ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the issues of action research and several different kinds of change: practitioner development, institutional improvement, and social change. Although at times I refer to action researchers as practitioners and to reform in a general sense, because of my background as a teacher and teacher educator, my specific examples focus on teachers and schools. My concern is with the extent to which the continually expanding international action research movement can be counted on to contribute to the processes of change in several different ways: (a) in terms of its ability to promote individual practitioner development and a higher quality of human service work (i.e. teaching, nursing, social work, etc.); (b) in terms of its potential effects on the control of the knowledge or theory that informs the work of these practitioners; (c) in terms of its influence on institutional change in the immediate settings in which these practitioners work (i.e. schools, hospitals, social work agencies, etc.); and (d) in terms of the impact of action research on the making of more democratic and decent societies for all who live in them (i.e. its connection to issues of social continuity and change).
