfold between 2020 and 2030 in the net zero pathway. Revenues from those minerals are larger than revenues from coal well before 2030. This creates substantial new opportunities for mining companies. It also creates new energy security concerns, including price volatility and additional costs for transitions, if supply cannot keep up with burgeoning demand.

The rapid electrification of all sectors makes electricity even more central to energy security around the world than it is today. Electricity system flexibility – needed to balance wind and solar with evolving demand patterns – quadruples by 2050 even as retirements of fossil fuel capacity reduce conventional sources of flexibility. The transition calls for major increases in all sources of flexibility: batteries, demand response and low-carbon flexible power plants, supported by smarter and more digital electricity networks. The resilience of electricity systems to cyberattacks and other emerging threats needs to be enhanced.

Priority action: Address emerging energy security risks now

Ensuring uninterrupted and reliable supplies of energy and critical energy-related commodities at affordable prices will only rise in importance on the way to net zero.

The focus of energy security will evolve as reliance on renewable electricity grows and the role of oil and gas diminishes. Potential vulnerabilities from the increasing importance of electricity include the variability of supply and cybersecurity risks. Governments need to create markets for investment in batteries, digital solutions and electricity grids that reward flexibility and enable adequate and reliable supplies of electricity. The growing dependence on critical minerals required for key clean energy technologies calls for new international mechanisms to ensure both the timely availability of supplies and sustainable production. At the same time, traditional energy security concerns will not disappear, as oil production will become more concentrated.

Critical minerals demand in the net zero pathway, 2020-2050

Oil supply in the net zero pathway, 2020-2050, international co-operation is pivotal for achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

Making net zero emissions a reality hinges on a singular, unwavering focus from all governments – working together with one another, and with businesses, investors and citizens. All stakeholders need to play their part. The wide-ranging measures adopted by governments at all levels in the net zero pathway help to frame, influence and incentivise the purchase by consumers and investment by businesses. This includes how energy companies invest in new ways of producing and supplying energy services, how businesses invest in equipment, and how consumers cool and heat their homes, power their devices and travel.

Underpinning all these changes are policy decisions made by governments. Devising cost-effective national and regional net zero roadmaps demands co-operation among all parts of government that breaks down silos and integrates energy into every country’s policy making on finance, labour, taxation, transport and industry. Energy or environment ministries alone cannot carry out the policy actions needed to reach net zero by 2050.

Changes in energy consumption result in a significant decline in fossil fuel tax revenues. In many countries today, taxes on diesel, gasoline and other fossil fuel consumption are an important source of public revenues, providing as much as 10% in some cases. In the net zero pathway, tax revenue from oil and gas retail sales falls by about 40% between 2020 and 2030. Managing this decline will require long-term fiscal planning and budget reforms.

The net zero pathway relies on unprecedented international co-operation among governments, especially on innovation and investment. The IEA stands ready to support governments in preparing national and regional net zero roadmaps, to provide guidance and assistance in implementing them, and to promote international co-operation to accelerate the energy transition worldwide. 

Priority action: Take international co-operation to new heights

This is not simply a matter of all governments seeking to bring their national emissions to net zero – it means tackling global challenges through co-ordinated actions.

Governments must work together in an effective and mutually beneficial manner to implement coherent measures that cross borders. This includes carefully managing domestic job creation and local commercial advantages with the collective global need for clean energy technology deployment. Accelerating innovation, developing international standards and co-ordinating to scale up clean technologies needs to be done in a way that links national markets. Co-operation must recognise differences in the stages of development of different countries and the varying situations of different parts of society. For many rich countries, achieving net zero emissions will be more difficult and costly without international co-operation. For many developing countries, the pathway to net zero without international assistance is not clear. Technical and financial support is needed to ensure deployment of key technologies and infrastructure. Without greater international co-operation, global CO 2 emissions will not fall to net zero by 2050. 

Global energy-related CO2 emissions in the net zero pathway and Low International Cooperation Case, 2010-2090

A zero-carbon-ready building is highly energy efficient and either uses renewable energy directly or uses an energy supply that will be fully decarbonised by 2050, such as electricity or district heat.

Battery gigafactory capacity assumption = 35 gigawatt-hours per year.

Reference 1

Reference 2, related net zero reports.

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IEA (2021), Net Zero by 2050 , IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-by-2050, Licence: CC BY 4.0

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