Monitoring the action, looking for data, and documenting the processes involved

This chapter is about looking for data, thinking about where you might find it, and keeping records of it once you have found it. Remember that one of the aims of research is to produce knowledge, so ‘data’ refers to all of those pieces of information that help you find what you are looking for as you make your claims to knowledge and test their validity. In action research, your claims are to do with how you have influenced new actions by influencing learning, so the kind of data you are looking for is in the learning and action, both your own and other people’s.