Ensayo sobre investigacion accion(en ingles)

What benefits does action research have?
Elizabeth Segura
October 6th, 2010
Introduction
Problems in any area of our daily lives have always required a practical solution and they always will because human beings are in continuous development looking for answers and solutions for everything he faces or intrigues. Some problems require immediate solutions while others can wait a little bitlonger to be solved. Since the beginnings of human life, people have always faced different situations in different areas such as society, economy, psychology, education, and many others. To find a proper or adequate solution for a problem has always been a challenge for human beings. Our ancestors dealt with problematic situations that required more than a simple answer, a practical solution to beapplied.
Human beings have always looked for answers for questions or phenomena that have remained for centuries in the society. The main concern of human being has always been to find a way in which problems can be solved in an appropriate form.
The search for problem solution has been a unique characteristic of human beings since they seek for practical solutions when they face a problem.Since human being is interested in finding solutions to problems, implementing action research as a proper method for finding practical solutions is the best choice for researchers.
Definition of action research
Action research has adopted different names for people involved in the research area. When referring to action research, people may use terms like participatory research, emancipatoryresearch, action learning, or any other term. The term action research was first proposed in 1946 by the author Kurt Lewin. “Action research is a form of research to link the experimental approach of social science with social action programs that respond to major social problems. Through action research is to simultaneously address knowledge and social change, so join the theory and practice.”
Thetraditional concept of action research comes from the model of Lewin of the three stages of social change: unfreezing, moving, and refreezing. Lewin mainly suggested that the three most important characteristics of the modern action research were its participatory character, its democratic impulse, and its simultaneous contribution to knowledge in the social sciences.
Rory O’ Brien alsocontributes with this concept and gives a more succinct definition."Action research...aims to contribute both to the practical concerns of people in an immediate problematic situation and to further the goals of social science simultaneously. Thus, there is a dual commitment in action research to study a system and concurrently to collaborate with members of the system in changing it in what is togetherregarded as a desirable direction. Accomplishing this twin goal requires the active collaboration of researcher and client, and thus it stresses the importance of co-learning as a primary aspect of the research process." Professional practices, consulting and daily problem –solving could seem similar to action research. However; we must make a difference between these matters. Action researchrelies on scientific study because the researcher studies the problem in a systematically way and ensures the intervention is formed by theoretical considerations. Much more than providing a solution, action research involves collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data.
Benefits of action research
There are many areas in which action research can be carried out. Because of its characteristics,action research provides a variety of benefits or advantages for the researcher, the subject to be studied or the area in which the research developed. Because of its nature, action research provides many advantages in fields such as education, society, health, and other fields. There are general benefits of action research for any of the areas mentioned before. We can say that there are 6 mainly...