ABSTRACT
Having discussed the demands and the pressures that academics have to deal with, as well as the need to be reflective and engage with the scholarship of teaching and learning, I attempt to bring all the arguments together in putting forward a case for pedagogical action research. In so doing, I want to consider briefly the history of the action research movement and show how being a practitioner doing action research in higher education is distinct from being a practitioner doing action research in other educational contexts. This is why I have coined the term ‘pedagogical action research’. In this chapter, I will look at the criticisms that have been raised against
action research and my responses to those criticisms. I will end by discussing the potential of pedagogical action research not just to change student learning and individual teaching, important though that is, but to bring about more radical change in which the very nature of higher education should be open to critique and fresh perspectives.
